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Optimizing for accessibility and SEO? Yes. Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back to discuss accessibility standards. Dive into why the standards matter for marketing and beyond and how they overlap with doing good SEO. Katherine Watier Ong, owner of WO Strategies, stops by to walk you through the integration process of proper accessibility in technical SEO. Plus, Wix’s own Neil Osman joins to discuss the future of accessibility technology and shares plenty of strategies along the way. Tune in as we grant you access to insights on why accessibility on your website means reliability to the user on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Real talk on SEO and accessibility Optimizing for accessibility and SEO? Yes. Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back to discuss accessibility standards. Dive into why the standards matter for marketing and beyond and how they overlap with doing good SEO. Katherine Watier Ong, owner of WO Strategies, stops by to walk you through the integration process of proper accessibility in technical SEO. Plus, Wix’s own Neil Osman joins to discuss the future of accessibility technology and shares plenty of strategies along the way. Tune in as we grant you access to insights on why accessibility on your website means reliability to the user on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 87 | May 16, 2024 | 60 MIN 00:00 / 1:00:03 This week’s guests Katherine Watier Ong Katherine Watier Ong owns WO Strategies LLC, a boutique organic traffic consultancy. WO Strategies is a DC-based organic traffic marketing partner and trainer to primarily science-based, enterprise-sized organizations. We focus on making sure scientific answers are discoverable in search. Before starting her business, she built and ran Ketchum PR's online marketing and analytics team, servicing their clients globally. She has developed award-winning campaigns and worked with organizations ranging from federal agencies, foreign governments, startups, nonprofits, and Fortune 500 companies focused on G2C, B2B, and B2C audiences. She has spoken about online marketing issues, AI, and search engine optimization for the Digital Strategy Summit, Voice Global, BrightonSEO, Search Engine Strategies Chicago, Online Marketing Summit, the American Marketing Association, Public Relations Society of America, DC Digital Capital Week, and a variety of other events and conferences. She hosts the Digital Marketing Victories podcast, focusing on the soft skills required for success in digital marketing. Neil Osman As a visually impaired veteran front-end developer, web accessibility is very important to me. I've been messing with accessibility practices for more than two decades now, and still feel the excitement each morning. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Obertstein: 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 Obertstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the ever and accessible, ask whatever you want, out there on social media. She'll always be happy to answer your SEO questions because she is accessible. She's the head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, everyone. I will ask to answer some questions. I will not answer every question. I'm just going to put that out there right now. Mordy Obertstein: No, but you know there are people out there on the social media space, "I'm an influencer. I'm not answering your questions. I'm not talking to you." Crystal Carter: That's true. That's true. That's true. Mordy Obertstein: Yeah, you're accessible. You'll talk. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's true. That's true. I talk to people. I don't hide away. And also, I get people in my DMs sometimes. Also, just want to shout out. Okay, so somebody messaged me and they were like, "Oh, can you help me with this thing?" Or whatever, and I was like, "I don't think I'm your girl for this particular thing," but I sent the recommendation over to Crystal Waddle. She was like, yeah, this is like a great recommend. So I think that sometimes- Mordy Obertstein: The great union of Crystals. Crystal Carter: Yes, she's one of the fantastic and SEO Crystals. We are shine brightly wherever we go. And yeah, I think that that's something that maybe just remember that if you're not able to help someone, then maybe you can point them in the right direction. That's always great and it's valuable for everybody, and I think that that's going to be a great project. So shout out to Crystal Waddle there, whose doing some cool stuff. Mordy Obertstein: She is. She's great. Crystal Carter: She's great. Mordy Obertstein: By the way, on the Crystal thing, is there a monthly Crystals of SEO media? Because I will tell you, I was talking to Crystal Ortiz about this, another SEO Crystal. I don't know any Crystals outside of SEO, but in SEO, I know tons of Crystals. Crystal Carter: Do you know why? It's because there's a lot of SEOs who are millennials. And basically in the eighties there was, I'm just putting myself out here, but basically in the eighties there were a lot of kids named Crystal because of Dynasty. So there was Crystal and Alexis on Dynasty. I met an Alexis and she was like, "I'm also named after Dynasty." So when I was growing up, there was Crystal C, Crystal B, Crystal L. There were Crystals in all the classes. I think it's like there was a lot of Kylie's who were born in the nineties, for instance. I'm guessing maybe there's some kids named Dua who are born around now. There's a lot of kids who were born in the nineties who were named Logan after Wolverine from all of the action- Mordy Obertstein: Oh really? Crystal Carter: ... yeah, I know a couple of Logans. Mordy Obertstein: I like that name. That's a good name. Crystal Carter: It's a good name. Mordy Obertstein: By the way, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Zales. No, it's brought to you by, Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight each and every month over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also run accessibility audit on your website with the accessibility wizard built into the Wix and Wix studio platforms. Catch instances where you left out alt text have poor color contrast and more all in one click with our accessibility wizard. There's no actual wizard of accessibility. It's not like a Merlin doesn't pop up. It's a tool. So if you're expecting a wizard to come out of nowhere and fix your accessibility, that's not what actually happens. But it would be amazing if there was a dude with a long white beard and a big stick who did. Also, accessibility Moses the way I'm describing it. Crystal Carter: That's all. He could part the traffic and separate the organic from the bots. Mordy Obertstein: Thou shalt not pass with thy poor accessibility. This bridge, right? Going with another wizard. Crystal Carter: Right. And it'll be easy to use if you're on a tablet. Mordy Obertstein: Oh, like, hey, we've gone off the rails. By the way, we're talking about accessibility in SEO this week in case you haven't figured it out. But there's an tremendous amount of overlap as we get into when optimizing for accessibility is optimizing for SEO. Why having an accessible website is both good manners and good marketing, and are there signals of a more accessible Google? WL strategies, Katherine Watier Ong stops by to share how to integrate accessibility into your technical SEO audits. Plus, Wix's own accessibility wizard, Neil Osmond joins us, talk about the future of accessibility and accessibility focused website technology. And of course we get the snappies of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So we hope you are open for all as we hit great info for you on this. The 87th episode of the Surf's Up podcast as having a site that performs good and does some good is within your reach. You might say it's accessible. I might say it. Yeah, if you're listening, would you actually say it or you might say it? Crystal Carter: Yeah, we try to make the podcast accessible. It's on multiple platforms, it's success... We add a transcript to our podcast for people who want to read the transcript. We have it so it's Audible as well for people who maybe don't want to read the transcript or hands-free or whatever, things like that. Mordy Obertstein: Yeah. No, you are- Crystal Carter: High contrast in our visuals. We're trying. We're trying. Mordy Obertstein: You're absolutely... We are. Crystal Carter: Yeah. If people have recommendations for other things, like give us a shout. If you're saying like, "Hey, there's a bit that I can't access," let us know. Mordy Obertstein: And we also make the lowercase a, We make it our podcast accessible to all types of SEO learners, no matter your level. So it's accessible in the front. Crystal Carter: We're trying, we're thinking to everybody. You know why? Because we care. Mordy Obertstein: Deeply. Crystal Carter: A lot. Mordy Obertstein: Did that come off inauthentic? Crystal Carter: It's true, we do. Mordy Obertstein: Yeah, no, I do. I just want to make sure I didn't sound inauthentic when I said, "Deeply." Anyway, we should probably move on. Okay, so what is accessibility? What are we talking about? So in a nutshell, accessibility means making your websites and the elements contained within your website usable for all people, whether they have, let's say a visual impairment or hearing difficulty, whatever it may be. You want to create a website experience where everybody can access the information on your website. So what does making a site accessible actually mean? Or practically, what does it mean? So there are a lot of things and it's way too long of a list and it's way more holistic than you might generally think, but it means things like having a button that doesn't say click here because when you have a text to audio reader, they don't know what here is. That would be a thing. Making sure you have descriptive headers that aren't overly relying on idioms or jargon or aren't visually centric or they're playing off an image that you have only having one H1, which is actually an SEO best practice. But Google said, yeah, you could have more, but for accessibility you can't. Alt texts obviously audio transcripts, avoiding low contrast text, text rather avoiding content that isn't only available inside of an image, which by the way is an SEO thing because Google can't read that content that you have in an image either. And generally avoiding things that are really only about or summarizing things that are only in an image. So if you create an infographic let's say, and you don't have a summary that describes the infographic in some kind of readable text that would be inaccessible to some of your users. The A11Y project has an entire checklist. We'll link to that in the show notes so you have a more prolific list there and there are real implications and a ramifications to this. There's a precedent for lawsuits if your site's not accessible. And that's based on in the US at least it's based on the Americans with Disabilities Act and that's just the US. And the US is not nearly as strict as other countries, particularly the European Union, which has an act in an effect since 2019 that's founded on the WCAG standards and that European Accessibility Act, and I'll end with this and hand it over to Crystal, they're going to enforce compliance as of June 28th, 2025, which is not that far off in the future if your website is fundamentally not accessible. So accessibility isn't just good. Marketing isn't just good manners. I mentioned before it's going to be good avoiding lawsuits. Crystal Carter: It's good business. And I think that that's something that people overlook because here's the thing. So one of the ways that people talk about accessibility is there's that dropped curb thing. So basically you've all seen this, but apparently back in the day it's like suitcases with wheels on them. I remember before wheels were on suitcases. Mordy Obertstein: I remember that. What were we thinking? Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Obertstein: Why? It took us so long to figure out, you know what would be a great thing to have wheels for? This really heavy-ass suitcase that I need to shlep through the entire freaking airport. Crystal Carter: Yeah, let me take the steamer trunk on my back. It's insane. It's madness. Mordy Obertstein: That's madness. Crystal Carter: So I remember that and that was ridiculous. But similarly with drop curves. So people used to just build, they'd have a sidewalk and they'd just have a sidewalk. At some point, somebody was like, we should have a drop curve, which is basically so that somebody who has a wheelchair can go, who can cross the street and cross onto the other side and they don't have to do the bumping down or whichever and all that sort of stuff, which is really inconvenient and really unsafe as well. Well, guess what? Those are great for everybody. If you have limited sight, it tells you that this is a safe place to cross. It's good for people who can walk but maybe have mobility challenges. It's good for people who are pushing push chairs. It's good for people riding bicycles. It's good for lots of people. And that's a lot of the things with some of the stuff that you were just talking about in terms of accessibility. So you were saying, "Don't say click here." I hate, click here. What am I clicking on? Tell me what it is. Tell me what it is. That's not easy for- Mordy Obertstein: Scammy, by the way. The click here, my mind the second you have that on your page, you could have the most prestigious product and service on the planet means you say, "Click here." I feel like you're a YouTube spammer of some kind. Crystal Carter: Right? So click what? Tell me what it is. Alt text images also really useful. Interestingly, interestingly, there's a lot of tools that are adding alt text automatically. So for instance, we have a great tool for helping you add alt text to your website into your web pages within Wix SEO tools. If you haven't gone back to the SEO, SEO set a checklist, please do that because they've added that in and it's really useful and it's really great. But similarly, if you're using PowerPoint, when you add an image into PowerPoint, it adds in alt text based on the thing. I added in that picture of John Cusack holding up that meme. And it was like someone holding up a sign and I was like, "Oh, okay. Thank you very much PowerPoint." These things are really, really useful." Audio transcripts. Sometimes I need to be able to search the podcast and say, "What was that thing that he was talking about?" And I can just search it with Ctrl F and I can find the piece of text. That is great. And that's also great for SEO because you, and they transcript, they transcribe all the YouTube videos for the same reason because they are easier to find bits of information and things like that. So it is great business, business from an SEO point of view, it's also great because if you have users who are trying to come to your website, you want them to feel welcome, you want them to feel like they can use your website. And I will tell you right now that if you go to a website or you go to something and it doesn't feel usable, you just leave. You just leave. Mordy Obertstein: Totally. Crystal Carter: Whereas if there's one where it is accessible, then not only will you use it, but that will be your go-to, because you know that it's easy for you to use as opposed to these other ones that you've been, you don't want to trawl around looking for 17 other websites. This one works. You will go to that one and you will use that one. For instance, and again, this is a lowercase accessibility thing, but just something to think about. I have dietary considerations to think about. I'm lactose intolerant, and if I look at a menu and they don't tell me which things have dairy in them, it's like a whole pain in the butt. It's so exhausting. I don't want to have to talk to you about all the things. Just tell me what's what. If you don't have it, cool, that's fine. I will go somewhere else. If you do have it, then great. And I think that it is very, very similar when people are thinking about accessibility stuff, the places where it's easy for them to go, it'll be really useful. And also I think that people forget that some of these things can be deal-breakers for wider groups. So if you have a client, we used to work with medical clients and the agency I was working at previously used to work with the NHS, and they have to be accessible. Everything has to be accessible for the NHS. Every single thing has to be accessible for the NHS. So if your website isn't accessible to the NHS, and guess what, you ain't getting that contract. Mordy Obertstein: We'll get into that later in a little bit with Katherine. Government contracts are very different. They have a different set of laws in the US at least, that they have to align with. And it's a good example of how you're limiting your audience and your potential market if you don't make your website accessible. I think one of the classic things you hear is, "Well, mean how many people are there out there with an audio or a visual impairment?" There's 26,514 nursing homes in the US as of 2023. My wife works in nursing homes, so I'm pretty familiar with this. I would like to go into a nursing home and see how many of the people don't have a visual or audio impairment. Crystal Carter: Yo, I'm wearing glasses right now and I- Mordy Obertstein: I can't see anything without my glasses on. Crystal Carter: And people forget about that. And on my phone, I have a little accessibility dude on the corner of my phone because, sometimes I forget to wear my glasses. I've only started wearing glasses in the last couple of years and so I forget that I can't see. And so sometimes- Mordy Obertstein: I'll pull up my glasses sometimes when I'm reading something because it's annoying on my phone to read it without, so it's like right in my face. I feel like an old person, but I'd say, Hey, I do that and that's fine. I'm okay with this. But the page, if the page is set up in a way that it's not accessible to the words, the font isn't big enough, it's super annoying. It's annoying with my glasses on because of the way the screen is set up and it's annoying my glasses off because I can't see it. Crystal Carter: So that high contrast thing, that's another point. The high contrast thing, that's just, that's everybody. Mordy Obertstein: That's just good. I was on a website with my wife the other day and the background is all black and the font is neon pink. It's like, why did they do this? It's killing my eyes. Crystal Carter: Yeah, so these are things to think about and I think that there's a lot of overlap with UX, so a lot of good UX will work well with that and a lot of good CROs. So a lot of CROs will think about things like high contrast, making sure that the clickable elements are not on top of each other. That's not good practice to have clickable elements like too close together, and good UX will flag that. So a lot of times there's a lot of alignment, but with good UX and good accessible websites. So I think that that's worth thinking about. But I think that sometimes you don't even know who's not coming to your website when you are not taking accessibility into consideration because people just won't... They just won't engage. Mordy Obertstein: They'll click and they'll bounce. Which by the way, from an SEO point, if you ever want to talk about user behavior, neighbor boost, whatever it is, that bouncing is a signal. Crystal Carter: And if you're looking at certain tools and things that you're finding that on certain situations or in certain places, a lot of people are bouncing or they're not coming through, that's something to think about. And I think that there are ways that can add in... You can use add-ons to make your site more accessible. Sometimes you see the little accessibility guy on certain websites and you can click on that and it can make it more accessible for people in that way. Another thing that I've started to see, and I think we talk about this as well, is making pages listenable. So people will add an audio, an audio file onto a long read article. I love those because I get tired, I get very tired staring at a screen for a long time and reading 3,000 words, 6,000 words of an article. Mordy Obertstein: It's like, listen in the background. Crystal Carter: Listen in the background like people would do to a podcast. Do some stretching, make a sandwich while listening to this article or just listen to, if it's something that's a new topic to me, I'll listen to it to sort of pick up the key phrases, pick up some of the things, and then go back into it to read the text, to get deep dive into the sections that I'm interested in. And this is something that is useful for people who have visual challenges. This is also useful for people who have temporary disabilities, I guess you would say, temporary things like when you don't have your hands because your hands are full. Because you've got your shopping in one hand, you've got the kids in the other hand, you can still listen to the content in that way, or you're driving for instance, and you want to be able to search up the information. There's things like that where you can have speakable to speakable schema, for instance, where you can say, "Hey, is Denny's open right now?" And that your Tesla or something we'll talk about, I don't know if people in Tesla's go to Denny's, I'm sure they do sometimes. Anyway, your Tesla will say, "Yes, Denny's is open right now and stuff." You go, "Thanks. Thanks car." Mordy Obertstein: By the way, just throw another stat into this to show you how you're limiting your audience. You're not talking about the point about having a temporary impairment is a great point. 6 million people in the US had cataract surgery last year. It could be two years ago, whatever it is. 6 million people. My father had cataract surgery last year, actually. He's one of those 6 million. And he couldn't read anything for a few days or couldn't read anything well, for a few days. And so do you really want potentially 6 million of your customers to be like, oh man, this website is so much more annoying than I thought it was a week ago now. I just had cataract surgery. Crystal Carter: Similarly, I think the other is people will talk about, people who are doing accessibility will think about how can you experience this? Well, some people say, "Well, try to use your website without looking at it. Try to use your website without looking at it. Try tabbing through it, using a voice reader, using a screen reader, et cetera, and see what it's like." And I think that that is something that's worth thinking about because it's very difficult sometimes to pay attention to challenges that aren't in your first frame of reference. And even with the best will in the world, probably the best example I've had of this was when I was on maternity leave and I was pushing a buggy around, pushing a shoulder around, I suddenly was very, very aware of how many places had stairs everywhere, and it was impossible for me to get this push chair, this stroller. Mordy Obertstein: New York City subway. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Obertstein: Super annoying. Crystal Carter: And as soon as you have that, you're like, "Oh my gosh, this is a horrible way. This is horrible. Why isn't this like this? Why isn’t there an elevator?" Mordy Obertstein: That's an example, because the New York City subway does have an elevator, but just because you have the thing there, it doesn't work. Well, half of them are broken half the time. Where is the elevator? God knows where it is. So sometimes you think, "Oh, I created it. It's accessible. I have the thing there." But you haven't really thought about how you've rolled that experience out in a way where it's made the accessibility actually accessible. Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah. "Oh, I ticked the box." It's like, "Yeah, but have you tested it? Have you tested it? And is it okay?" Right, because there's lots of places, and again, wheelchair access is probably one that we're all very familiar with, but sometimes they just have the ramp, so they'll have the ramp. That's the way that you access the place. And there's lots of times where people prefer the ramp over the stairs. People who are perfectly capable of using the stairs will prefer the ramp because the ramp is better, and the ramp is easier for people to access. And certainly if you're pushing something heavy or you're doing whatever, these are the things. So have a look at it, have a look at it that actually tests your accessible features. Because like you said, making accessibility accessible, it's really important. I think what another example is on a bus for instance, you have those buses. There's some buses where you go to the bus stop and the curb is raised. And so if the bus shows up and somebody needs to go on a wheelchair, they can just roll straight on. Then there's some places where the curve is dropped and the bus driver has to get out of their seat and they've got to take the ramp and they've got to put it down and then they've got to do all the thing. And it's a whole big thing. And it's like when I show up with my lactose intolerance and they're like, "Oh, let me get you this ring binder. Let me get you this trapper keeper notebook that's all covered in grease and grime and things and a million other people's smudges and have you flip through that." I don't want that. Just put it on the menu. Just put it on the menu. Then I know everybody knows, or there's an app or something. Make it accessible. Give people the information, give people the tools in order to use your content and to access your site, access your services really well. Mordy Obertstein: And that's where the web is going. One of the things you pointed out, we were talking about this, was that Google started to add all of the audio readers to all of their, not to all of their, increasingly to their documentation. At a certain point, as the web becomes more and more accessible, you're running the risk of being left behind and created the optic. You don't care, which if you don't actually care, you should at a minimum care about the optic of caring. Because you're going to come off as, I don't know what, it's a good word I'm allowed to use on the, you're going to come out like a jerk. And people move off of your brand because they'll look at it. People who don't have any impairments will look at it like, "Oh, this website is... Come on, seriously?" And they'll move off the website because of it. Crystal Carter: And I think also, so speaking of Google, Google's also added in a lot of those accessibility elements to their Google business profile. So in Google business profile, you can declare this is wheelchair accessible. You can declare things like that. Mordy Obertstein: You see, that's where the internet is going. That's a big deal. All those attributes were a big deal. They are a big deal. In the local space, people will say, yes, a million percent, we add in those attributes. They're super helpful to the consumer. Crystal Carter: It shows your users that you care about them. Like we said, on our podcasts, we try to make sure that it's accessible in lots of different ways. For instance, because we care. We want people to be able to use it. And I think it's important to remember and to acknowledge the times when you feel like you're on a website and you're like, "Why can't I access this? Why is this too small? Why is this too close together? Why is this not accessible?" Take a moment, pause and experience the experience of that and think about that when you're building your website. Also, I think it's worth testing it with folks that you know who might be in that audience just to make sure that they are able to access it. It doesn't have to be a big deal. It's just like, "Hey, what do you think of this website? Your honest opinion." And I think that it can get you a lot. It can help you get really far in the process. Mordy Obertstein: You know what can also help you, some tips about how to integrate accessibility into your SEO audits and what that actually means, and why that actually makes sense and why there's an overlap to begin with. Here is the owner of WO Strategies, Katherine Watier Ong on just that. Katherine Watier Ong: I stumbled into checking website accessibility as an SEO when I started working on federal.gov websites. At this point, I've worked on three. Cancer.gov, healthit.gov, and the Fisheries Division of NOAA, so fisheries.noaa.gov. And there's just so much related to SEO that's important for accessibility. So I just couldn't help highlighting areas where I thought they weren't meeting 508 compliance, because the feds need to meet this level of compliance. And usually feds think they're fine and they have some obvious stuff usually handled like transcript for audio or video, but then having alt text for all of their images and text navigation, the screen reader can read, some of that stuff usually falls by the way of side. Right now I'm in the middle of a tech audit for a large international nonprofit looking at four of their websites, and I sense that they might need a full accessibility audit. So to make my case for that audit, I usually just use the default stuff in Microsoft. So I turn on a screen reader, I use Microsoft's default, and then I video record my session using Microsoft's game bar recording functionality. And in one instance, I noticed that they had these instructional videos for how to use the website, but they didn't have unique link names. So when you listen to the screen reader, it just said, "Video, video, video." And none of the videos had transcripts. And then in another instance, the JavaScript that they're using on this website had garbled the navigation so much that you could just hear that garbled confusion in the screen reader. I think it's kind of powerful to see how an actual user would experience the website by using these recordings. Oftentimes I get a hint of whether or not there's trouble. I run a Chrome Lighthouse report, obviously that pulls some stuff, but then I also use WebAIM's Wave tool, the checker to check a variety of other stuff like low contrast issues, form field labeling, tech size, that kind of thing. Now with the feds, you just have to mention 508 compliance, and usually they're motivated to fix the issues. But with this international nonprofit, I pulled together all of the regulating laws related to disabilities for every country they're trying to appear in, as well as the US laws. I'm also going to try to tie page speed to accessibility. As cheaper mobile phones have slower processors and obviously certain geographic areas don't have great internet speeds, and I know their goal is to be in front of everyday users in all these different countries. So we'll see how it goes with persuading them to take this seriously. Mordy Obertstein: Thank you so much Katherine. Make sure to give Katherine a follow over on X, over at K-W-A-T-I-E-R link in the show notes. And you see a second you start to a certain type of client. If you're not thinking about accessibility, you're immediately out. Crystal Carter: And I think that that's really interesting that she mentioned a few government spaces as well. Gov.UK is an award-winning site for both accessibility and for UX, and they keep it super simple. And I think that the accessibility that she's talking about in terms of device and data access is also really important. There are certain GEOs. For instance, I know that in Johannesburg for instance, data is incredibly expensive. It's like some of the most expensive data on earth or something. And I've had it before where we had a client who was working in that area and they were saying like, "Oh yeah, we want to have a video on the page." And somebody local was like, "Nah." Like what? It was like, "Nah, nobody's going to watch that video because it's too much on the data." So that should not be on the page. Don't put it on the page and things. And I think that that's really important to think about as well because again, it will make your site more accessible to other users. I had an app recently that updated beyond the capabilities of my little phone, and I had a terrible time using it when I changed my phone, it was perfectly fine. But I think when you are thinking about accessibility both with a capital A and with the lowercase, you're also broadening the scope of your audience, which is what growth is about. And I think if you're like, "Oh, there's nobody who needs this." It's like, "Well, nobody, that's your current user that needs this." Mordy Obertstein: Tell you 6 million people got cataracts in the US, had surgery alone in the US. Crystal Carter: And I think you say, "Oh, people who don't have disabilities..." Honestly, by the time people get past 30 years old, tell me somebody who doesn't have a bum knee, or hearing- Mordy Obertstein: I can't hear anything. My wife talks, I can't hear anything. It's like as if I didn't hear it Hear, Didn't you hear? I'm like, no, I didn't hear. Crystal Carter: Right. Let's be honest here. Mordy Obertstein: I do. I can't hear. I have bad hearing. Crystal Carter: Let's be honest here, about what people need and how people access sites access the web. And yeah, I think that you'll only win. And chances are it's not even going to cost that much to implement. Mordy Obertstein: No, it could. Must be. It can be sometimes a big overhaul, but the truth is most of the times, not. And either way, you're going to end up at a point where you're exposing yourself to lawsuits if you're operating in the EU for sure. Crystal Carter: And that costs more. Mordy Obertstein: Yeah. And that's going to cost more. And also you're setting yourself up to end up being looked at like you're behind the times, which is not what you want to do as a brand. And again, you're limiting your market. It makes zero sense most of the time. Things you are right are very simple. Again, don't have a black background with pink highlight neon text. I can't read that. And I can see with my glasses on. Now with that, we have a very special treat for you about talking about building your website and making it accessible. It's one thing to talk about accessibility, it's another thing to talk to someone who's actually worked on working to create all new ways for site owners and site matters to ensure that their websites are actually accessible. So join us as we go across the Wix-verse, we talk to Wix's own accessibility specialist, Neil Osmond. Mordy Obertstein: Welcome to the show, Neil. It's an honor to have you here. Neil Osman: Thanks for having me. Mordy Obertstein: So there's a lot of talk about accessibility is becoming more in focus as we spoke about earlier in the show, but you've done a lot to help Wix site owners be able to create more accessible websites more efficiently and more accessibly, for lack of a better word. And before we get into it all, I just wanted to catch up with you. What have you done? What have you worked on? What have you done to help our Wix ecosystem? Because you're the man. Neil Osman: We are a team of specialists and I'm one of them. But yeah, our methodic, the way we try to tackle this complex thing in Wix is to do a shift left. And by shift left, I mean making everything accessible by design. So our users will not need to care about it too much, though they should as far as their content is concerned. So all of the viewer, the infrastructure, the components, the directionality, all this technical stuff, they're exempted from having to deal with it and we take care of everything. And by the way, internally also, that was a very laborious effort to do a shift left instead of fixing bags and vicious cycle of bugs and things like that. So we tried to do an organizational shift left. Crystal Carter: How difficult is it to get buy-in for that sort of thing? I know that there are some people who work in teams and they try to make the case for accessibility and they find it a little bit tricky. What is your top tip for making that case, for building that sort of access as a first port of call? What's your top tip for getting buy-in for that? Neil Osman: My top tip would be to consider all kinds of personas that might use your site. And usually we're not fully aware of personas type like blind users or visually impaired visitors or elderly visitors or users maybe with diverse, with new diversity, all kinds of, or just sighted keyboard users. Crystal Carter: And I think also, I think people sometimes forget that. I always call it, capital A accessibility. Thinking about that sort of thing also impacts lowercase accessibility, people being able to use it on their mobile or people being able to use it with voice search or things like that. So if I'm out and about with my son and I don't have fingers to type, or when Mordy sends me voice messages that are just like, yeah, okay. And I'm like, "You couldn't type that?" He was like, "I was busy." Making sure that people have different ways that they can access the information is- Neil Osman: Absolutely Crystal Carter: ... great for lots of users. Neil Osman: Another common example that I hear a lot is you sit in a bar, in a cafe, you are looking at a video. So captions really help them with the noise around you. Mordy Obertstein: Yeah, no, for real. I look at YouTube videos and captions with the sound off all the time. A huge thing. Neil Osman: No, it's a common pattern that lots of accessibility enhancements take away to the mainstream. And usually when there are good accessible solutions, it helps everyone. It's not always the case, because not all accessibility solutions are great, but the ones that are great, in high probability, they will serve everyone. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think is that something that you think about when you're thinking about which accessibility optimizations to add to websites? Neil Osman: Absolutely. And most of the time it would be, let's take the simple solution, the straight one, let's not complex too much. But on the other end there's a notion that accessible sites are ugly sites and we want to tackle this one because it's not true. We can make everything accessible, even the most complicated application. So I think that it's kind of a philosophy, but things should be simple to the visitors and in that regard, yeah, I think it's more helpful for your visitors to not complex things too much, like invent the navigation, invent the visual conventions and affordances. Mordy Obertstein: I want to swing back to something you were mentioning earlier, because it's very similar to what we have on the SEO side, where we have the Wix infrastructure for SEO makes it easy for bots to crawl and discover your pages and so forth and so forth. But what you do with the content from an SEO point of view, is really on you. We can't write your title tags for, we have an AI thing that can write your title tags for you, but you still need to click to do that and then accept the AI suggestion. And it's a fine balance. And I'm wondering how do you go about tackling or deciding what guidance you're going to build for our users to be able to create more accessible websites? I know we have the accessibility wizard and so forth, but how do you sit down and say, "You know what? This is the next thing we need to tackle to help guide our users to making more accessible websites." Neil Osman: So I think that in this regard, we have three main areas of concern. One is headings, the other one is alternative text for images, and also choice of colors. So let's take one by one. So let's start with headings. Headings are very important. I like the metaphor of the book, the H1, the main heading should be a single one. And that's the book title. And then each chapter is the H two, the secondary headings. And then if the chapters are complex or have lots of content, maybe it'll be a good idea to split them into H3s. So when a visitor or user or reader wants to go straight to chapter three and to the second thing, so it can straight go to that chapter, chapter through headings. Yeah, maybe I'm assuming that everyone understands why it's important for users with disabilities. So lots of users that use assistive technology, they have all kinds of shortcuts. So they cannot scheme the page and look at it and go straight well and point, and click the thing they're interested in. So instead of that, they have alternative mechanisms like navigating through headings. So headings should represent the structure and hierarchy in relationship of the content. And as side effects, it also helps the primary screen reader user of the web, which is Google, which works quite similarly. Crystal Carter: I mean, I, as a sighted user, I can't stand it when I go to a page and the headings don't make sense. If I look at the headings and the headings are just like, "And now read more related posts," I'm just like, "What is this?" I can't stand when they're, so I can't imagine how frustrating that must be for somebody with limited sight trying to navigate a page and it just makes no sense. You just leave. You would just leave. You'd just go to someone... Neil Osman: Absolutely. Mordy Obertstein: And the contrast stuff, the color contrast is something that I will freely admit. I've used the accessibility words under my own size. I thought it was fine. I thought this is fine. And you don't really realize because while I have many shortcomings, I can see with my glasses on. With my glasses off, I can't see a thing. I'm blind as a the bat. Neil Osman: By the way, that very substantial percentage of men are colorblind. Mordy Obertstein: Yeah, interesting. Wayne Gretzky was colorblind. I don't think I'll realize that. Yeah, a little hockey fact for you. I'm pretty sure that's true. Wait, don't take me to the bank on that. I'm pretty sure it's true. But yeah, there's a lot of issues there. And you don't think about it because you're designing it. It looks nice. It looks like I could read it. I see it, by the way, in kids' books all the time. Crystal Carter: Yes. Yes. Facts. Yes. Mordy Obertstein: They put the black text on a dark color character and you can't read squat. Crystal Carter: No, no. Neil Osman: Interesting. Crystal Carter: I can think of the one right off the top of my head. It's an astronomy book and they're telling me about Saturn and its black text on a dark purple cloud or something, and I'm like, "I don't know anything about this planet anymore." We just have to think there's no hope for me. Mordy Obertstein: Was it one of the real planets or was like Pluto, who cares? Crystal Carter: Pluto can't keep itself together. It's a helper belt. Guys, guys manage your orbit. Mordy Obertstein: Pluto's that crazy uncle who comes over for Thanksgiving, you don't want there anyway. Crystal Carter: He's like, "Hey." And you're like, "Are you still around? I thought were in Florida." Mordy Obertstein: "I thought we got rid of you." Neil Osman: But at least at Wix, all the presets and templates are designs- Mordy Obertstein: That's amazing. Neil Osman: ... as needed, but when users start playing with it might have contrast issues. And for this, we have the Wizard to detect these issues. Crystal Carter: Yes. The Accessibility Wizard is turning three this year. Mordy Obertstein: Is it really? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's turning three this year. And I think it such an amazing thing. And I think that, can you just tell us about what the goals are for the Accessibility Wizard and how it works for people that aren't aware? Neil Osman: Absolutely. Absolutely. So as I said before, all of the infrastructure should be accessible by designs and users should not care about. But as Mordy mentioned, user content is their domain and they should take care of it. So the Wizard scans all of the site pages and detect these kind of issues and allow users straight in the editor to fix it. It's not just a reporting tool, it's a product that help users fix things on the spot. Yeah, and we have big plans for the Wizard, but we leave it as a surprise. Mordy Obertstein: Not even a little? I know we're working on a lot of stuff for accessibility. It's really in focus for us right now, not even a little tease? Neil Osman: So we have partners in mind, we want to tailor something for them. They have multiple sides and we work hard on a new architecture, so to work on all editors and there's going to be a very fancy engine rules and better coverage and sorting and filtering. Mordy Obertstein: I don't think you've said too much. No, I think it was perfect, because I don't know what you're talking about and I work here. Crystal Carter: But I think that the making it really easy for website builders and website managers to manage your accessibility is really key. And the best example that I've seen of that is adding the alt text updates into the SEO set of checklists, like the blog assistant so that you go onto your blog and they're like, "You're missing alt text." And you're like, "Where?" And they're like, "Here, here, here and here. Do you want to fill it in?" And you're like, "Yeah, okay." And then you just do. And we've seen an incredible number of users take that up, which has been fantastic. Neil Osman: That's fantastic. What do you think about the AI enhancements? Crystal Carter: I think that some of those, we've been using vision AI, Google's, vision AI to add tags or to make images more searchable in Wix for years. And I think that it's very good at categorizing images, so it makes sense that it would make help, that it would be a big help for adding alt text images. Neil Osman: Truth is, I'm a bit ambivalent about this because on the one hand, yeah, we see uplift and that's great and no alt or partially good alt for sure, partially good alt are better than nothing and gives more value. But I think we should up our game a bit because user rely on this. So let's consider an example. Okay, you're a merchant, you have a store and you sell Nike shoes, and for each model you have a few products. Okay? Now what the alt, because one from the front, one from the side, one from, I don't know, from behind. What kind of alt can you give? And I think AI is not... It's very challenging to write, to do good prompt engineering to good results, but it's doable. I think it's doable and it's a challenge, but I think that, hey, if the merchant chose to include a photo from the front, so maybe it communicates them, it gives this source the information they're looking for, oh, that's the model that you see, I don't know, something like this. And that should be the alt text, right? Not just the Nike and the model number or what have benefit. Mordy Obertstein: If you understand the page better, you can pull in all sorts of stuff to the image, one would assume. Well, you can take a product description and have AI summarize a product description and pull that in to be, if you know that's the image. Also, it's one image. Just make it really simple. You have, I don't know, a pair of socks, which is complicated when it's more than one image. Neil Osman: Right. Exactly. Mordy Obertstein: Right. But if it's a page with one image, you can take the description and summarize it and put that as the alt text, theoretically. Neil Osman: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think, yeah, you are correct. Mordy Obertstein: Bottom line is you should not be using more than one product image now is what I'm saying, which is not what you should be doing. Don't take that advice. Neil Osman: Absolutely. Yeah. We have the gallery for this and- Mordy Obertstein: Yeah, that's more challenging. Neil Osman: ... it gives our office lots of value. Yeah. Crystal Carter: I have a question which is slightly off-piece. So Mordy, forgive me for going on a tangent. Mordy Obertstein: That's what this podcast is about. Crystal Carter: So I've been seeing a lot, and this is something that I've noticed and something that the first time I saw this was I was reading an article on, it's called Guardian Long Reads, and they're really long articles, I don't know, 7,000 words or something like that. And they had an audio of it and it was like an excerpt for a book or an interview with an author who'd just written a book and they had basically the author reading the article. I've started also seeing these snippets on Google. They've started listen to this article, and I think Hacker Noon also does it Medium had it for a while. What's your opinion on those in terms of making content more accessible? Neil Osman: Oh, I think that these are great enhancements because many, many user prefer to consume the content in audio format. And having a few options to consume the content is great. That's useful by the way, listening and reading at the same time. Usually people with attention deficit and things like that and the context changes. Sometimes you want to consume the content on the way to work or when you're running. Yeah, it's great. So if the content is available only in audio, it's very important to have a transcription. And by the way, there are two kinds of solutions. A synthetic one and a natural one, someone reads it and you have a ready-made audio. But nowadays, screen readers, not the traditional ones, but those maintained by Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, they are and they're powered through AI. It's a revolution. It's so much better than it used to be. It's really natural with all them. Mordy Obertstein: I'm looking forward to the point in time where you can have a voice like, Waze or Google Maps, you have different voices redo the directions. I want Arnold Schwarzenegger reading my Google documentation to me. Neil Osman: What Apple push towards this goal. You can record for 15 minutes a voice and then it can be used as the voice that will. Mordy Obertstein: Perfect. This is all I want out of life. I'm glad. I'm glad it's already here then. Neil Osman: Why Arnold, by the way? Mordy Obertstein: I love Arnold. I think he's hilarious. Yeah, I love a big Arnold Schwarzenegger fan now. Old Arnold from way back when was kind of a creep, but yeah, new Arnold is way better than old Arnold. Neil Osman: Yeah. You are from California? Mordy Obertstein: No, Crystal is from California. Neil Osman: Oh. Where you are you from, Mordy? Mordy Obertstein: New York. Neil Osman: Oh. Mordy Obertstein: I mean now. Yeah, I'm originally from New York. Now I'm international. Where can people, we could find Crystal in California, which we can't anymore, because she doesn't live in California anymore. Where can people find you? Are you on Twitter? LinkedIn, TikTok? Neil Osman: I'm a bit on like Twitter, but I got tired of it. Yeah, but I still have an account and I communicate with professionals over there and. Mordy Obertstein: Oh, okay, cool. Neil Osman: LinkedIn properly is also active. Mordy Obertstein: So we will link to those in the show notes. Neil, thank you so much for all that you do to help our users and thanks so much for joining us today. Neil Osman: Thank you. Was a blast. Thanks. Mordy Obertstein: You know who's always making the SEO news very accessible? Crystal Carter: Whose that? Mordy Obertstein: Literally he has his articles, he has his daily video series called, It's New, which you can find right here on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, where it's indicated because Crystal and I do this daily with him. It's Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Hey. Mordy Obertstein: He makes it accessible. Crystal Carter: He does, he does. He does. Mordy Obertstein: He's very accessible on Twitter as well. You reach out to Barry, is it new? No. Your birthday? Thank you. Crystal Carter: I think also we talked about language as well. I think language is also really, really important. I think Barry writes in a very matter of fact kind of way like this happened and this happened and that happened. Mordy Obertstein: That's true. Crystal Carter: And I think that's really, really useful. I think it's particularly useful when we think about accessibility in a lowercase a kind of way in terms of international audiences like, [foreign language 00:48:44] from school or whatever. But when I know my accent is- Mordy Obertstein: Espanol. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I know my accent is sometimes better than that. But anyway- Mordy Obertstein: That's a combination of, I don't know what. Texas, Espanol. Crystal Carter: Espanol, [foreign language 00:49:01]. Anyway, but I can't understand super complex sentences. I can understand smaller sentences in Spanish and straightforward sentences, but I can't understand super complex sentences. And I think that when you're speaking to an international audience, it's really important to think about that as well. Don't dumb it down, but don't make it overly complex for no reason at all. And I would say that Barry's very good at speaking very clearly and has a very wide-ranging international audience For that reason. Mordy Obertstein: What we're trying to say is its time for the Snappy News. Snappy News. Snappy news. Snappy News. You heard of the Yankee Clipper. Well now Google's the coupon clipper for the record, you may not have heard of the Yankee Clipper and that's Joe DiMaggio, but you may not have heard of either. Mordy, stop with the baseball references. I can't, I'm sorry. From Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Land, Google begins enforcement of site reputation abuse policy with portions of sites being de-listed. So as we spoke about on this podcast before, back in the beginning of March, Google when announcing it's March 2024 core update and the spam update said, "Hey, come May 5th, we're going to be targeting Parasite SEO." And indeed they are. Barry confirmed with Danny Sullivan from Google who said that right now they're only doing manual actions. Dan said the algorithmic component will indeed come as we've said, but that's not live yet. What is Parasite SEO's, Google's calling on site reputation abuse. Barry writes, when third party sites host low quality content provided by third parties to piggyback on the ranking power of those third party websites. So for example, if I am, I don't know, coupon, superdupercoupon.com and no one's looking up, I can't rank for whatever keyword I'm trying to rank for. So I'll go to CNN, say, "Hey CNN, I'd like to host an article on your website because you rank for everything. So now I'll rank for my coupon keyword because you rank for everything. I will siphon off your authority." Google says, quote, "A third party might publish payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefit from the site. Such content ranking highly in search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given site." So the issue is, in my opinion, and maybe I'm putting words in Google's mouth, who knows. If I go to CNN and I see CNN's branding everywhere, and then I'm reading this article about whatever that this third party site is hosting on CNN, a reader might get confused, like, "Look at this, this is CNN," but it's not actually as trustworthy as CNN or whatever. I don't know. ABC News, wherever they're hosting this content. What Google did say, and I'm personally against me, speckling, I think this is why algorithmically it's hard. A lot of times you have content that's editorial content or surgeon and journal, they have advertisement, what do they call it? Oh, man. Announcements I think they call it. And it's articles like Crystal Carter, the host of this podcast has written an announcement article on search a journal, and it's all about SEO. It's great content because its from Crystal. So it's probably the best content on the whole website, just saying, and it makes sense to have that on search a journal. It was about SEO, I think it was about a SEO checklist or whatever it was. So that's exactly the kind of content and the quality of content that you'd want to see on an SEO news and blog site. So that makes sense. So Google said, "Many publications host advertising content that is intended for the regular readers rather than to primarily manipulate search rankings, sometimes calls native advertising or advertorial. This kind of typically won't confuse regular readers of the publication when they find on the publisher's site directly or when arriving at it from Google search results." I think that makes a complicated algorithmically and I think that's why they need to implement the manual actions to train the algorithm. That's me saying that. That's how Google's saying that. I'm a smart person, I think. Anyway, Barry also wrote this time on Search Engine Roundtable. "Google Site repetition Abuse isn't about linking." So Danny Sullivan, again, Google search liaison made it to quote Barry, "Crystal clear that the cyber petition abuse policy has zero to do with linking." This means that who you link to and or who links to you has no impact on this new policy that Google began enforcing with manual actions earlier this week. So it's not about links, it's purely about the content itself. Okay, so that's clarified. Thank you, Barry. Also, from Barry Schwartz and also from Search Engine Roundtable about Barry again with a monopoly on the news. Sundar Pichai Google CEO responds to Google's search quality issues. Google, CEO sat down with Bloomberg, did whole interview about the, and one of the topics that came up was obviously AI and the quality of Google's results. I found personally that a lot of the ways that he answered the questions were very telling. We cover this on It's New, our daily news series with Barry Schwartz and Greg Finn, and of course Krista Carter when I cover this with Barry. And I said, "Look at his body language and how Sundar replied to this comment and to that question," Barry was unhappy. Barry did not like the read between the lines body language thing. So I think there were some interesting tidbits in there about how he answered the questions. Barry clearly thought I was wrong. He's making faces at me while we were recording, It's New, rolling his eyes at me saying that's the most ridiculous thing he ever heard in the chat. But I do think that you can learn a lot from the way that Sundar answered the questions. I think, by the way, for the record, the quality issue, which he answered it as anytime there's a transition, you get an exposure to new content, AI is going to do it. Sorry, AI is going to do that. So for us, we view this as a challenge, yada, yada, yada, yada. That's totally true. I think we do give Google a little bit too much of a hard time. I was talking about Melissa Popp on an interview that's going to be released in a few weeks for this very podcast about this. It's hard. There's a bunch of AI content, but there's a ton of AI content being spun up. Content trends and consumption trends have changed, expectations have changed, which we covered on this podcast numerous times. Google's got to keep up with all of that at the same time. I think I mentioned on, It's New, which I'm basically pitching, you should check out, It's New each day on Monday through Thursday rather. There's another layer on top. And I think some of the things that Google's done to address those issues have been very thinking about the immediate and not thinking about the long term, which I'm not criticizing them. It's hard to do that, hard to balance that, but I think that's also a layer. So it's a very, I think the quality of the results and the questions about the quality of the results, it's not a linear question or a linear equation. There's multiple layers to it and multiple people who are responsible for it, if you want to put it that way. But again, check out the interview. I was joking, by the way, Barry wasn't making faces at me and saying things in the comments, but he did say that he didn't think the body of language told him much, but I think it did. I think it did. I stand by that. And that's this week's, Snappy News. Hope you found all of that news, super accessible to you. Hope you did a good job with that. If I didn't, let me know out there on the social media verse, and I'll do my best to fix it. We also wanted to make a person who talks about SEO and accessibility accessible to you by telling you that you should be following, Miracle Inameti Archibong out there on social media on X. It's at M-I-R-A underscore I-N-A-M on LinkedIn. It'll just be her name. Crystal Carter: And she is a fantastic follower. She is an SEO over at John Lewis, and she does some great work, and she's been speaking on accessibility for years, before it was a little bit of a buzzword. She was talking about how to do alt text in a sort of programmatic way and how to make things more accessible. So she talked about that at MozCon. Mordy Obertstein: Oh yeah, I was there for that. That was a great speech. Crystal Carter: Yeah, really, really good. And she demonstrated, and it was the first time I'd ever heard an Audible screen reader going through. Mordy Obertstein: That's right. She went through it and it got stuck. Crystal Carter: It got stuck. And I think that that's really, really important because the other thing is that it also tells you how bots might be getting stuck on your website as well. So it's really, really useful to think about and forth between these two buttons. And it's very possible that if the screen reader's doing that, it's very possible the bots doing that as well. So everything should flow all together. And the way she illustrated it made it really, really clear to me that we got to do better for folks using screen readers. And yeah, she's a great follower for lots of reasons, but that one as well. Mordy Obertstein: So make sure to give Miracle a follow whatever you consume social media. I don't know if she's on TikTok or not, so I don't know if that applies to all social media, but LinkedIn and Twitter, X for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. No, Miracle is a great follower. Mordy Obertstein: When I say social media as an old person, I literally mean kind of Facebook, not really. Yeah, X and LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's what we're talking about. Mordy Obertstein: Because I'm an old person, which is why need to have things accessible, because I am blind as a bat without my glasses. My grandfather was literally blind. Crystal Carter: Was he really? Mordy Obertstein: Yeah. And the curb thing was a big deal. Crystal Carter: Right. I think, oh, and also in England you get the bump, so- Mordy Obertstein: The bumps. They don't have that in the US. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Bumps on the brakes. And also, I don't like it when they don't have, when you press the button for walking and there's no sound. Mordy Obertstein: No sound, that's... Crystal Carter: I really don't like that. Mordy Obertstein: You can hear a click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. Crystal Carter: Yeah, because sometimes you're just chatting away anyway when you're perfectly able or whatever, able to see that you could cross the road. You're chatting away and you don't notice it or whatever. Whereas when there's a sound, you hear it, and then you know that it's safe to go. Mordy Obertstein: See, you're speaking to your audience in different ways and making things accessible. Crystal Carter: Right. It's better for everybody. Mordy Obertstein: And if the local municipality can handle it, so can you. Crystal Carter: On that note... Mordy Obertstein: On that... Thanks for showing us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us not to worry? We're back next week, the new episode, as we dive into a look at what is often known as Holistic SEO and what that actually means. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Katherine Watier Ong Neil Osman Miracle Inameti-Archibong Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube WCAG Overview WO Strategies Wix Accessibility Wizard News: Google begins enforcement of site reputation abuse policy with portions of sites being delisted Google: Site Reputation Abuse Isn't About Linking Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, Responds To Google Search Quality Issues Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Katherine Watier Ong Neil Osman Miracle Inameti-Archibong Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube WCAG Overview WO Strategies Wix Accessibility Wizard News: Google begins enforcement of site reputation abuse policy with portions of sites being delisted Google: Site Reputation Abuse Isn't About Linking Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, Responds To Google Search Quality Issues Transcript Mordy Obertstein: 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 Obertstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the ever and accessible, ask whatever you want, out there on social media. She'll always be happy to answer your SEO questions because she is accessible. She's the head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, everyone. I will ask to answer some questions. I will not answer every question. I'm just going to put that out there right now. Mordy Obertstein: No, but you know there are people out there on the social media space, "I'm an influencer. I'm not answering your questions. I'm not talking to you." Crystal Carter: That's true. That's true. That's true. Mordy Obertstein: Yeah, you're accessible. You'll talk. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's true. That's true. I talk to people. I don't hide away. And also, I get people in my DMs sometimes. Also, just want to shout out. Okay, so somebody messaged me and they were like, "Oh, can you help me with this thing?" Or whatever, and I was like, "I don't think I'm your girl for this particular thing," but I sent the recommendation over to Crystal Waddle. She was like, yeah, this is like a great recommend. So I think that sometimes- Mordy Obertstein: The great union of Crystals. Crystal Carter: Yes, she's one of the fantastic and SEO Crystals. We are shine brightly wherever we go. And yeah, I think that that's something that maybe just remember that if you're not able to help someone, then maybe you can point them in the right direction. That's always great and it's valuable for everybody, and I think that that's going to be a great project. So shout out to Crystal Waddle there, whose doing some cool stuff. Mordy Obertstein: She is. She's great. Crystal Carter: She's great. Mordy Obertstein: By the way, on the Crystal thing, is there a monthly Crystals of SEO media? Because I will tell you, I was talking to Crystal Ortiz about this, another SEO Crystal. I don't know any Crystals outside of SEO, but in SEO, I know tons of Crystals. Crystal Carter: Do you know why? It's because there's a lot of SEOs who are millennials. And basically in the eighties there was, I'm just putting myself out here, but basically in the eighties there were a lot of kids named Crystal because of Dynasty. So there was Crystal and Alexis on Dynasty. I met an Alexis and she was like, "I'm also named after Dynasty." So when I was growing up, there was Crystal C, Crystal B, Crystal L. There were Crystals in all the classes. I think it's like there was a lot of Kylie's who were born in the nineties, for instance. I'm guessing maybe there's some kids named Dua who are born around now. There's a lot of kids who were born in the nineties who were named Logan after Wolverine from all of the action- Mordy Obertstein: Oh really? Crystal Carter: ... yeah, I know a couple of Logans. Mordy Obertstein: I like that name. That's a good name. Crystal Carter: It's a good name. Mordy Obertstein: By the way, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Zales. No, it's brought to you by, Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight each and every month over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also run accessibility audit on your website with the accessibility wizard built into the Wix and Wix studio platforms. Catch instances where you left out alt text have poor color contrast and more all in one click with our accessibility wizard. There's no actual wizard of accessibility. It's not like a Merlin doesn't pop up. It's a tool. So if you're expecting a wizard to come out of nowhere and fix your accessibility, that's not what actually happens. But it would be amazing if there was a dude with a long white beard and a big stick who did. Also, accessibility Moses the way I'm describing it. Crystal Carter: That's all. He could part the traffic and separate the organic from the bots. Mordy Obertstein: Thou shalt not pass with thy poor accessibility. This bridge, right? Going with another wizard. Crystal Carter: Right. And it'll be easy to use if you're on a tablet. Mordy Obertstein: Oh, like, hey, we've gone off the rails. By the way, we're talking about accessibility in SEO this week in case you haven't figured it out. But there's an tremendous amount of overlap as we get into when optimizing for accessibility is optimizing for SEO. Why having an accessible website is both good manners and good marketing, and are there signals of a more accessible Google? WL strategies, Katherine Watier Ong stops by to share how to integrate accessibility into your technical SEO audits. Plus, Wix's own accessibility wizard, Neil Osmond joins us, talk about the future of accessibility and accessibility focused website technology. And of course we get the snappies of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So we hope you are open for all as we hit great info for you on this. The 87th episode of the Surf's Up podcast as having a site that performs good and does some good is within your reach. You might say it's accessible. I might say it. Yeah, if you're listening, would you actually say it or you might say it? Crystal Carter: Yeah, we try to make the podcast accessible. It's on multiple platforms, it's success... We add a transcript to our podcast for people who want to read the transcript. We have it so it's Audible as well for people who maybe don't want to read the transcript or hands-free or whatever, things like that. Mordy Obertstein: Yeah. No, you are- Crystal Carter: High contrast in our visuals. We're trying. We're trying. Mordy Obertstein: You're absolutely... We are. Crystal Carter: Yeah. If people have recommendations for other things, like give us a shout. If you're saying like, "Hey, there's a bit that I can't access," let us know. Mordy Obertstein: And we also make the lowercase a, We make it our podcast accessible to all types of SEO learners, no matter your level. So it's accessible in the front. Crystal Carter: We're trying, we're thinking to everybody. You know why? Because we care. Mordy Obertstein: Deeply. Crystal Carter: A lot. Mordy Obertstein: Did that come off inauthentic? Crystal Carter: It's true, we do. Mordy Obertstein: Yeah, no, I do. I just want to make sure I didn't sound inauthentic when I said, "Deeply." Anyway, we should probably move on. Okay, so what is accessibility? What are we talking about? So in a nutshell, accessibility means making your websites and the elements contained within your website usable for all people, whether they have, let's say a visual impairment or hearing difficulty, whatever it may be. You want to create a website experience where everybody can access the information on your website. So what does making a site accessible actually mean? Or practically, what does it mean? So there are a lot of things and it's way too long of a list and it's way more holistic than you might generally think, but it means things like having a button that doesn't say click here because when you have a text to audio reader, they don't know what here is. That would be a thing. Making sure you have descriptive headers that aren't overly relying on idioms or jargon or aren't visually centric or they're playing off an image that you have only having one H1, which is actually an SEO best practice. But Google said, yeah, you could have more, but for accessibility you can't. Alt texts obviously audio transcripts, avoiding low contrast text, text rather avoiding content that isn't only available inside of an image, which by the way is an SEO thing because Google can't read that content that you have in an image either. And generally avoiding things that are really only about or summarizing things that are only in an image. So if you create an infographic let's say, and you don't have a summary that describes the infographic in some kind of readable text that would be inaccessible to some of your users. The A11Y project has an entire checklist. We'll link to that in the show notes so you have a more prolific list there and there are real implications and a ramifications to this. There's a precedent for lawsuits if your site's not accessible. And that's based on in the US at least it's based on the Americans with Disabilities Act and that's just the US. And the US is not nearly as strict as other countries, particularly the European Union, which has an act in an effect since 2019 that's founded on the WCAG standards and that European Accessibility Act, and I'll end with this and hand it over to Crystal, they're going to enforce compliance as of June 28th, 2025, which is not that far off in the future if your website is fundamentally not accessible. So accessibility isn't just good. Marketing isn't just good manners. I mentioned before it's going to be good avoiding lawsuits. Crystal Carter: It's good business. And I think that that's something that people overlook because here's the thing. So one of the ways that people talk about accessibility is there's that dropped curb thing. So basically you've all seen this, but apparently back in the day it's like suitcases with wheels on them. I remember before wheels were on suitcases. Mordy Obertstein: I remember that. What were we thinking? Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Obertstein: Why? It took us so long to figure out, you know what would be a great thing to have wheels for? This really heavy-ass suitcase that I need to shlep through the entire freaking airport. Crystal Carter: Yeah, let me take the steamer trunk on my back. It's insane. It's madness. Mordy Obertstein: That's madness. Crystal Carter: So I remember that and that was ridiculous. But similarly with drop curves. So people used to just build, they'd have a sidewalk and they'd just have a sidewalk. At some point, somebody was like, we should have a drop curve, which is basically so that somebody who has a wheelchair can go, who can cross the street and cross onto the other side and they don't have to do the bumping down or whichever and all that sort of stuff, which is really inconvenient and really unsafe as well. Well, guess what? Those are great for everybody. If you have limited sight, it tells you that this is a safe place to cross. It's good for people who can walk but maybe have mobility challenges. It's good for people who are pushing push chairs. It's good for people riding bicycles. It's good for lots of people. And that's a lot of the things with some of the stuff that you were just talking about in terms of accessibility. So you were saying, "Don't say click here." I hate, click here. What am I clicking on? Tell me what it is. Tell me what it is. That's not easy for- Mordy Obertstein: Scammy, by the way. The click here, my mind the second you have that on your page, you could have the most prestigious product and service on the planet means you say, "Click here." I feel like you're a YouTube spammer of some kind. Crystal Carter: Right? So click what? Tell me what it is. Alt text images also really useful. Interestingly, interestingly, there's a lot of tools that are adding alt text automatically. So for instance, we have a great tool for helping you add alt text to your website into your web pages within Wix SEO tools. If you haven't gone back to the SEO, SEO set a checklist, please do that because they've added that in and it's really useful and it's really great. But similarly, if you're using PowerPoint, when you add an image into PowerPoint, it adds in alt text based on the thing. I added in that picture of John Cusack holding up that meme. And it was like someone holding up a sign and I was like, "Oh, okay. Thank you very much PowerPoint." These things are really, really useful." Audio transcripts. Sometimes I need to be able to search the podcast and say, "What was that thing that he was talking about?" And I can just search it with Ctrl F and I can find the piece of text. That is great. And that's also great for SEO because you, and they transcript, they transcribe all the YouTube videos for the same reason because they are easier to find bits of information and things like that. So it is great business, business from an SEO point of view, it's also great because if you have users who are trying to come to your website, you want them to feel welcome, you want them to feel like they can use your website. And I will tell you right now that if you go to a website or you go to something and it doesn't feel usable, you just leave. You just leave. Mordy Obertstein: Totally. Crystal Carter: Whereas if there's one where it is accessible, then not only will you use it, but that will be your go-to, because you know that it's easy for you to use as opposed to these other ones that you've been, you don't want to trawl around looking for 17 other websites. This one works. You will go to that one and you will use that one. For instance, and again, this is a lowercase accessibility thing, but just something to think about. I have dietary considerations to think about. I'm lactose intolerant, and if I look at a menu and they don't tell me which things have dairy in them, it's like a whole pain in the butt. It's so exhausting. I don't want to have to talk to you about all the things. Just tell me what's what. If you don't have it, cool, that's fine. I will go somewhere else. If you do have it, then great. And I think that it is very, very similar when people are thinking about accessibility stuff, the places where it's easy for them to go, it'll be really useful. And also I think that people forget that some of these things can be deal-breakers for wider groups. So if you have a client, we used to work with medical clients and the agency I was working at previously used to work with the NHS, and they have to be accessible. Everything has to be accessible for the NHS. Every single thing has to be accessible for the NHS. So if your website isn't accessible to the NHS, and guess what, you ain't getting that contract. Mordy Obertstein: We'll get into that later in a little bit with Katherine. Government contracts are very different. They have a different set of laws in the US at least, that they have to align with. And it's a good example of how you're limiting your audience and your potential market if you don't make your website accessible. I think one of the classic things you hear is, "Well, mean how many people are there out there with an audio or a visual impairment?" There's 26,514 nursing homes in the US as of 2023. My wife works in nursing homes, so I'm pretty familiar with this. I would like to go into a nursing home and see how many of the people don't have a visual or audio impairment. Crystal Carter: Yo, I'm wearing glasses right now and I- Mordy Obertstein: I can't see anything without my glasses on. Crystal Carter: And people forget about that. And on my phone, I have a little accessibility dude on the corner of my phone because, sometimes I forget to wear my glasses. I've only started wearing glasses in the last couple of years and so I forget that I can't see. And so sometimes- Mordy Obertstein: I'll pull up my glasses sometimes when I'm reading something because it's annoying on my phone to read it without, so it's like right in my face. I feel like an old person, but I'd say, Hey, I do that and that's fine. I'm okay with this. But the page, if the page is set up in a way that it's not accessible to the words, the font isn't big enough, it's super annoying. It's annoying with my glasses on because of the way the screen is set up and it's annoying my glasses off because I can't see it. Crystal Carter: So that high contrast thing, that's another point. The high contrast thing, that's just, that's everybody. Mordy Obertstein: That's just good. I was on a website with my wife the other day and the background is all black and the font is neon pink. It's like, why did they do this? It's killing my eyes. Crystal Carter: Yeah, so these are things to think about and I think that there's a lot of overlap with UX, so a lot of good UX will work well with that and a lot of good CROs. So a lot of CROs will think about things like high contrast, making sure that the clickable elements are not on top of each other. That's not good practice to have clickable elements like too close together, and good UX will flag that. So a lot of times there's a lot of alignment, but with good UX and good accessible websites. So I think that that's worth thinking about. But I think that sometimes you don't even know who's not coming to your website when you are not taking accessibility into consideration because people just won't... They just won't engage. Mordy Obertstein: They'll click and they'll bounce. Which by the way, from an SEO point, if you ever want to talk about user behavior, neighbor boost, whatever it is, that bouncing is a signal. Crystal Carter: And if you're looking at certain tools and things that you're finding that on certain situations or in certain places, a lot of people are bouncing or they're not coming through, that's something to think about. And I think that there are ways that can add in... You can use add-ons to make your site more accessible. Sometimes you see the little accessibility guy on certain websites and you can click on that and it can make it more accessible for people in that way. Another thing that I've started to see, and I think we talk about this as well, is making pages listenable. So people will add an audio, an audio file onto a long read article. I love those because I get tired, I get very tired staring at a screen for a long time and reading 3,000 words, 6,000 words of an article. Mordy Obertstein: It's like, listen in the background. Crystal Carter: Listen in the background like people would do to a podcast. Do some stretching, make a sandwich while listening to this article or just listen to, if it's something that's a new topic to me, I'll listen to it to sort of pick up the key phrases, pick up some of the things, and then go back into it to read the text, to get deep dive into the sections that I'm interested in. And this is something that is useful for people who have visual challenges. This is also useful for people who have temporary disabilities, I guess you would say, temporary things like when you don't have your hands because your hands are full. Because you've got your shopping in one hand, you've got the kids in the other hand, you can still listen to the content in that way, or you're driving for instance, and you want to be able to search up the information. There's things like that where you can have speakable to speakable schema, for instance, where you can say, "Hey, is Denny's open right now?" And that your Tesla or something we'll talk about, I don't know if people in Tesla's go to Denny's, I'm sure they do sometimes. Anyway, your Tesla will say, "Yes, Denny's is open right now and stuff." You go, "Thanks. Thanks car." Mordy Obertstein: By the way, just throw another stat into this to show you how you're limiting your audience. You're not talking about the point about having a temporary impairment is a great point. 6 million people in the US had cataract surgery last year. It could be two years ago, whatever it is. 6 million people. My father had cataract surgery last year, actually. He's one of those 6 million. And he couldn't read anything for a few days or couldn't read anything well, for a few days. And so do you really want potentially 6 million of your customers to be like, oh man, this website is so much more annoying than I thought it was a week ago now. I just had cataract surgery. Crystal Carter: Similarly, I think the other is people will talk about, people who are doing accessibility will think about how can you experience this? Well, some people say, "Well, try to use your website without looking at it. Try to use your website without looking at it. Try tabbing through it, using a voice reader, using a screen reader, et cetera, and see what it's like." And I think that that is something that's worth thinking about because it's very difficult sometimes to pay attention to challenges that aren't in your first frame of reference. And even with the best will in the world, probably the best example I've had of this was when I was on maternity leave and I was pushing a buggy around, pushing a shoulder around, I suddenly was very, very aware of how many places had stairs everywhere, and it was impossible for me to get this push chair, this stroller. Mordy Obertstein: New York City subway. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Obertstein: Super annoying. Crystal Carter: And as soon as you have that, you're like, "Oh my gosh, this is a horrible way. This is horrible. Why isn't this like this? Why isn’t there an elevator?" Mordy Obertstein: That's an example, because the New York City subway does have an elevator, but just because you have the thing there, it doesn't work. Well, half of them are broken half the time. Where is the elevator? God knows where it is. So sometimes you think, "Oh, I created it. It's accessible. I have the thing there." But you haven't really thought about how you've rolled that experience out in a way where it's made the accessibility actually accessible. Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah. "Oh, I ticked the box." It's like, "Yeah, but have you tested it? Have you tested it? And is it okay?" Right, because there's lots of places, and again, wheelchair access is probably one that we're all very familiar with, but sometimes they just have the ramp, so they'll have the ramp. That's the way that you access the place. And there's lots of times where people prefer the ramp over the stairs. People who are perfectly capable of using the stairs will prefer the ramp because the ramp is better, and the ramp is easier for people to access. And certainly if you're pushing something heavy or you're doing whatever, these are the things. So have a look at it, have a look at it that actually tests your accessible features. Because like you said, making accessibility accessible, it's really important. I think what another example is on a bus for instance, you have those buses. There's some buses where you go to the bus stop and the curb is raised. And so if the bus shows up and somebody needs to go on a wheelchair, they can just roll straight on. Then there's some places where the curve is dropped and the bus driver has to get out of their seat and they've got to take the ramp and they've got to put it down and then they've got to do all the thing. And it's a whole big thing. And it's like when I show up with my lactose intolerance and they're like, "Oh, let me get you this ring binder. Let me get you this trapper keeper notebook that's all covered in grease and grime and things and a million other people's smudges and have you flip through that." I don't want that. Just put it on the menu. Just put it on the menu. Then I know everybody knows, or there's an app or something. Make it accessible. Give people the information, give people the tools in order to use your content and to access your site, access your services really well. Mordy Obertstein: And that's where the web is going. One of the things you pointed out, we were talking about this, was that Google started to add all of the audio readers to all of their, not to all of their, increasingly to their documentation. At a certain point, as the web becomes more and more accessible, you're running the risk of being left behind and created the optic. You don't care, which if you don't actually care, you should at a minimum care about the optic of caring. Because you're going to come off as, I don't know what, it's a good word I'm allowed to use on the, you're going to come out like a jerk. And people move off of your brand because they'll look at it. People who don't have any impairments will look at it like, "Oh, this website is... Come on, seriously?" And they'll move off the website because of it. Crystal Carter: And I think also, so speaking of Google, Google's also added in a lot of those accessibility elements to their Google business profile. So in Google business profile, you can declare this is wheelchair accessible. You can declare things like that. Mordy Obertstein: You see, that's where the internet is going. That's a big deal. All those attributes were a big deal. They are a big deal. In the local space, people will say, yes, a million percent, we add in those attributes. They're super helpful to the consumer. Crystal Carter: It shows your users that you care about them. Like we said, on our podcasts, we try to make sure that it's accessible in lots of different ways. For instance, because we care. We want people to be able to use it. And I think it's important to remember and to acknowledge the times when you feel like you're on a website and you're like, "Why can't I access this? Why is this too small? Why is this too close together? Why is this not accessible?" Take a moment, pause and experience the experience of that and think about that when you're building your website. Also, I think it's worth testing it with folks that you know who might be in that audience just to make sure that they are able to access it. It doesn't have to be a big deal. It's just like, "Hey, what do you think of this website? Your honest opinion." And I think that it can get you a lot. It can help you get really far in the process. Mordy Obertstein: You know what can also help you, some tips about how to integrate accessibility into your SEO audits and what that actually means, and why that actually makes sense and why there's an overlap to begin with. Here is the owner of WO Strategies, Katherine Watier Ong on just that. Katherine Watier Ong: I stumbled into checking website accessibility as an SEO when I started working on federal.gov websites. At this point, I've worked on three. Cancer.gov, healthit.gov, and the Fisheries Division of NOAA, so fisheries.noaa.gov. And there's just so much related to SEO that's important for accessibility. So I just couldn't help highlighting areas where I thought they weren't meeting 508 compliance, because the feds need to meet this level of compliance. And usually feds think they're fine and they have some obvious stuff usually handled like transcript for audio or video, but then having alt text for all of their images and text navigation, the screen reader can read, some of that stuff usually falls by the way of side. Right now I'm in the middle of a tech audit for a large international nonprofit looking at four of their websites, and I sense that they might need a full accessibility audit. So to make my case for that audit, I usually just use the default stuff in Microsoft. So I turn on a screen reader, I use Microsoft's default, and then I video record my session using Microsoft's game bar recording functionality. And in one instance, I noticed that they had these instructional videos for how to use the website, but they didn't have unique link names. So when you listen to the screen reader, it just said, "Video, video, video." And none of the videos had transcripts. And then in another instance, the JavaScript that they're using on this website had garbled the navigation so much that you could just hear that garbled confusion in the screen reader. I think it's kind of powerful to see how an actual user would experience the website by using these recordings. Oftentimes I get a hint of whether or not there's trouble. I run a Chrome Lighthouse report, obviously that pulls some stuff, but then I also use WebAIM's Wave tool, the checker to check a variety of other stuff like low contrast issues, form field labeling, tech size, that kind of thing. Now with the feds, you just have to mention 508 compliance, and usually they're motivated to fix the issues. But with this international nonprofit, I pulled together all of the regulating laws related to disabilities for every country they're trying to appear in, as well as the US laws. I'm also going to try to tie page speed to accessibility. As cheaper mobile phones have slower processors and obviously certain geographic areas don't have great internet speeds, and I know their goal is to be in front of everyday users in all these different countries. So we'll see how it goes with persuading them to take this seriously. Mordy Obertstein: Thank you so much Katherine. Make sure to give Katherine a follow over on X, over at K-W-A-T-I-E-R link in the show notes. And you see a second you start to a certain type of client. If you're not thinking about accessibility, you're immediately out. Crystal Carter: And I think that that's really interesting that she mentioned a few government spaces as well. Gov.UK is an award-winning site for both accessibility and for UX, and they keep it super simple. And I think that the accessibility that she's talking about in terms of device and data access is also really important. There are certain GEOs. For instance, I know that in Johannesburg for instance, data is incredibly expensive. It's like some of the most expensive data on earth or something. And I've had it before where we had a client who was working in that area and they were saying like, "Oh yeah, we want to have a video on the page." And somebody local was like, "Nah." Like what? It was like, "Nah, nobody's going to watch that video because it's too much on the data." So that should not be on the page. Don't put it on the page and things. And I think that that's really important to think about as well because again, it will make your site more accessible to other users. I had an app recently that updated beyond the capabilities of my little phone, and I had a terrible time using it when I changed my phone, it was perfectly fine. But I think when you are thinking about accessibility both with a capital A and with the lowercase, you're also broadening the scope of your audience, which is what growth is about. And I think if you're like, "Oh, there's nobody who needs this." It's like, "Well, nobody, that's your current user that needs this." Mordy Obertstein: Tell you 6 million people got cataracts in the US, had surgery alone in the US. Crystal Carter: And I think you say, "Oh, people who don't have disabilities..." Honestly, by the time people get past 30 years old, tell me somebody who doesn't have a bum knee, or hearing- Mordy Obertstein: I can't hear anything. My wife talks, I can't hear anything. It's like as if I didn't hear it Hear, Didn't you hear? I'm like, no, I didn't hear. Crystal Carter: Right. Let's be honest here. Mordy Obertstein: I do. I can't hear. I have bad hearing. Crystal Carter: Let's be honest here, about what people need and how people access sites access the web. And yeah, I think that you'll only win. And chances are it's not even going to cost that much to implement. Mordy Obertstein: No, it could. Must be. It can be sometimes a big overhaul, but the truth is most of the times, not. And either way, you're going to end up at a point where you're exposing yourself to lawsuits if you're operating in the EU for sure. Crystal Carter: And that costs more. Mordy Obertstein: Yeah. And that's going to cost more. And also you're setting yourself up to end up being looked at like you're behind the times, which is not what you want to do as a brand. And again, you're limiting your market. It makes zero sense most of the time. Things you are right are very simple. Again, don't have a black background with pink highlight neon text. I can't read that. And I can see with my glasses on. Now with that, we have a very special treat for you about talking about building your website and making it accessible. It's one thing to talk about accessibility, it's another thing to talk to someone who's actually worked on working to create all new ways for site owners and site matters to ensure that their websites are actually accessible. So join us as we go across the Wix-verse, we talk to Wix's own accessibility specialist, Neil Osmond. Mordy Obertstein: Welcome to the show, Neil. It's an honor to have you here. Neil Osman: Thanks for having me. Mordy Obertstein: So there's a lot of talk about accessibility is becoming more in focus as we spoke about earlier in the show, but you've done a lot to help Wix site owners be able to create more accessible websites more efficiently and more accessibly, for lack of a better word. And before we get into it all, I just wanted to catch up with you. What have you done? What have you worked on? What have you done to help our Wix ecosystem? Because you're the man. Neil Osman: We are a team of specialists and I'm one of them. But yeah, our methodic, the way we try to tackle this complex thing in Wix is to do a shift left. And by shift left, I mean making everything accessible by design. So our users will not need to care about it too much, though they should as far as their content is concerned. So all of the viewer, the infrastructure, the components, the directionality, all this technical stuff, they're exempted from having to deal with it and we take care of everything. And by the way, internally also, that was a very laborious effort to do a shift left instead of fixing bags and vicious cycle of bugs and things like that. So we tried to do an organizational shift left. Crystal Carter: How difficult is it to get buy-in for that sort of thing? I know that there are some people who work in teams and they try to make the case for accessibility and they find it a little bit tricky. What is your top tip for making that case, for building that sort of access as a first port of call? What's your top tip for getting buy-in for that? Neil Osman: My top tip would be to consider all kinds of personas that might use your site. And usually we're not fully aware of personas type like blind users or visually impaired visitors or elderly visitors or users maybe with diverse, with new diversity, all kinds of, or just sighted keyboard users. Crystal Carter: And I think also, I think people sometimes forget that. I always call it, capital A accessibility. Thinking about that sort of thing also impacts lowercase accessibility, people being able to use it on their mobile or people being able to use it with voice search or things like that. So if I'm out and about with my son and I don't have fingers to type, or when Mordy sends me voice messages that are just like, yeah, okay. And I'm like, "You couldn't type that?" He was like, "I was busy." Making sure that people have different ways that they can access the information is- Neil Osman: Absolutely Crystal Carter: ... great for lots of users. Neil Osman: Another common example that I hear a lot is you sit in a bar, in a cafe, you are looking at a video. So captions really help them with the noise around you. Mordy Obertstein: Yeah, no, for real. I look at YouTube videos and captions with the sound off all the time. A huge thing. Neil Osman: No, it's a common pattern that lots of accessibility enhancements take away to the mainstream. And usually when there are good accessible solutions, it helps everyone. It's not always the case, because not all accessibility solutions are great, but the ones that are great, in high probability, they will serve everyone. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think is that something that you think about when you're thinking about which accessibility optimizations to add to websites? Neil Osman: Absolutely. And most of the time it would be, let's take the simple solution, the straight one, let's not complex too much. But on the other end there's a notion that accessible sites are ugly sites and we want to tackle this one because it's not true. We can make everything accessible, even the most complicated application. So I think that it's kind of a philosophy, but things should be simple to the visitors and in that regard, yeah, I think it's more helpful for your visitors to not complex things too much, like invent the navigation, invent the visual conventions and affordances. Mordy Obertstein: I want to swing back to something you were mentioning earlier, because it's very similar to what we have on the SEO side, where we have the Wix infrastructure for SEO makes it easy for bots to crawl and discover your pages and so forth and so forth. But what you do with the content from an SEO point of view, is really on you. We can't write your title tags for, we have an AI thing that can write your title tags for you, but you still need to click to do that and then accept the AI suggestion. And it's a fine balance. And I'm wondering how do you go about tackling or deciding what guidance you're going to build for our users to be able to create more accessible websites? I know we have the accessibility wizard and so forth, but how do you sit down and say, "You know what? This is the next thing we need to tackle to help guide our users to making more accessible websites." Neil Osman: So I think that in this regard, we have three main areas of concern. One is headings, the other one is alternative text for images, and also choice of colors. So let's take one by one. So let's start with headings. Headings are very important. I like the metaphor of the book, the H1, the main heading should be a single one. And that's the book title. And then each chapter is the H two, the secondary headings. And then if the chapters are complex or have lots of content, maybe it'll be a good idea to split them into H3s. So when a visitor or user or reader wants to go straight to chapter three and to the second thing, so it can straight go to that chapter, chapter through headings. Yeah, maybe I'm assuming that everyone understands why it's important for users with disabilities. So lots of users that use assistive technology, they have all kinds of shortcuts. So they cannot scheme the page and look at it and go straight well and point, and click the thing they're interested in. So instead of that, they have alternative mechanisms like navigating through headings. So headings should represent the structure and hierarchy in relationship of the content. And as side effects, it also helps the primary screen reader user of the web, which is Google, which works quite similarly. Crystal Carter: I mean, I, as a sighted user, I can't stand it when I go to a page and the headings don't make sense. If I look at the headings and the headings are just like, "And now read more related posts," I'm just like, "What is this?" I can't stand when they're, so I can't imagine how frustrating that must be for somebody with limited sight trying to navigate a page and it just makes no sense. You just leave. You would just leave. You'd just go to someone... Neil Osman: Absolutely. Mordy Obertstein: And the contrast stuff, the color contrast is something that I will freely admit. I've used the accessibility words under my own size. I thought it was fine. I thought this is fine. And you don't really realize because while I have many shortcomings, I can see with my glasses on. With my glasses off, I can't see a thing. I'm blind as a the bat. Neil Osman: By the way, that very substantial percentage of men are colorblind. Mordy Obertstein: Yeah, interesting. Wayne Gretzky was colorblind. I don't think I'll realize that. Yeah, a little hockey fact for you. I'm pretty sure that's true. Wait, don't take me to the bank on that. I'm pretty sure it's true. But yeah, there's a lot of issues there. And you don't think about it because you're designing it. It looks nice. It looks like I could read it. I see it, by the way, in kids' books all the time. Crystal Carter: Yes. Yes. Facts. Yes. Mordy Obertstein: They put the black text on a dark color character and you can't read squat. Crystal Carter: No, no. Neil Osman: Interesting. Crystal Carter: I can think of the one right off the top of my head. It's an astronomy book and they're telling me about Saturn and its black text on a dark purple cloud or something, and I'm like, "I don't know anything about this planet anymore." We just have to think there's no hope for me. Mordy Obertstein: Was it one of the real planets or was like Pluto, who cares? Crystal Carter: Pluto can't keep itself together. It's a helper belt. Guys, guys manage your orbit. Mordy Obertstein: Pluto's that crazy uncle who comes over for Thanksgiving, you don't want there anyway. Crystal Carter: He's like, "Hey." And you're like, "Are you still around? I thought were in Florida." Mordy Obertstein: "I thought we got rid of you." Neil Osman: But at least at Wix, all the presets and templates are designs- Mordy Obertstein: That's amazing. Neil Osman: ... as needed, but when users start playing with it might have contrast issues. And for this, we have the Wizard to detect these issues. Crystal Carter: Yes. The Accessibility Wizard is turning three this year. Mordy Obertstein: Is it really? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's turning three this year. And I think it such an amazing thing. And I think that, can you just tell us about what the goals are for the Accessibility Wizard and how it works for people that aren't aware? Neil Osman: Absolutely. Absolutely. So as I said before, all of the infrastructure should be accessible by designs and users should not care about. But as Mordy mentioned, user content is their domain and they should take care of it. So the Wizard scans all of the site pages and detect these kind of issues and allow users straight in the editor to fix it. It's not just a reporting tool, it's a product that help users fix things on the spot. Yeah, and we have big plans for the Wizard, but we leave it as a surprise. Mordy Obertstein: Not even a little? I know we're working on a lot of stuff for accessibility. It's really in focus for us right now, not even a little tease? Neil Osman: So we have partners in mind, we want to tailor something for them. They have multiple sides and we work hard on a new architecture, so to work on all editors and there's going to be a very fancy engine rules and better coverage and sorting and filtering. Mordy Obertstein: I don't think you've said too much. No, I think it was perfect, because I don't know what you're talking about and I work here. Crystal Carter: But I think that the making it really easy for website builders and website managers to manage your accessibility is really key. And the best example that I've seen of that is adding the alt text updates into the SEO set of checklists, like the blog assistant so that you go onto your blog and they're like, "You're missing alt text." And you're like, "Where?" And they're like, "Here, here, here and here. Do you want to fill it in?" And you're like, "Yeah, okay." And then you just do. And we've seen an incredible number of users take that up, which has been fantastic. Neil Osman: That's fantastic. What do you think about the AI enhancements? Crystal Carter: I think that some of those, we've been using vision AI, Google's, vision AI to add tags or to make images more searchable in Wix for years. And I think that it's very good at categorizing images, so it makes sense that it would make help, that it would be a big help for adding alt text images. Neil Osman: Truth is, I'm a bit ambivalent about this because on the one hand, yeah, we see uplift and that's great and no alt or partially good alt for sure, partially good alt are better than nothing and gives more value. But I think we should up our game a bit because user rely on this. So let's consider an example. Okay, you're a merchant, you have a store and you sell Nike shoes, and for each model you have a few products. Okay? Now what the alt, because one from the front, one from the side, one from, I don't know, from behind. What kind of alt can you give? And I think AI is not... It's very challenging to write, to do good prompt engineering to good results, but it's doable. I think it's doable and it's a challenge, but I think that, hey, if the merchant chose to include a photo from the front, so maybe it communicates them, it gives this source the information they're looking for, oh, that's the model that you see, I don't know, something like this. And that should be the alt text, right? Not just the Nike and the model number or what have benefit. Mordy Obertstein: If you understand the page better, you can pull in all sorts of stuff to the image, one would assume. Well, you can take a product description and have AI summarize a product description and pull that in to be, if you know that's the image. Also, it's one image. Just make it really simple. You have, I don't know, a pair of socks, which is complicated when it's more than one image. Neil Osman: Right. Exactly. Mordy Obertstein: Right. But if it's a page with one image, you can take the description and summarize it and put that as the alt text, theoretically. Neil Osman: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think, yeah, you are correct. Mordy Obertstein: Bottom line is you should not be using more than one product image now is what I'm saying, which is not what you should be doing. Don't take that advice. Neil Osman: Absolutely. Yeah. We have the gallery for this and- Mordy Obertstein: Yeah, that's more challenging. Neil Osman: ... it gives our office lots of value. Yeah. Crystal Carter: I have a question which is slightly off-piece. So Mordy, forgive me for going on a tangent. Mordy Obertstein: That's what this podcast is about. Crystal Carter: So I've been seeing a lot, and this is something that I've noticed and something that the first time I saw this was I was reading an article on, it's called Guardian Long Reads, and they're really long articles, I don't know, 7,000 words or something like that. And they had an audio of it and it was like an excerpt for a book or an interview with an author who'd just written a book and they had basically the author reading the article. I've started also seeing these snippets on Google. They've started listen to this article, and I think Hacker Noon also does it Medium had it for a while. What's your opinion on those in terms of making content more accessible? Neil Osman: Oh, I think that these are great enhancements because many, many user prefer to consume the content in audio format. And having a few options to consume the content is great. That's useful by the way, listening and reading at the same time. Usually people with attention deficit and things like that and the context changes. Sometimes you want to consume the content on the way to work or when you're running. Yeah, it's great. So if the content is available only in audio, it's very important to have a transcription. And by the way, there are two kinds of solutions. A synthetic one and a natural one, someone reads it and you have a ready-made audio. But nowadays, screen readers, not the traditional ones, but those maintained by Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, they are and they're powered through AI. It's a revolution. It's so much better than it used to be. It's really natural with all them. Mordy Obertstein: I'm looking forward to the point in time where you can have a voice like, Waze or Google Maps, you have different voices redo the directions. I want Arnold Schwarzenegger reading my Google documentation to me. Neil Osman: What Apple push towards this goal. You can record for 15 minutes a voice and then it can be used as the voice that will. Mordy Obertstein: Perfect. This is all I want out of life. I'm glad. I'm glad it's already here then. Neil Osman: Why Arnold, by the way? Mordy Obertstein: I love Arnold. I think he's hilarious. Yeah, I love a big Arnold Schwarzenegger fan now. Old Arnold from way back when was kind of a creep, but yeah, new Arnold is way better than old Arnold. Neil Osman: Yeah. You are from California? Mordy Obertstein: No, Crystal is from California. Neil Osman: Oh. Where you are you from, Mordy? Mordy Obertstein: New York. Neil Osman: Oh. Mordy Obertstein: I mean now. Yeah, I'm originally from New York. Now I'm international. Where can people, we could find Crystal in California, which we can't anymore, because she doesn't live in California anymore. Where can people find you? Are you on Twitter? LinkedIn, TikTok? Neil Osman: I'm a bit on like Twitter, but I got tired of it. Yeah, but I still have an account and I communicate with professionals over there and. Mordy Obertstein: Oh, okay, cool. Neil Osman: LinkedIn properly is also active. Mordy Obertstein: So we will link to those in the show notes. Neil, thank you so much for all that you do to help our users and thanks so much for joining us today. Neil Osman: Thank you. Was a blast. Thanks. Mordy Obertstein: You know who's always making the SEO news very accessible? Crystal Carter: Whose that? Mordy Obertstein: Literally he has his articles, he has his daily video series called, It's New, which you can find right here on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, where it's indicated because Crystal and I do this daily with him. It's Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Hey. Mordy Obertstein: He makes it accessible. Crystal Carter: He does, he does. He does. Mordy Obertstein: He's very accessible on Twitter as well. You reach out to Barry, is it new? No. Your birthday? Thank you. Crystal Carter: I think also we talked about language as well. I think language is also really, really important. I think Barry writes in a very matter of fact kind of way like this happened and this happened and that happened. Mordy Obertstein: That's true. Crystal Carter: And I think that's really, really useful. I think it's particularly useful when we think about accessibility in a lowercase a kind of way in terms of international audiences like, [foreign language 00:48:44] from school or whatever. But when I know my accent is- Mordy Obertstein: Espanol. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I know my accent is sometimes better than that. But anyway- Mordy Obertstein: That's a combination of, I don't know what. Texas, Espanol. Crystal Carter: Espanol, [foreign language 00:49:01]. Anyway, but I can't understand super complex sentences. I can understand smaller sentences in Spanish and straightforward sentences, but I can't understand super complex sentences. And I think that when you're speaking to an international audience, it's really important to think about that as well. Don't dumb it down, but don't make it overly complex for no reason at all. And I would say that Barry's very good at speaking very clearly and has a very wide-ranging international audience For that reason. Mordy Obertstein: What we're trying to say is its time for the Snappy News. Snappy News. Snappy news. Snappy News. You heard of the Yankee Clipper. Well now Google's the coupon clipper for the record, you may not have heard of the Yankee Clipper and that's Joe DiMaggio, but you may not have heard of either. Mordy, stop with the baseball references. I can't, I'm sorry. From Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Land, Google begins enforcement of site reputation abuse policy with portions of sites being de-listed. So as we spoke about on this podcast before, back in the beginning of March, Google when announcing it's March 2024 core update and the spam update said, "Hey, come May 5th, we're going to be targeting Parasite SEO." And indeed they are. Barry confirmed with Danny Sullivan from Google who said that right now they're only doing manual actions. Dan said the algorithmic component will indeed come as we've said, but that's not live yet. What is Parasite SEO's, Google's calling on site reputation abuse. Barry writes, when third party sites host low quality content provided by third parties to piggyback on the ranking power of those third party websites. So for example, if I am, I don't know, coupon, superdupercoupon.com and no one's looking up, I can't rank for whatever keyword I'm trying to rank for. So I'll go to CNN, say, "Hey CNN, I'd like to host an article on your website because you rank for everything. So now I'll rank for my coupon keyword because you rank for everything. I will siphon off your authority." Google says, quote, "A third party might publish payday loan reviews on a trusted educational website to gain ranking benefit from the site. Such content ranking highly in search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given site." So the issue is, in my opinion, and maybe I'm putting words in Google's mouth, who knows. If I go to CNN and I see CNN's branding everywhere, and then I'm reading this article about whatever that this third party site is hosting on CNN, a reader might get confused, like, "Look at this, this is CNN," but it's not actually as trustworthy as CNN or whatever. I don't know. ABC News, wherever they're hosting this content. What Google did say, and I'm personally against me, speckling, I think this is why algorithmically it's hard. A lot of times you have content that's editorial content or surgeon and journal, they have advertisement, what do they call it? Oh, man. Announcements I think they call it. And it's articles like Crystal Carter, the host of this podcast has written an announcement article on search a journal, and it's all about SEO. It's great content because its from Crystal. So it's probably the best content on the whole website, just saying, and it makes sense to have that on search a journal. It was about SEO, I think it was about a SEO checklist or whatever it was. So that's exactly the kind of content and the quality of content that you'd want to see on an SEO news and blog site. So that makes sense. So Google said, "Many publications host advertising content that is intended for the regular readers rather than to primarily manipulate search rankings, sometimes calls native advertising or advertorial. This kind of typically won't confuse regular readers of the publication when they find on the publisher's site directly or when arriving at it from Google search results." I think that makes a complicated algorithmically and I think that's why they need to implement the manual actions to train the algorithm. That's me saying that. That's how Google's saying that. I'm a smart person, I think. Anyway, Barry also wrote this time on Search Engine Roundtable. "Google Site repetition Abuse isn't about linking." So Danny Sullivan, again, Google search liaison made it to quote Barry, "Crystal clear that the cyber petition abuse policy has zero to do with linking." This means that who you link to and or who links to you has no impact on this new policy that Google began enforcing with manual actions earlier this week. So it's not about links, it's purely about the content itself. Okay, so that's clarified. Thank you, Barry. Also, from Barry Schwartz and also from Search Engine Roundtable about Barry again with a monopoly on the news. Sundar Pichai Google CEO responds to Google's search quality issues. Google, CEO sat down with Bloomberg, did whole interview about the, and one of the topics that came up was obviously AI and the quality of Google's results. I found personally that a lot of the ways that he answered the questions were very telling. We cover this on It's New, our daily news series with Barry Schwartz and Greg Finn, and of course Krista Carter when I cover this with Barry. And I said, "Look at his body language and how Sundar replied to this comment and to that question," Barry was unhappy. Barry did not like the read between the lines body language thing. So I think there were some interesting tidbits in there about how he answered the questions. Barry clearly thought I was wrong. He's making faces at me while we were recording, It's New, rolling his eyes at me saying that's the most ridiculous thing he ever heard in the chat. But I do think that you can learn a lot from the way that Sundar answered the questions. I think, by the way, for the record, the quality issue, which he answered it as anytime there's a transition, you get an exposure to new content, AI is going to do it. Sorry, AI is going to do that. So for us, we view this as a challenge, yada, yada, yada, yada. That's totally true. I think we do give Google a little bit too much of a hard time. I was talking about Melissa Popp on an interview that's going to be released in a few weeks for this very podcast about this. It's hard. There's a bunch of AI content, but there's a ton of AI content being spun up. Content trends and consumption trends have changed, expectations have changed, which we covered on this podcast numerous times. Google's got to keep up with all of that at the same time. I think I mentioned on, It's New, which I'm basically pitching, you should check out, It's New each day on Monday through Thursday rather. There's another layer on top. And I think some of the things that Google's done to address those issues have been very thinking about the immediate and not thinking about the long term, which I'm not criticizing them. It's hard to do that, hard to balance that, but I think that's also a layer. So it's a very, I think the quality of the results and the questions about the quality of the results, it's not a linear question or a linear equation. There's multiple layers to it and multiple people who are responsible for it, if you want to put it that way. But again, check out the interview. I was joking, by the way, Barry wasn't making faces at me and saying things in the comments, but he did say that he didn't think the body of language told him much, but I think it did. I think it did. I stand by that. And that's this week's, Snappy News. Hope you found all of that news, super accessible to you. Hope you did a good job with that. If I didn't, let me know out there on the social media verse, and I'll do my best to fix it. We also wanted to make a person who talks about SEO and accessibility accessible to you by telling you that you should be following, Miracle Inameti Archibong out there on social media on X. It's at M-I-R-A underscore I-N-A-M on LinkedIn. It'll just be her name. Crystal Carter: And she is a fantastic follower. She is an SEO over at John Lewis, and she does some great work, and she's been speaking on accessibility for years, before it was a little bit of a buzzword. She was talking about how to do alt text in a sort of programmatic way and how to make things more accessible. So she talked about that at MozCon. Mordy Obertstein: Oh yeah, I was there for that. That was a great speech. Crystal Carter: Yeah, really, really good. And she demonstrated, and it was the first time I'd ever heard an Audible screen reader going through. Mordy Obertstein: That's right. She went through it and it got stuck. Crystal Carter: It got stuck. And I think that that's really, really important because the other thing is that it also tells you how bots might be getting stuck on your website as well. So it's really, really useful to think about and forth between these two buttons. And it's very possible that if the screen reader's doing that, it's very possible the bots doing that as well. So everything should flow all together. And the way she illustrated it made it really, really clear to me that we got to do better for folks using screen readers. And yeah, she's a great follower for lots of reasons, but that one as well. Mordy Obertstein: So make sure to give Miracle a follow whatever you consume social media. I don't know if she's on TikTok or not, so I don't know if that applies to all social media, but LinkedIn and Twitter, X for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. No, Miracle is a great follower. Mordy Obertstein: When I say social media as an old person, I literally mean kind of Facebook, not really. Yeah, X and LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's what we're talking about. Mordy Obertstein: Because I'm an old person, which is why need to have things accessible, because I am blind as a bat without my glasses. My grandfather was literally blind. Crystal Carter: Was he really? Mordy Obertstein: Yeah. And the curb thing was a big deal. Crystal Carter: Right. I think, oh, and also in England you get the bump, so- Mordy Obertstein: The bumps. They don't have that in the US. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Bumps on the brakes. And also, I don't like it when they don't have, when you press the button for walking and there's no sound. Mordy Obertstein: No sound, that's... Crystal Carter: I really don't like that. Mordy Obertstein: You can hear a click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. Crystal Carter: Yeah, because sometimes you're just chatting away anyway when you're perfectly able or whatever, able to see that you could cross the road. You're chatting away and you don't notice it or whatever. Whereas when there's a sound, you hear it, and then you know that it's safe to go. Mordy Obertstein: See, you're speaking to your audience in different ways and making things accessible. Crystal Carter: Right. It's better for everybody. Mordy Obertstein: And if the local municipality can handle it, so can you. Crystal Carter: On that note... Mordy Obertstein: On that... Thanks for showing us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us not to worry? We're back next week, the new episode, as we dive into a look at what is often known as Holistic SEO and what that actually means. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

How much bias creeps into an SEOs' daily habits? How does bias impact how effectively we target our audiences? Join hosts Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter as they dig into how biases influence SEO practitioners and the modern SERP with special guest Giulia Panozzo. This juicy episode is worth the squeeze, explaining why sometimes those quirky, negative headlines suck you in like a vortex or why autocomplete can deliver the celebrity gossip you’d never know to look for. Discover why understanding user journey and behavior is crucial for your brand’s success on this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Back The SERP according to users, not just SEOs How much bias creeps into an SEOs' daily habits? How does bias impact how effectively we target our audiences? Join hosts Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter as they dig into how biases influence SEO practitioners and the modern SERP with special guest Giulia Panozzo. This juicy episode is worth the squeeze, explaining why sometimes those quirky, negative headlines suck you in like a vortex or why autocomplete can deliver the celebrity gossip you’d never know to look for. Discover why understanding user journey and behavior is crucial for your brand’s success on this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 103 | September 24, 2024 | 46 MIN 00:00 / 46:08 This week’s guests Giulia Panozzo Giulia is a neuroscientist turned marketer who leverages her academic background to explore what drives customers to trust and buy, and the biases that influence information processing and decision-making. She founded Neuroscientive, a consultancy and training venture to help businesses understand their consumers more effectively. 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 bringing some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the fabulously incredible, the fresh off her summer vacation, the one, the only, head of SEO Comms here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, everyone. Yes, my vacation was fantastic. I went to see Mariah Carey and she was amazing. She was everything that you would expect from Mariah Carey, which was no dancing at all, but fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: Honestly, I know nothing about it. My mom was a big Mariah Carey fan. Now, I like some of her songs, but she doesn't dance? Crystal Carter: No, of course she doesn't dance. She's Mariah. Carey. What? Are you kidding me? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. You don't dance? Does Beyonce not dance? Beyonce dances. Crystal Carter: Oh, Beyonce dances, but Mariah Carey has never. Never. Mordy Oberstein: I see. Okay. Crystal Carter: There's a couple of vintage videos, peak Mariah Carey, she was doing a couple of moves, but she was never throwing down, ever. She doesn't want to bust a sweat. It's just not happening. Mordy Oberstein: Max effort. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Minimal effort. Crystal Carter: Minimal effort. Maximum vocals, minimum effort. But she's amazing. Mordy Oberstein: All right, that's a trade off. All right, cool. Nice. I did not see Mariah Carey this summer. Crystal Carter: No, but did you have a nice summer? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it was fine. Crystal Carter: Cool. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know, I feel like I'm at the point in my life where like summer, fall, winter, whatever other season, I'm missing one, spring. Spring, that's the fourth one, it's all the same. Crystal Carter: These are other seasons that happen? Mordy Oberstein: Whatever. It's all whatever. I like fall. I miss fall. I miss fall foliage. That I enjoy. Crystal Carter: That's true. Someone from the northeast of America, it goes hard. Fall, autumn, goes hard in New England. I remember I went to college in Ohio and autumn in Ohio is beautiful. It's gorgeous. Mordy Oberstein: Except in Cleveland. Crystal Carter: I wasn't in Cleveland, I was in rural Ohio surrounded by beautiful trees. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's fine. Crystal Carter: Shout out to Kenyon College. Shout out to my alma mater on the Kokosing River in Gambier, Ohio, outside Mount Vernon. Shout out to central Ohio and Cowtown, Columbus, where I used to go back and forth. Mordy Oberstein: But no shout out to Cleveland, the mistake by the lake. I don't know why we're crapping all over Cleveland. Crystal Carter: I been to Cleveland once. I went to see the Cavs. It was fine. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. That's basically, yeah, I went to Cleveland, it was fine. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by the City Of Cleveland, who wants you to visit there really badly. Wow. We're really going hard on Cleveland. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio. Crystal Carter: Where you can throw the hammer down. Mordy Oberstein: Where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also better understand user intent with our keyword research integrations with Semrush SE Ranking, and Wincher, look for in the SEO Dashboard inside of Wix Studio, as this week, we're minding the gap between SEO and actual searchers. The assumptions that SEOs may make about users that might not be true, the gap between how an SEO looks at search and how a user might look at search, and how searcher bias might impact your ability to garner clicks. Neuroscientist turned marketer Giulia Panozzo will tell us how the SERP itself might lend to bias, plus we'll explore how marketers can deal with consumer bias. And of course we have the snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So grab some beams, boards and metal cords as we help you build a bridge to close the gap between the two sides of the river SERP on this, the 103rd episode, of SERP's Up. That only works, by the way, if you're building a suspension bridge. You don't need cords unless you're a suspension bridge. I'm an engineer. Crystal Carter: I'm a big fan of suspension bridges. They're pretty cool. Mordy Oberstein: But not suspension bridges in Cleveland. Crystal Carter: I don't know if they have any suspension bridges in Cleveland. Probably. There's probably at least one or something. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they were, they're not built well. Anyway, the two can't stop. Crystal Carter: We love you Cleveland. Mordy Oberstein: Hello, Cleveland. The quotes final question. Which brings me to my point about bias, because Cleveland could be a one.... I haven't been there in 20 years. I've been there twice and both times were it's pretty neutral. But this brings the bias out. Cleveland brings out my biases and there's biases all over the SERP. For example, how we as SEOs look at the SERP, we might project that onto users. By the way, users don't look at the SERP the same way. We care about ecosystems, we care about where things are headed, what Google's doing. Things like plastering red all over the SERP or AI overview is telling you to eat glue. They eat at us as SEOs. The average usually are probably like, "Yeah, that's weird," and move on. How we think about Google and where Google is going and how powerful Google is and yada, yada, yada, we might be projecting a lot of that bias onto actual users and it might not be true. By the way, the reverse I think is also true. Users come with their own biases, and a topic that we as the SEO working on a website might see as neutral, users don't. For example, jeans. The way I as a boomer look at jeans and the way that my children look at jeans, are entirely different. The jeans that I would find nice to wear, my kids would look at what absolute utter disdain. Depending upon who the audience actually is, you might want to be careful of which thumbnail you show. For example, if your main audience of the website are boomers like myself, don't show the cool jeans with the ripped things and the whatever's and whatever's. I'm not buying those. But if your target audience are my kids, then you should show all the rips and the this and the that with the jeans. That's what my kids want. Because the audience is not neutral. But you as an SEO might look at it like, "Yeah, it's jeans, it's neutral, whatever," but it's not. Both us, the SEOs and the searchers, have different biases that we need to be aware of is what I'm saying. Crystal Carter: I think also the way that we use the internet as marketing professionals, as SEO professionals, is different. I've seen people talk on this previously and there's an old piece of data, this is the only study I could find, from 2012, way back, speaking of old. This is a fast company, and it was a study that was talking about how advertising and marketing professionals are not normal. They were saying that on Facebook for instance, and a gain, this is- Mordy Oberstein: Wait, we're not normal? Crystal Carter: We're not normal. We think of ourselves as normal, but we're not normal. For instance, on Facebook it was saying 71% of this, and again, this is way back in the day, but I think this probably still holds true in different platforms now. 71% of advertising marketing professionals say they pay attention to brand posts in their Facebook feed all of the time versus 23% of the general population. As for Twitter, 92% of advertising marketing professionals use Twitter to follow brands they like and 33% of the regular population does. If you say, should brands put more effort into interacting with consumers via social media, 63% of marketing professionals say yes, 23% of the general population say yes. When we're searching, we think that we're putting ourselves in the same place as the searcher but we're not. We have different perspectives, we have a different understanding of how search works, and we have a different understanding of those sorts of things. I think that that really goes to the fact that not only do you need to experience the user journey to get to your content, to find your content online, to see how it is on Google, but as you're saying, people also need to engage with real people and see how real people are seeing that content because they're going to see it differently from the way that we do as marketers, even as business owners online, it's so important. Mordy Oberstein: It's so prevalent in the SEO space in particular because of the changes on the SERP. We look at a change on the SERP, like, "Oh, look at that. Google added the line over there with the thing and the accordions and whatever. All this is going to change. This is going to change the organic game forever." And users are like, "I didn't even notice that." Crystal Carter: Right. I remember doing some user research, we were doing an audit for a company and I was talking to someone from the company about where they get their information from. I said to them, I was like, "Okay, so what blogs do you read?" She was like, "Oh, I just read Google." I was like, "What?" I was like, "What are you reading on Google?" She's like, "You know, Google." I'm like, "But what?" That's like saying, "What books do you read?" "I read the library." What do you mean? There are books in the library? You don't know if you're reading Chaucer or Toni Morrison. "No, I just read the library." But people don't recognize. Similarly on your phone, there's the Google app and there's the Chrome app and they have a different experience. And I know people who don't have the Chrome app and just use the Google app. My aunt just uses the Google app, and I think that it's really important for people... Glenn Gabe is a real big advocate of getting user groups. If you're trying to figure out how people are experiencing either the user journey from the SERP to your website or your website itself, but to have people who are just regular folks actually try to complete a task, try to buy a thing, try to get to your content, starting from zero and getting to your content. Because you will just assume, "Oh yeah, they'll know how to do that." No, they won't. They will not. You need to test. Mordy Oberstein: A hundred percent. Because I find as an industry, we're so quick to draw conclusions out of things. Whether it be a Google update or a change on the SERP or whatever it is, we're like, "Oh, that's what's going on." I find by the way, the point of the library, the zero-click thing to me is that. We're like, "Oh, Google is steering people away from websites and blah, blah, blah, yada, yada." Maybe part of that's partially true. Whatever. I'm getting into that part of it. But there's a broader point that I think we as an industry have whiffed on. Google's not doing that. They didn't pull out of a hat like, "Oh, that's content consumption trends that we're observing. Let's steer into that," and we missed the trees for the forest, like, "Oh, Google's stealing the traffic." That's how we look at it as SEOs, where if I were to look at it from a broader perspective, I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait a second. Content trends themselves have shifted. Maybe I should be aligning the content on the websites that I'm working on to those content trends more closely." Crystal Carter: Right,. I think also it's a question of in terms of content trends, stop being basic. There's some stuff- Mordy Oberstein: Hello Cleveland. Crystal Carter: No. But I just feel like, so there's things like people will say, "How can I get links or how com I'm indexed? Martin Schmidt was like, "Maybe Google doesn't think your content's that great and that's why you're not being indexed." I think that if you were making super basic content, if I look up how far is it from the earth to the moon, that's just knowledge. Mordy Oberstein: No, I don't want to go to a website for that anymore. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I just need to win the bet. I just need to win the bet, I just need to win the argument, I just need to confirm that fact because my kid asked me or whatever. I just need that information. If you're making basic content that's basic that isn't really adding anything to the conversation, then there is so much more content online right now than there was 10, 15 years ago, even five years ago, so you to have a reason for letting people get to your site. I sometimes describe SEO as the job of making it so that search engines can read your content and so that users want to read your content. Those two things. If nobody wants to read it, not going to. Google can tell that nobody needs to read this because this is just the same stuff that we've got rehashed out 25 times already with pictures and videos and a how-to, an FAQ and a thing thingy thing. They already have it, then they don't need you to make it in that- Mordy Oberstein: A million percent. Crystal Carter: ... format, so you have to be unique. Mordy Oberstein: That's the ultimate bias though, because we look at the whole thing like, "People are going to go to Google and they're going to find the content and they're going to want to come to my... That's the ultimate SEO bias. I'll give you a good example of how that's not true anymore, and I think a lot of has to do with apps. I was at my sister's house and everyone had an app. They pulled up the app, I'm like, "Oh, what is that?" It's like, "Oh, it's called The Score and it's how I track sports now." It's great because you can pick the teams that you want to follow. I'm looking at the Yankees, the Knicks, the Steelers and the Rangers. It's all the information that I basically get. I get notifications pop up. If I want to see what's going on, go to the app, click on Yankees, there's everything I need to know right there. I don't have to go scouring the web. If however, they're like, "Oh, that's interesting, that guy get on the injured list, let me go." I'll go to Google like, "Oh, Louise Hill, injured list." I'm starting from the app, the top level information that's there, and I'm only going deeper when something piques my interest already. In other words, I'm only going to Google when I have a specific reason to extend my journey from the app. I think SEOs don't realize that. Crystal Carter: Right. I think that understanding that as part the content ecosystem, there are more than just websites that you're competing with is super important. The app, for instance, is something to think about. I think that there are businesses who are like, "Oh yeah, I'm competing with the people in my neighborhood." It's like, you're not. You're competing with people in your neighborhood, you're competing with the people online, you're competing with all of that. Again, there's also the conversation that they're having a lot around Twitter. I've heard a lot of people talk... I'm sorry, not Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. A lot of people talking about content there that it's not even that it's an influencer necessarily that is the thing anymore. It's the information. People will follow sourdough and they'll follow sourdough content, and they don't even remember who told them the recipe. They don't even remember. They'll say, "Oh, this, I saw this thing online." No reference to who it was. But if it sticks. The time of recording, demure is going around all over the internet. There's this person, Jules, I can't remember their last name, but Jules is fantastic and keeps saying about demure, and has gone really in on that and has branded this idea of just being low-key. Not being basic, being classy or whatever, but not being extra, as it were. They've put a stamp on that in a way that means that they're constantly in the algorithm for that topic without necessarily being branded. Other people are picking it up, but they are essentially the epicenter of that content. I think that people have to about the content ecosystem, the conversation of their content ecosystem. For instance, if you were to think about the Yankees or something. Mordy Oberstein: I am thinking about the Yankees. Crystal Carter: You're literally wearing a Yankee shirt right now. I know you're thinking about the Yankees. What were you thinking about? He's thinking about content, the Yankees, trolling Barry. These are the things. Mordy Oberstein: If I could somehow unite all three of those as the one activity, that'd be like heaven. Crystal Carter: Just sat at Yankee Stadium writing a blog- Mordy Oberstein: Trolling Barry with content. Crystal Carter: ... about trolling Barry. I think that it's a question of being part of the conversation and staying part of the conversation across multiple channels, including your website, of course. I think that the great thing about a website is it's yours and you can curate the content, you can concentrate your content, and people can connect with it and pull all of it together. Because there's strands everywhere. I think that you were talking about that journey of you're on the app, you're over here, you're over there. Sometimes that's exhausting. Sometimes that's exhausting and you just want- Mordy Oberstein: One place. Yeah, totally. Crystal Carter: ... one place. You want one place. And that's something we tried to do with the Wix SEO Hub, without tooting our own horn too much. But it's one of the reasons why we put that together, we have podcasts, we have webinars, we have articles, we have resources that you can download, we have decks that you can look at. We have all of these different things all in one place so that however you like to learn, you can get that information in one place. When I find places like that, when I find places online like that, I've always so relieved. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. Absolutely. Crystal Carter: I think it's really important for people to think about being that kind of resource for their clients, for their content when they're thinking about how to bridge that gap between the SEO and the everything. Mordy Oberstein: I'll say two things on this. One is Sourdough would be a great name for a rapper. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Mordy Oberstein: That'd be amazing. That might be the most brilliant thing I've ever said in this podcast. Crystal Carter: Dude, I think that's your new rapping name. Mordy Oberstein: The second thing is the point you're making, by the way, I think Rand Fishkin ran data on this. I'll try to find the post on LinkedIn somewhere. LinkedIn is horrible at finding this stuff post facto, and link it in the show notes, if I can. No promises. But he was talking about, and this again, goes to that bias that SEOs have. Google is the strongest channel for search traffic. Don't focus on social. You're not getting traffic from there. But what you're not realizing is that they see the thing you wrote on social and now they're Googling it. It started with social, it started where your community is, and it moved over to Google, but there's just a lack of attributions and you can't track it. You don't know how that happened. I think that speaks to the thing you're talking about, there's another huge bias in SEO, speaking of bias from SEOs, there's also bias within users and the SERP itself can contribute to this. So we asked the founder of Neuroscientive, Giulia Panozzo, how the SERP itself contributes to user bias. Here's Giulia. Giulia Panozzo: Bias impacts our judgment and decision-making and it is unavoidable because as individuals, we come with previous experiences and beliefs that skew the way we process information and make decisions. After all, if we all have the same beliefs, experiences, and even the same brain wiring, then we would all perceive everything in the same way and make the exact same choices probably. However, bias can be experienced even before we consciously process the information that we're faced with, and it comes into play potentially in every area of our life, including when we search. Because when we do that, we are driven by a need. We're onto a quest that normally sees us with limited time and limited attention. That is not to say that we don't allocate the proper time to searches or the proper attention, but realistically, with the amount of searches that we do every day and the amount of results that we get, we cannot possibly analyze every single result in order to choose the very best one, so we tend to navigate the search tasks with our existing biases, whether we are or aren't aware of it. The SERP contributes to user bias because it tends to reinforce it, and it does so by pushing elements that are known to capture the attention and to aid decision-making when there is a sea of options. There are a number of biases that are known and exploited. I talked about a number of them throughout my career, and it is still not exhaustive. While the aim of search engine is probably to help users find the results weekly, it can actually backfire because it might not consistently provide the best result for the user or even be ethical sometimes. The most obvious example is when we see negative headlines being awarded primary spots in the SERP. We know for sure that users sent to click on something that's shocking or negative because it's just in our nature to have this over-attention to the negative. There was a study by SEO Clarity a couple of years ago, showing how negative headlines produce significantly more clicks than their positive or neutral counterparts, which really drives the point home. If user signals are what drives the algorithm, which is always a reason for debate, but it is a valid claim if the final aim is to help the user, then it's a circle that feeds itself because the more we interact with those results, the more we are being served with them. Another thing that contributes to bias is the over-personalization of results. We are now accustomed to having everything at our fingertips, and Google has been trying to simplify our experience, but in the end, the fact that we get everything catered to what we previously searched for or even showed interest in other platforms, amplifies these eco-chamber and makes us lazy, preventing us from using our critical thinking to evaluate other options, which eventually contributes to confirmation bias, which in itself is a huge problem because it's when people just tend to favor information that confirms their existing beliefs. Another element that we see awarded on the SERP is authority. You can say anything about the domain authority not impacting rankings, but there was a Verge article that they ran as a test, and it was basically everything that the guidelines tell you not to do. They were using keyword stuffing, they were making up their experts, and they were even acknowledging that they were trolling Google. And it is currently sitting in third position for best Printer 2024 after CNET and the New York Times in the UK, so this tells us something. So yes, I mentioned that Google is awarding these bias-inducing factors, if you will, and you can see some connections between their messy middle report and the guidelines for enhanced results. The messy middle report for those who are not familiar with it, was this massive behavioral economic study which isolated six of the most common cognitive biases driving purchase behavior in users. These were category heuristics, authority bias, scarcity bias, power of now, power of free, and social proof. Some of them align very well with the guidelines to get rich snippets or based on the carousel for example. Adding schema for offers, for reviews, deliver information, which as I understand are now being made mandatory on shopping listings, and this in turn translates to more real estate, more visual space on the SERP, again awarded. This brings me to the final aspect, which is the fact that everyone's trying to stay in the game doing exactly the same thing. We're all scrambling for more space on the SERP, being visible on the carousel, using scarcity messaging to get CTRs, adding reviews, and it's becoming overwhelming to discriminate for users. Too much of anything at the end of the day makes you long for something else. When everything seems to be equal, what do we rely on? Likely the first satisfactory result. A combination of what is relevant to our query and what we recognize first because we are familiar with a brand or because they are authoritative in their space. Because this discerning as a user is a hefty task on top of the initial task, which is the search itself, and having the same results over and over produces fatigue so we just want to be over with it as users. Surely all of the choices we have are available if we search hard enough, but the SERP, in an attempt of making search more efficient, is actually impacting the visibility of diversified options so that's how it contributes to bias. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Giulia. Make sure to give Giulia a follow over on LinkedIn, I'll link to her profile in the show notes. That's like the ultimate bias. You think, "Okay, it's a top result, top five results, those must be the best pieces of content out there." If it's on page two, it must not be good. When in reality, that's not necessarily true. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Sometimes it's worth remembering that there is a lot going on the SERP, so what is on page two might just be that it's got a more nuanced writing style or something, it might be that it doesn't show for some of the SERP features because these days, depending on which SERP you're looking at, there's shopping, there's ads, there's local pack, there's PAA, there's discussions and forums, there's related searches. There's tons and tons of different SERP features that are showing up there and it might be that maybe a piece of content that is relevant to you isn't necessarily eligible for that SERP feature. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's not relevant for you, but it might mean that because of all those SERP features, that because it's such a busy SERP, it's pushed down a little bit. I think that we're starting to see more people, I don't know, searching again or following some of the refinements and things like that, which do guide bias. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the refinements for sure. There's no way around it. Again, you might think, okay, this filter is filled to the top of the SERP or wherever the refinement filter is, like, oh, that's what I need. It's not. Because again, I think the important, if you're a person listening to this podcast, you're not an SEO. Anytime you're trying to target a product at a particular, I'll call it user base or demographic, it's a law of averages. They're trying to get the best for the most amount of people, but you might just fall out of that demographic and nothing to do about it. Crystal Carter: Right. I think also sometimes it's a question of in terms of guiding bias, predictive text, for instance, the predictive search. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. Crystal Carter: Totally does. And also- Mordy Oberstein: When you see it pops up, by the way, is like a controversy all the time and politics and this thing and that thing. Everyone gets all upset. The auto complete is probably the most controversial thing on the internet from Google point of view, outside of the whole monopoly thing. Crystal Carter: And we'll totally include things like... I just started typing in is nail polish, and then the things I got is nail polish remover acetone, is nail polish flammable? I'd never even thought about that, whether nail polish was flammable or not. I'm guessing it is because it's very fumey. Is nail polish bad for your nails? That's another one that comes up. But sometimes I've seen the predictive text put people on blast things where I was like, "I didn't even know something happened." You type in some celebrity's name and they're controversy with so-and-so and you're like, "Oh my God, I didn't even realize that was that." And so it guides bias and I think that people have sometimes taken umbrage with this. I think Google's had a few controversies about that. But yeah, I think it's definitely something to consider how people are doing things. It's worth, if you're marketing to people, to understand the kinds of bias that your users are going to be coming up against as they go on their search journey. Mordy Oberstein: Let's keep diving into this whole idea of the biases a priori notions that your user base are coming with. Because it goes beyond SEO. Just look at how consumers feel about generic versus name brand medications. Second is Tylenol. It's got to be a million times better than the CVS brand. There's so much bias, so much bias out there. Let's talk about or discuss how to deal with those biases as we go the great beyond. Why would you spend another 20 bucks on Tylenol? Making that number up. I don't know what the actual number is. It's the same thing. Crystal Carter: Right. Sometimes I find myself buying the branded thing when I don't recognize or don't know the other folks, or don't trust them in some way. For instance, if there's a supermarket, and let's say I'm at Walmart, and Walmart has the Walmart own Tylenol or whatever, and I can't remember what the actual chemical in the Tylenol is, if it's- Mordy Oberstein: SSC, emotive. Something SSC.. Crystal Carter: I can't remember what it is. Let's say it's like it's aspirin. Mordy Oberstein: I'm an engineer, not a doctor. Crystal Carter: Let's say it's aspirin. Aspirin is the actual chemical, isn't it? Or whatever it is. Let's say- Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to Google it. Crystal Carter: Okay. Let's say Walmart has their own brand off-brand aspirin or whatever, and then there's the branded like Bayer Aspirin or something. If I know Walmart, then I'm like, "Yeah, okay, I'll get the the Walmart aspirin," because I'm like, "Well, I know them. I've had some of their other stuff before, it's probably fine," et cetera, et cetera. If I look at- Mordy Oberstein: Aminofen. Crystal Carter: It's science. You see? SERP's Up isn't just SEO, it's also science. Mordy Oberstein: Science and engineering. Crystal Carter: And engineering. So much today. Mordy Oberstein: It's just science. Crystal Carter: I think that there's a level of trust that you have that you have with that. Similarly online, there's all these discount things that are popping up everywhere. There's tons of discount products that are popping up everywhere. And there're unbranded. There're unbranded sponges or a brush or a laptop case or a lamp for your phone or that sort of stuff. TikTok Shop is full of these things and they have no brand. They're just like cheap thing. Temu is full of this stuff. Wish had all of this stuff. Amazon thrives in a lot of unbranded things. But the thing that Amazon does, and this is the same with that Walmart one, is that it's wrapped in Amazon. And to a certain extent, I trust that if I buy something on Amazon that yes, it will arrive, and if there's a problem, they will deal with it, to a certain extent. Whereas in other places, you have some of those elements where it's just the Wild West. If you're on someone's website and they haven't spent the time to establish trust, we haven't spent the time to demonstrate that they have good customer service, they haven't spent the time to demonstrate that they have good client reviews, they haven't spent the time to demonstrate good case studies, they haven't spent the time to show you that they care about this product, that they have taken photos of this product, that they're illustrating the product and how it all works and things like that, and you don't know them, then you're less likely to buy from them in that space. I think that this is how you get around some of those biases is you just have to confront them head-on. Because if you're a small business, then people are going to come with a certain amount of bias to your business and that, I don't know, you stranger danger, kind of bias. And you have to confront those things. You have to answer all their questions, you have to illustrate that you know what you're doing, you have to show, I've got this certificate, I've done this, I've done that. Here's the photos of the people that have enjoyed the work that I've done, that sort of thing. I feel like that's really important. I think that it might seem daunting, but you don't have to do it all at once, you can build up as you go. I think that with those kinds of things, it's worth taking the time to start with warm leads. I know somebody who's starting a business as a barber and he's just training as a barber and he's doing great and he's doing absolutely fantastically, and he's trying to build up his client base. I'm like, "Okay, well you need to get lots of people in the chair and you need to get lots of photos of the stuff that you've done so people can see that you're good at doing barbering, and that's something that you can build up." So he's getting his friends to sit in the chair, he's getting his friends to do that sort of stuff, so he can build that up. And as you go on, more people will see, oh, this is good, this is fine. All of that sort of stuff. That really helps. If you're a bigger business and you have big budgets, deep pockets or whatever, then you can scale this more quickly. You can do a free trial, you can be freemium. That's one of the reasons why people do freemium so they can get good reviews so they can get a lot of people replying. Similarly, when people launch a book on Amazon or something, they will launch their book and they'll make it free in Kindle for a few weeks or a few months and stuff, so that they can get a bunch of reviews. I think that you can balance bias by building trust with a reciprocal offer in some ways. Mordy Oberstein: Well, there's basically two ways to deal with it. One is basically you're saying to confront the bias or to deal with the bias in some way, shape, or form. That can mean basically whatever barrier the bias is creating, you need to get rid of that barrier. There's multiple ways you can do that. You know what's a great example? Starbucks would be a good example of this, they'll never do it, but Coors is a great example of this. I don't know. I'm trying to remember. 20 years ago, craft beers started becoming a really big thing. A really, really big thing. As it grew, the big companies, the Budweiser of the world started to really take note of the fact that there's a threat in the industry, in the market, because of the craft breweries. What they did was, by the way, they tried to hijack the distribution methods of those craft breweries because the big brands, I forget how it all works out, they own the distribution of beer in America. Crazy thing. But what Coors did, probably among other things, was they created their own craft brewery. They have, what's it called? Blue Moon. Blue Moon is Coors. It's their craft offering and they hide the fact that it's really Coors. Or it's like, yeah, it's hidden enough. The hardcore beer drinkers like myself, I know that's Coors, I'm not going for Blue Moon. Blue Moon's fine. Didn't go for it, but it did capitalize. Oh, Blue Moon, Craft Brewery. I know craft Breweries are coming a big thing, I'm going to buy that and not buy the Coors. They steered into the skid. That's how they dealt with the consumer bias. I think, by the way, Starbucks would do well to deal with this because Starbucks is getting a reputation of being too corporate among other issues that Starbucks has, like just being too expensive and their coffee not being good. Their ground coffee is good in the bags. I like that. I don't like their in-store coffee. But one of the biases that they're dealing with is the fact that, hey, wait a second, you come off as corporate. If I have two cafes in front of me, one is Starbucks and one's Pacino's Local Cafe, I'm just going to walk into Pacino's because it's local. Because in that case, local does seem like higher quality and the big brand doesn't seem like higher quality. I think Starbucks should pivot and they should create a sub-brand that's divorced from the actual brand of local-ish kind of coffee houses. Like what Coors did with Blue Moon. The other way, I think, to deal with it is just completely cut it off. I saw a thing, I think on CNBC, but basically, you know the front end of a pharmacy, they have the snacks and the, I don't know, all the other stuff that they sell? It doesn't do well. Just cut it. If it's a part of your product offering where consumer buys basically, I'm not here for that, that's not going to be good here. I'm going to get it cheaper somewhere else. It may not be true, but I think what CNBC said was basically people feel like whatever the front end of the pharmacy is offering, I will get cheaper somewhere else, which may or may not be true, I don't know. But if that's a bias and it's not your main business offering, or you'll spend more money trying to deal with the bias, then just cut it and pivot. Crystal Carter: I think that that's definitely something worth thinking about and I think that you need to spend time looking at what it is. It can be painful. It can be painful to- Mordy Oberstein: That's the biggest thing, diagnosing it. Crystal Carter: ... digging into what people are biased about for your business, for your product, for what you do. I think that it's really, really important to do that because if you're going to do big cuts, that's a big deal. If you're going to cut something, that's a big deal. You need to dig into why are people biased about this? Why is this a challenge for us? If you're going to pivot or you're going to create a sub-brand, if you're going to do whatever, you have to think very deeply because that's quite an investment about how you're going to do that and why it is. I think when you're trying to figure out whether or not you need to do this. Because people do this with websites all the time. People are like, "We to we have a new brand, do we need to do a new website for this new sub-brand or do we need to keep it on the same domain?" When you're trying to decide between those things, you have to think about, well, how is it being on this domain going to affect how people think about this new brand? How is it being on a separate domain going to affect how people think about the brand? Will it help us with the positioning? All of that sort of stuff. I think that you have to dig deep and make some tough decisions on that, and I think that while you're looking at that, you really have to look at the data very, very objectively. Very objectively, to get something that's something of value. Mordy Oberstein: But you also have to understand where users are flowing. If the users are flowing a certain direction, the biggest thing you should not do is fight it. Meaning the users flowing in a certain direction, their bias is flowing in that direction. If they're thinking, "Okay, small business is not going to be quality here," do things that show your quality. Have the reviews up, have the whatever up. Don't do things that are like, no small business is good here. Don't fight that bias. You'll never, ever win doing something like that. If it does mean pivoting, if it does mean rebranding, if it does mean cutting your loss on something, or by the way, if it means, "Well, we won't get a lot out of it, we'll get something decent out of it," that's fine too, by the way. I personally think, for me, I'm only speaking for myself, like generic brand cereal. I'm always like, "Nah, it's never going to taste good. It's never going to be the right thing." But I'm picky about my cereal. Many people probably are not, because you see the generic brands all the time, they're way cheaper. You won't get me, but that's fine because you might get a ton of other people. You really have to slice and dice it. Crystal Carter: Also sometimes it's a question of being bold in who you are, being bold in your brand positioning, being bold in your statement. You mentioned Coors, and when you mentioned Coors, for instance, the first thing that I thought of was that van Damme campaign. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know that. Claude? Jean-Claude? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Let me just make sure that it's... There was a thing that Coors wasn't cool. Mordy Oberstein: It was not cool, but yeah. Crystal Carter: And the Jean-Claude van Damme one was basically, he was super uncool. He was there looking really, really uncool, on a mountain. And it was so uncool it was cool, basically. It was hilarious. Mordy Oberstein: I like that. That's cool. Crystal Carter: And so he really just confronted it head on, and there's a few businesses that I've seen do that, and they're just like, "Yep, that's what we do." Mordy Oberstein: That's where they lean into it. Whatever it means to lean into it, lean into it. That's the only way you're going to deal with it. What's cool, by the way,? Barry's cool. Super cool, coolest guy I ever met. Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry Schwartz, the guy. Mordy Oberstein: So cool he could sport a goatee and it's 2024. That is so uncool it's cool. Crystal Carter: It's very cool. Mordy Oberstein: Very cool. Like a 1990s baseball player, here's Barry Schwartz and this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Two articles for you both from Barry Schwartz. What's new? First from seoroundtable.com. Study, 96% of Google AI overviews links go to informational intent pages. It is what Barry's saying, heard data from Mark Traphagan over at SEO Clarity. The links inside of the AI overviews predominantly go to informational pages. I'm sick about talking about AI overviews, so I'm just going to say, if you want to see more, click on the link on the show notes, I'm moving on. Anyway. Is that wrong? Whatever. Onto the core update, the August 2024 core update, Barry covers some data from the data providers, which I sent him. I'm covering Barry covering me. That sounds incredibly narcissistic. The title, Data Providers, Google August 2024 core update was very volatile. Barry, you have a way with words. Yes, it was very volatile. All core updates are very volatile. All right. No, but all in all seriousness, similar web in Semrush sent over a bunch of data to Barry. I do the data roundup for Semrush. I pull the data, while I ask for a data pull, they sent it over and analyze it, and then I send it to Barry, and then Barry puts into an article and everybody's happy. I'll pull the curtain back. This is one of the harder updates to pin down because, here's how the tools do this. What they do is they take a data period before the core update as the baseline. You have to do the same thing each time because what we do is we compare one core update to the next core update because it's all relative so you have to have something to compare it to. But if you're going to compare them, then you have to do the same thing each time. But the problem here was, if you recall, I think we covered it here, there was an incredible amount of rank volatility for an extended period of time before the core update rolled out, which meant the baseline period that using the data was incredibly volatile. If you look at, for example, the rank volatility change comparison chart that I sent to Barry in the article, you can see that compared to the March 2024 core update, the August 2024 core update was super tiny. In fact, for many verticals, food and drink, game health, jobs and education, the amount of volatility was significantly less. In fact, I'll pull the curtain back a little bit more, some of the verticals were more volatile before the update than during the update, which is I don't think I've ever seen that. Getting this data right was very, very, very difficult. I actually did ask Semrush to pull a data pull from way, way, way before, it's not exactly one-to-one to compare to the March 2024 because, as I mentioned, you have to do the same thing each time and do the same exact methodology each time to have some kind of accurate picture. In this inherently I'm asking to do something different. There you could see, okay, there was more of the normal increase in volatility change that you would normally see with the core update, yada, yada, yada, yada. But what we can see is the drasticness of the rank volatility. Here, for example, looking at the top 10 results, one of the things we look at is the percentage of URLs that previously before the update ranked position 20, and now after the update ranked top 10. Back in March, during the March 2024 core update, 9.38% of URLs ranking top 10 after the update came from beyond position 20 before the update, which shows you, oh, wow, that's a pretty drastic swing. You were ranking 20, 25, 30, 40, whatever it was, beforehand, now you're ranking top 10? Basically the same number for the August 2024 core update, 9.51%. You could read the rest of the article for the rest of the data. The reason why the way that's significant is that the March 2024 core update was a reassessment of the algorithm helpfulness and the helpful content, blah, blah, blah. Seeing the August update running similar numbers should tell you that was a really big update. I'm going to try to keep this short because it's a snappy news and I've already gone too long. That's this week's Snappy News. Barry, we love you and your goatee. I'm just messing. Crystal Carter: We'll see you today. It's new. Mordy Oberstein: Right. By the way, and on this show, we've talked about the Yankees, we've created content, and we've trolled Barry, so I've checked off all my things. Crystal Carter: There we go. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. Crystal Carter: Perfect day. Mordy Oberstein: Perfect day. Well almost perfect. We have one more thing we'll make it perfect. We've given you a great follow of the week, and we're talking about biases and search and search psychology. That's a new area of search we need to coin. Search psychology. The person you need to follow is Garrett Sussman from I Pull Rank. He spoke about a lot of this stuff over at MozCon. He's @Garrett, G-A-R-R-E-T-T, S-U-S-S-M-A-N, Sussman over on X and on LinkedIn under the same name. But Garrett talks a ton about this. He reads a ton of psychology books and he pulls that into search. So it's Search Psychology by Garrett Sussman. Crystal Carter: I saw this presentation. It was fantastic. The deck is available on the Moz website, and you can check it out and I think you can buy the thing to watch it as well. But it's absolutely spot on. He talks about the psychology of search and he talks about biases and he gets all into it. Garrett is a great follow, not just for that, but also- Mordy Oberstein: And a great person. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's a great person and he really stays on top of the SEO news on behalf of the team at I Pull Rank. Shout out to Mike King and everybody else at I Pull Rank as well. They've got a great squad over there and they put out some fantastic content most recently, or most notably about the Google leaks. If you haven't read that, if you haven't checked out that, you should check that out. They've got some really good insights about AI overviews as well, which Mike has shared at some events that we've hosted at the Wix Playground in New York as well. Shout out to Garrett and the team at I Pull Rank and Garrett's a great follow. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely great follow. Always sharing information. He's an active social media person. He's got a great insights, but Garrett shares on social, is what you want. It's not what you want. Cleveland. I can't stop, I'm sorry. Crystal Carter: Oh, come. Mordy Oberstein: I only did it to go full circle. Sorry, Cleveland. We love you Cleveland. We love you. Crystal Carter: You biased, man. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, there's my bias again. Crystal Carter: You're biased. Mordy Oberstein: I can't get out of it. Cleveland just leaned into it. They have, by the way, they have something cool commercial, they've leaned into it. Crystal Carter: There was one I saw, it was somewhere in Sweden I think, or something. It was for Cannes. They won an award at Cannes, and it was basically like, "Why would you come to this place? You can walk from one side to the other in five minutes, and everybody knows each other, and the food, it's just like normal food." Basically they just went the other way. They weren't talking about how exciting they were. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they've got some really cool stuff. Much like I'm crappy on Cleveland, they're a good example of leaning into it and actually using it to improve their reputation. Crystal Carter: Yeah, there you go. Mordy Oberstein: We love you, Cleveland. You've convinced me. On that happy note, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into the gray area of the algorithm, Signs Google Might Or Might Not Love You. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or your rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Giulia Panozzo Garrett Sussman Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Neuroscientive News: Study: 96% Of Google AI Overviews Links Go To Informational Intent Pages Data providers: Google August 2024 core update was very volatile Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Giulia Panozzo Garrett Sussman Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Neuroscientive News: Study: 96% Of Google AI Overviews Links Go To Informational Intent Pages Data providers: Google August 2024 core update was very volatile 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 bringing some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the fabulously incredible, the fresh off her summer vacation, the one, the only, head of SEO Comms here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, everyone. Yes, my vacation was fantastic. I went to see Mariah Carey and she was amazing. She was everything that you would expect from Mariah Carey, which was no dancing at all, but fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: Honestly, I know nothing about it. My mom was a big Mariah Carey fan. Now, I like some of her songs, but she doesn't dance? Crystal Carter: No, of course she doesn't dance. She's Mariah. Carey. What? Are you kidding me? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. You don't dance? Does Beyonce not dance? Beyonce dances. Crystal Carter: Oh, Beyonce dances, but Mariah Carey has never. Never. Mordy Oberstein: I see. Okay. Crystal Carter: There's a couple of vintage videos, peak Mariah Carey, she was doing a couple of moves, but she was never throwing down, ever. She doesn't want to bust a sweat. It's just not happening. Mordy Oberstein: Max effort. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Minimal effort. Crystal Carter: Minimal effort. Maximum vocals, minimum effort. But she's amazing. Mordy Oberstein: All right, that's a trade off. All right, cool. Nice. I did not see Mariah Carey this summer. Crystal Carter: No, but did you have a nice summer? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it was fine. Crystal Carter: Cool. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know, I feel like I'm at the point in my life where like summer, fall, winter, whatever other season, I'm missing one, spring. Spring, that's the fourth one, it's all the same. Crystal Carter: These are other seasons that happen? Mordy Oberstein: Whatever. It's all whatever. I like fall. I miss fall. I miss fall foliage. That I enjoy. Crystal Carter: That's true. Someone from the northeast of America, it goes hard. Fall, autumn, goes hard in New England. I remember I went to college in Ohio and autumn in Ohio is beautiful. It's gorgeous. Mordy Oberstein: Except in Cleveland. Crystal Carter: I wasn't in Cleveland, I was in rural Ohio surrounded by beautiful trees. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's fine. Crystal Carter: Shout out to Kenyon College. Shout out to my alma mater on the Kokosing River in Gambier, Ohio, outside Mount Vernon. Shout out to central Ohio and Cowtown, Columbus, where I used to go back and forth. Mordy Oberstein: But no shout out to Cleveland, the mistake by the lake. I don't know why we're crapping all over Cleveland. Crystal Carter: I been to Cleveland once. I went to see the Cavs. It was fine. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. That's basically, yeah, I went to Cleveland, it was fine. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by the City Of Cleveland, who wants you to visit there really badly. Wow. We're really going hard on Cleveland. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio. Crystal Carter: Where you can throw the hammer down. Mordy Oberstein: Where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also better understand user intent with our keyword research integrations with Semrush SE Ranking, and Wincher, look for in the SEO Dashboard inside of Wix Studio, as this week, we're minding the gap between SEO and actual searchers. The assumptions that SEOs may make about users that might not be true, the gap between how an SEO looks at search and how a user might look at search, and how searcher bias might impact your ability to garner clicks. Neuroscientist turned marketer Giulia Panozzo will tell us how the SERP itself might lend to bias, plus we'll explore how marketers can deal with consumer bias. And of course we have the snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So grab some beams, boards and metal cords as we help you build a bridge to close the gap between the two sides of the river SERP on this, the 103rd episode, of SERP's Up. That only works, by the way, if you're building a suspension bridge. You don't need cords unless you're a suspension bridge. I'm an engineer. Crystal Carter: I'm a big fan of suspension bridges. They're pretty cool. Mordy Oberstein: But not suspension bridges in Cleveland. Crystal Carter: I don't know if they have any suspension bridges in Cleveland. Probably. There's probably at least one or something. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they were, they're not built well. Anyway, the two can't stop. Crystal Carter: We love you Cleveland. Mordy Oberstein: Hello, Cleveland. The quotes final question. Which brings me to my point about bias, because Cleveland could be a one.... I haven't been there in 20 years. I've been there twice and both times were it's pretty neutral. But this brings the bias out. Cleveland brings out my biases and there's biases all over the SERP. For example, how we as SEOs look at the SERP, we might project that onto users. By the way, users don't look at the SERP the same way. We care about ecosystems, we care about where things are headed, what Google's doing. Things like plastering red all over the SERP or AI overview is telling you to eat glue. They eat at us as SEOs. The average usually are probably like, "Yeah, that's weird," and move on. How we think about Google and where Google is going and how powerful Google is and yada, yada, yada, we might be projecting a lot of that bias onto actual users and it might not be true. By the way, the reverse I think is also true. Users come with their own biases, and a topic that we as the SEO working on a website might see as neutral, users don't. For example, jeans. The way I as a boomer look at jeans and the way that my children look at jeans, are entirely different. The jeans that I would find nice to wear, my kids would look at what absolute utter disdain. Depending upon who the audience actually is, you might want to be careful of which thumbnail you show. For example, if your main audience of the website are boomers like myself, don't show the cool jeans with the ripped things and the whatever's and whatever's. I'm not buying those. But if your target audience are my kids, then you should show all the rips and the this and the that with the jeans. That's what my kids want. Because the audience is not neutral. But you as an SEO might look at it like, "Yeah, it's jeans, it's neutral, whatever," but it's not. Both us, the SEOs and the searchers, have different biases that we need to be aware of is what I'm saying. Crystal Carter: I think also the way that we use the internet as marketing professionals, as SEO professionals, is different. I've seen people talk on this previously and there's an old piece of data, this is the only study I could find, from 2012, way back, speaking of old. This is a fast company, and it was a study that was talking about how advertising and marketing professionals are not normal. They were saying that on Facebook for instance, and a gain, this is- Mordy Oberstein: Wait, we're not normal? Crystal Carter: We're not normal. We think of ourselves as normal, but we're not normal. For instance, on Facebook it was saying 71% of this, and again, this is way back in the day, but I think this probably still holds true in different platforms now. 71% of advertising marketing professionals say they pay attention to brand posts in their Facebook feed all of the time versus 23% of the general population. As for Twitter, 92% of advertising marketing professionals use Twitter to follow brands they like and 33% of the regular population does. If you say, should brands put more effort into interacting with consumers via social media, 63% of marketing professionals say yes, 23% of the general population say yes. When we're searching, we think that we're putting ourselves in the same place as the searcher but we're not. We have different perspectives, we have a different understanding of how search works, and we have a different understanding of those sorts of things. I think that that really goes to the fact that not only do you need to experience the user journey to get to your content, to find your content online, to see how it is on Google, but as you're saying, people also need to engage with real people and see how real people are seeing that content because they're going to see it differently from the way that we do as marketers, even as business owners online, it's so important. Mordy Oberstein: It's so prevalent in the SEO space in particular because of the changes on the SERP. We look at a change on the SERP, like, "Oh, look at that. Google added the line over there with the thing and the accordions and whatever. All this is going to change. This is going to change the organic game forever." And users are like, "I didn't even notice that." Crystal Carter: Right. I remember doing some user research, we were doing an audit for a company and I was talking to someone from the company about where they get their information from. I said to them, I was like, "Okay, so what blogs do you read?" She was like, "Oh, I just read Google." I was like, "What?" I was like, "What are you reading on Google?" She's like, "You know, Google." I'm like, "But what?" That's like saying, "What books do you read?" "I read the library." What do you mean? There are books in the library? You don't know if you're reading Chaucer or Toni Morrison. "No, I just read the library." But people don't recognize. Similarly on your phone, there's the Google app and there's the Chrome app and they have a different experience. And I know people who don't have the Chrome app and just use the Google app. My aunt just uses the Google app, and I think that it's really important for people... Glenn Gabe is a real big advocate of getting user groups. If you're trying to figure out how people are experiencing either the user journey from the SERP to your website or your website itself, but to have people who are just regular folks actually try to complete a task, try to buy a thing, try to get to your content, starting from zero and getting to your content. Because you will just assume, "Oh yeah, they'll know how to do that." No, they won't. They will not. You need to test. Mordy Oberstein: A hundred percent. Because I find as an industry, we're so quick to draw conclusions out of things. Whether it be a Google update or a change on the SERP or whatever it is, we're like, "Oh, that's what's going on." I find by the way, the point of the library, the zero-click thing to me is that. We're like, "Oh, Google is steering people away from websites and blah, blah, blah, yada, yada." Maybe part of that's partially true. Whatever. I'm getting into that part of it. But there's a broader point that I think we as an industry have whiffed on. Google's not doing that. They didn't pull out of a hat like, "Oh, that's content consumption trends that we're observing. Let's steer into that," and we missed the trees for the forest, like, "Oh, Google's stealing the traffic." That's how we look at it as SEOs, where if I were to look at it from a broader perspective, I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait a second. Content trends themselves have shifted. Maybe I should be aligning the content on the websites that I'm working on to those content trends more closely." Crystal Carter: Right,. I think also it's a question of in terms of content trends, stop being basic. There's some stuff- Mordy Oberstein: Hello Cleveland. Crystal Carter: No. But I just feel like, so there's things like people will say, "How can I get links or how com I'm indexed? Martin Schmidt was like, "Maybe Google doesn't think your content's that great and that's why you're not being indexed." I think that if you were making super basic content, if I look up how far is it from the earth to the moon, that's just knowledge. Mordy Oberstein: No, I don't want to go to a website for that anymore. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I just need to win the bet. I just need to win the bet, I just need to win the argument, I just need to confirm that fact because my kid asked me or whatever. I just need that information. If you're making basic content that's basic that isn't really adding anything to the conversation, then there is so much more content online right now than there was 10, 15 years ago, even five years ago, so you to have a reason for letting people get to your site. I sometimes describe SEO as the job of making it so that search engines can read your content and so that users want to read your content. Those two things. If nobody wants to read it, not going to. Google can tell that nobody needs to read this because this is just the same stuff that we've got rehashed out 25 times already with pictures and videos and a how-to, an FAQ and a thing thingy thing. They already have it, then they don't need you to make it in that- Mordy Oberstein: A million percent. Crystal Carter: ... format, so you have to be unique. Mordy Oberstein: That's the ultimate bias though, because we look at the whole thing like, "People are going to go to Google and they're going to find the content and they're going to want to come to my... That's the ultimate SEO bias. I'll give you a good example of how that's not true anymore, and I think a lot of has to do with apps. I was at my sister's house and everyone had an app. They pulled up the app, I'm like, "Oh, what is that?" It's like, "Oh, it's called The Score and it's how I track sports now." It's great because you can pick the teams that you want to follow. I'm looking at the Yankees, the Knicks, the Steelers and the Rangers. It's all the information that I basically get. I get notifications pop up. If I want to see what's going on, go to the app, click on Yankees, there's everything I need to know right there. I don't have to go scouring the web. If however, they're like, "Oh, that's interesting, that guy get on the injured list, let me go." I'll go to Google like, "Oh, Louise Hill, injured list." I'm starting from the app, the top level information that's there, and I'm only going deeper when something piques my interest already. In other words, I'm only going to Google when I have a specific reason to extend my journey from the app. I think SEOs don't realize that. Crystal Carter: Right. I think that understanding that as part the content ecosystem, there are more than just websites that you're competing with is super important. The app, for instance, is something to think about. I think that there are businesses who are like, "Oh yeah, I'm competing with the people in my neighborhood." It's like, you're not. You're competing with people in your neighborhood, you're competing with the people online, you're competing with all of that. Again, there's also the conversation that they're having a lot around Twitter. I've heard a lot of people talk... I'm sorry, not Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. A lot of people talking about content there that it's not even that it's an influencer necessarily that is the thing anymore. It's the information. People will follow sourdough and they'll follow sourdough content, and they don't even remember who told them the recipe. They don't even remember. They'll say, "Oh, this, I saw this thing online." No reference to who it was. But if it sticks. The time of recording, demure is going around all over the internet. There's this person, Jules, I can't remember their last name, but Jules is fantastic and keeps saying about demure, and has gone really in on that and has branded this idea of just being low-key. Not being basic, being classy or whatever, but not being extra, as it were. They've put a stamp on that in a way that means that they're constantly in the algorithm for that topic without necessarily being branded. Other people are picking it up, but they are essentially the epicenter of that content. I think that people have to about the content ecosystem, the conversation of their content ecosystem. For instance, if you were to think about the Yankees or something. Mordy Oberstein: I am thinking about the Yankees. Crystal Carter: You're literally wearing a Yankee shirt right now. I know you're thinking about the Yankees. What were you thinking about? He's thinking about content, the Yankees, trolling Barry. These are the things. Mordy Oberstein: If I could somehow unite all three of those as the one activity, that'd be like heaven. Crystal Carter: Just sat at Yankee Stadium writing a blog- Mordy Oberstein: Trolling Barry with content. Crystal Carter: ... about trolling Barry. I think that it's a question of being part of the conversation and staying part of the conversation across multiple channels, including your website, of course. I think that the great thing about a website is it's yours and you can curate the content, you can concentrate your content, and people can connect with it and pull all of it together. Because there's strands everywhere. I think that you were talking about that journey of you're on the app, you're over here, you're over there. Sometimes that's exhausting. Sometimes that's exhausting and you just want- Mordy Oberstein: One place. Yeah, totally. Crystal Carter: ... one place. You want one place. And that's something we tried to do with the Wix SEO Hub, without tooting our own horn too much. But it's one of the reasons why we put that together, we have podcasts, we have webinars, we have articles, we have resources that you can download, we have decks that you can look at. We have all of these different things all in one place so that however you like to learn, you can get that information in one place. When I find places like that, when I find places online like that, I've always so relieved. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. Absolutely. Crystal Carter: I think it's really important for people to think about being that kind of resource for their clients, for their content when they're thinking about how to bridge that gap between the SEO and the everything. Mordy Oberstein: I'll say two things on this. One is Sourdough would be a great name for a rapper. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Mordy Oberstein: That'd be amazing. That might be the most brilliant thing I've ever said in this podcast. Crystal Carter: Dude, I think that's your new rapping name. Mordy Oberstein: The second thing is the point you're making, by the way, I think Rand Fishkin ran data on this. I'll try to find the post on LinkedIn somewhere. LinkedIn is horrible at finding this stuff post facto, and link it in the show notes, if I can. No promises. But he was talking about, and this again, goes to that bias that SEOs have. Google is the strongest channel for search traffic. Don't focus on social. You're not getting traffic from there. But what you're not realizing is that they see the thing you wrote on social and now they're Googling it. It started with social, it started where your community is, and it moved over to Google, but there's just a lack of attributions and you can't track it. You don't know how that happened. I think that speaks to the thing you're talking about, there's another huge bias in SEO, speaking of bias from SEOs, there's also bias within users and the SERP itself can contribute to this. So we asked the founder of Neuroscientive, Giulia Panozzo, how the SERP itself contributes to user bias. Here's Giulia. Giulia Panozzo: Bias impacts our judgment and decision-making and it is unavoidable because as individuals, we come with previous experiences and beliefs that skew the way we process information and make decisions. After all, if we all have the same beliefs, experiences, and even the same brain wiring, then we would all perceive everything in the same way and make the exact same choices probably. However, bias can be experienced even before we consciously process the information that we're faced with, and it comes into play potentially in every area of our life, including when we search. Because when we do that, we are driven by a need. We're onto a quest that normally sees us with limited time and limited attention. That is not to say that we don't allocate the proper time to searches or the proper attention, but realistically, with the amount of searches that we do every day and the amount of results that we get, we cannot possibly analyze every single result in order to choose the very best one, so we tend to navigate the search tasks with our existing biases, whether we are or aren't aware of it. The SERP contributes to user bias because it tends to reinforce it, and it does so by pushing elements that are known to capture the attention and to aid decision-making when there is a sea of options. There are a number of biases that are known and exploited. I talked about a number of them throughout my career, and it is still not exhaustive. While the aim of search engine is probably to help users find the results weekly, it can actually backfire because it might not consistently provide the best result for the user or even be ethical sometimes. The most obvious example is when we see negative headlines being awarded primary spots in the SERP. We know for sure that users sent to click on something that's shocking or negative because it's just in our nature to have this over-attention to the negative. There was a study by SEO Clarity a couple of years ago, showing how negative headlines produce significantly more clicks than their positive or neutral counterparts, which really drives the point home. If user signals are what drives the algorithm, which is always a reason for debate, but it is a valid claim if the final aim is to help the user, then it's a circle that feeds itself because the more we interact with those results, the more we are being served with them. Another thing that contributes to bias is the over-personalization of results. We are now accustomed to having everything at our fingertips, and Google has been trying to simplify our experience, but in the end, the fact that we get everything catered to what we previously searched for or even showed interest in other platforms, amplifies these eco-chamber and makes us lazy, preventing us from using our critical thinking to evaluate other options, which eventually contributes to confirmation bias, which in itself is a huge problem because it's when people just tend to favor information that confirms their existing beliefs. Another element that we see awarded on the SERP is authority. You can say anything about the domain authority not impacting rankings, but there was a Verge article that they ran as a test, and it was basically everything that the guidelines tell you not to do. They were using keyword stuffing, they were making up their experts, and they were even acknowledging that they were trolling Google. And it is currently sitting in third position for best Printer 2024 after CNET and the New York Times in the UK, so this tells us something. So yes, I mentioned that Google is awarding these bias-inducing factors, if you will, and you can see some connections between their messy middle report and the guidelines for enhanced results. The messy middle report for those who are not familiar with it, was this massive behavioral economic study which isolated six of the most common cognitive biases driving purchase behavior in users. These were category heuristics, authority bias, scarcity bias, power of now, power of free, and social proof. Some of them align very well with the guidelines to get rich snippets or based on the carousel for example. Adding schema for offers, for reviews, deliver information, which as I understand are now being made mandatory on shopping listings, and this in turn translates to more real estate, more visual space on the SERP, again awarded. This brings me to the final aspect, which is the fact that everyone's trying to stay in the game doing exactly the same thing. We're all scrambling for more space on the SERP, being visible on the carousel, using scarcity messaging to get CTRs, adding reviews, and it's becoming overwhelming to discriminate for users. Too much of anything at the end of the day makes you long for something else. When everything seems to be equal, what do we rely on? Likely the first satisfactory result. A combination of what is relevant to our query and what we recognize first because we are familiar with a brand or because they are authoritative in their space. Because this discerning as a user is a hefty task on top of the initial task, which is the search itself, and having the same results over and over produces fatigue so we just want to be over with it as users. Surely all of the choices we have are available if we search hard enough, but the SERP, in an attempt of making search more efficient, is actually impacting the visibility of diversified options so that's how it contributes to bias. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Giulia. Make sure to give Giulia a follow over on LinkedIn, I'll link to her profile in the show notes. That's like the ultimate bias. You think, "Okay, it's a top result, top five results, those must be the best pieces of content out there." If it's on page two, it must not be good. When in reality, that's not necessarily true. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Sometimes it's worth remembering that there is a lot going on the SERP, so what is on page two might just be that it's got a more nuanced writing style or something, it might be that it doesn't show for some of the SERP features because these days, depending on which SERP you're looking at, there's shopping, there's ads, there's local pack, there's PAA, there's discussions and forums, there's related searches. There's tons and tons of different SERP features that are showing up there and it might be that maybe a piece of content that is relevant to you isn't necessarily eligible for that SERP feature. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's not relevant for you, but it might mean that because of all those SERP features, that because it's such a busy SERP, it's pushed down a little bit. I think that we're starting to see more people, I don't know, searching again or following some of the refinements and things like that, which do guide bias. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the refinements for sure. There's no way around it. Again, you might think, okay, this filter is filled to the top of the SERP or wherever the refinement filter is, like, oh, that's what I need. It's not. Because again, I think the important, if you're a person listening to this podcast, you're not an SEO. Anytime you're trying to target a product at a particular, I'll call it user base or demographic, it's a law of averages. They're trying to get the best for the most amount of people, but you might just fall out of that demographic and nothing to do about it. Crystal Carter: Right. I think also sometimes it's a question of in terms of guiding bias, predictive text, for instance, the predictive search. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. Crystal Carter: Totally does. And also- Mordy Oberstein: When you see it pops up, by the way, is like a controversy all the time and politics and this thing and that thing. Everyone gets all upset. The auto complete is probably the most controversial thing on the internet from Google point of view, outside of the whole monopoly thing. Crystal Carter: And we'll totally include things like... I just started typing in is nail polish, and then the things I got is nail polish remover acetone, is nail polish flammable? I'd never even thought about that, whether nail polish was flammable or not. I'm guessing it is because it's very fumey. Is nail polish bad for your nails? That's another one that comes up. But sometimes I've seen the predictive text put people on blast things where I was like, "I didn't even know something happened." You type in some celebrity's name and they're controversy with so-and-so and you're like, "Oh my God, I didn't even realize that was that." And so it guides bias and I think that people have sometimes taken umbrage with this. I think Google's had a few controversies about that. But yeah, I think it's definitely something to consider how people are doing things. It's worth, if you're marketing to people, to understand the kinds of bias that your users are going to be coming up against as they go on their search journey. Mordy Oberstein: Let's keep diving into this whole idea of the biases a priori notions that your user base are coming with. Because it goes beyond SEO. Just look at how consumers feel about generic versus name brand medications. Second is Tylenol. It's got to be a million times better than the CVS brand. There's so much bias, so much bias out there. Let's talk about or discuss how to deal with those biases as we go the great beyond. Why would you spend another 20 bucks on Tylenol? Making that number up. I don't know what the actual number is. It's the same thing. Crystal Carter: Right. Sometimes I find myself buying the branded thing when I don't recognize or don't know the other folks, or don't trust them in some way. For instance, if there's a supermarket, and let's say I'm at Walmart, and Walmart has the Walmart own Tylenol or whatever, and I can't remember what the actual chemical in the Tylenol is, if it's- Mordy Oberstein: SSC, emotive. Something SSC.. Crystal Carter: I can't remember what it is. Let's say it's like it's aspirin. Mordy Oberstein: I'm an engineer, not a doctor. Crystal Carter: Let's say it's aspirin. Aspirin is the actual chemical, isn't it? Or whatever it is. Let's say- Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to Google it. Crystal Carter: Okay. Let's say Walmart has their own brand off-brand aspirin or whatever, and then there's the branded like Bayer Aspirin or something. If I know Walmart, then I'm like, "Yeah, okay, I'll get the the Walmart aspirin," because I'm like, "Well, I know them. I've had some of their other stuff before, it's probably fine," et cetera, et cetera. If I look at- Mordy Oberstein: Aminofen. Crystal Carter: It's science. You see? SERP's Up isn't just SEO, it's also science. Mordy Oberstein: Science and engineering. Crystal Carter: And engineering. So much today. Mordy Oberstein: It's just science. Crystal Carter: I think that there's a level of trust that you have that you have with that. Similarly online, there's all these discount things that are popping up everywhere. There's tons of discount products that are popping up everywhere. And there're unbranded. There're unbranded sponges or a brush or a laptop case or a lamp for your phone or that sort of stuff. TikTok Shop is full of these things and they have no brand. They're just like cheap thing. Temu is full of this stuff. Wish had all of this stuff. Amazon thrives in a lot of unbranded things. But the thing that Amazon does, and this is the same with that Walmart one, is that it's wrapped in Amazon. And to a certain extent, I trust that if I buy something on Amazon that yes, it will arrive, and if there's a problem, they will deal with it, to a certain extent. Whereas in other places, you have some of those elements where it's just the Wild West. If you're on someone's website and they haven't spent the time to establish trust, we haven't spent the time to demonstrate that they have good customer service, they haven't spent the time to demonstrate that they have good client reviews, they haven't spent the time to demonstrate good case studies, they haven't spent the time to show you that they care about this product, that they have taken photos of this product, that they're illustrating the product and how it all works and things like that, and you don't know them, then you're less likely to buy from them in that space. I think that this is how you get around some of those biases is you just have to confront them head-on. Because if you're a small business, then people are going to come with a certain amount of bias to your business and that, I don't know, you stranger danger, kind of bias. And you have to confront those things. You have to answer all their questions, you have to illustrate that you know what you're doing, you have to show, I've got this certificate, I've done this, I've done that. Here's the photos of the people that have enjoyed the work that I've done, that sort of thing. I feel like that's really important. I think that it might seem daunting, but you don't have to do it all at once, you can build up as you go. I think that with those kinds of things, it's worth taking the time to start with warm leads. I know somebody who's starting a business as a barber and he's just training as a barber and he's doing great and he's doing absolutely fantastically, and he's trying to build up his client base. I'm like, "Okay, well you need to get lots of people in the chair and you need to get lots of photos of the stuff that you've done so people can see that you're good at doing barbering, and that's something that you can build up." So he's getting his friends to sit in the chair, he's getting his friends to do that sort of stuff, so he can build that up. And as you go on, more people will see, oh, this is good, this is fine. All of that sort of stuff. That really helps. If you're a bigger business and you have big budgets, deep pockets or whatever, then you can scale this more quickly. You can do a free trial, you can be freemium. That's one of the reasons why people do freemium so they can get good reviews so they can get a lot of people replying. Similarly, when people launch a book on Amazon or something, they will launch their book and they'll make it free in Kindle for a few weeks or a few months and stuff, so that they can get a bunch of reviews. I think that you can balance bias by building trust with a reciprocal offer in some ways. Mordy Oberstein: Well, there's basically two ways to deal with it. One is basically you're saying to confront the bias or to deal with the bias in some way, shape, or form. That can mean basically whatever barrier the bias is creating, you need to get rid of that barrier. There's multiple ways you can do that. You know what's a great example? Starbucks would be a good example of this, they'll never do it, but Coors is a great example of this. I don't know. I'm trying to remember. 20 years ago, craft beers started becoming a really big thing. A really, really big thing. As it grew, the big companies, the Budweiser of the world started to really take note of the fact that there's a threat in the industry, in the market, because of the craft breweries. What they did was, by the way, they tried to hijack the distribution methods of those craft breweries because the big brands, I forget how it all works out, they own the distribution of beer in America. Crazy thing. But what Coors did, probably among other things, was they created their own craft brewery. They have, what's it called? Blue Moon. Blue Moon is Coors. It's their craft offering and they hide the fact that it's really Coors. Or it's like, yeah, it's hidden enough. The hardcore beer drinkers like myself, I know that's Coors, I'm not going for Blue Moon. Blue Moon's fine. Didn't go for it, but it did capitalize. Oh, Blue Moon, Craft Brewery. I know craft Breweries are coming a big thing, I'm going to buy that and not buy the Coors. They steered into the skid. That's how they dealt with the consumer bias. I think, by the way, Starbucks would do well to deal with this because Starbucks is getting a reputation of being too corporate among other issues that Starbucks has, like just being too expensive and their coffee not being good. Their ground coffee is good in the bags. I like that. I don't like their in-store coffee. But one of the biases that they're dealing with is the fact that, hey, wait a second, you come off as corporate. If I have two cafes in front of me, one is Starbucks and one's Pacino's Local Cafe, I'm just going to walk into Pacino's because it's local. Because in that case, local does seem like higher quality and the big brand doesn't seem like higher quality. I think Starbucks should pivot and they should create a sub-brand that's divorced from the actual brand of local-ish kind of coffee houses. Like what Coors did with Blue Moon. The other way, I think, to deal with it is just completely cut it off. I saw a thing, I think on CNBC, but basically, you know the front end of a pharmacy, they have the snacks and the, I don't know, all the other stuff that they sell? It doesn't do well. Just cut it. If it's a part of your product offering where consumer buys basically, I'm not here for that, that's not going to be good here. I'm going to get it cheaper somewhere else. It may not be true, but I think what CNBC said was basically people feel like whatever the front end of the pharmacy is offering, I will get cheaper somewhere else, which may or may not be true, I don't know. But if that's a bias and it's not your main business offering, or you'll spend more money trying to deal with the bias, then just cut it and pivot. Crystal Carter: I think that that's definitely something worth thinking about and I think that you need to spend time looking at what it is. It can be painful. It can be painful to- Mordy Oberstein: That's the biggest thing, diagnosing it. Crystal Carter: ... digging into what people are biased about for your business, for your product, for what you do. I think that it's really, really important to do that because if you're going to do big cuts, that's a big deal. If you're going to cut something, that's a big deal. You need to dig into why are people biased about this? Why is this a challenge for us? If you're going to pivot or you're going to create a sub-brand, if you're going to do whatever, you have to think very deeply because that's quite an investment about how you're going to do that and why it is. I think when you're trying to figure out whether or not you need to do this. Because people do this with websites all the time. People are like, "We to we have a new brand, do we need to do a new website for this new sub-brand or do we need to keep it on the same domain?" When you're trying to decide between those things, you have to think about, well, how is it being on this domain going to affect how people think about this new brand? How is it being on a separate domain going to affect how people think about the brand? Will it help us with the positioning? All of that sort of stuff. I think that you have to dig deep and make some tough decisions on that, and I think that while you're looking at that, you really have to look at the data very, very objectively. Very objectively, to get something that's something of value. Mordy Oberstein: But you also have to understand where users are flowing. If the users are flowing a certain direction, the biggest thing you should not do is fight it. Meaning the users flowing in a certain direction, their bias is flowing in that direction. If they're thinking, "Okay, small business is not going to be quality here," do things that show your quality. Have the reviews up, have the whatever up. Don't do things that are like, no small business is good here. Don't fight that bias. You'll never, ever win doing something like that. If it does mean pivoting, if it does mean rebranding, if it does mean cutting your loss on something, or by the way, if it means, "Well, we won't get a lot out of it, we'll get something decent out of it," that's fine too, by the way. I personally think, for me, I'm only speaking for myself, like generic brand cereal. I'm always like, "Nah, it's never going to taste good. It's never going to be the right thing." But I'm picky about my cereal. Many people probably are not, because you see the generic brands all the time, they're way cheaper. You won't get me, but that's fine because you might get a ton of other people. You really have to slice and dice it. Crystal Carter: Also sometimes it's a question of being bold in who you are, being bold in your brand positioning, being bold in your statement. You mentioned Coors, and when you mentioned Coors, for instance, the first thing that I thought of was that van Damme campaign. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know that. Claude? Jean-Claude? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Let me just make sure that it's... There was a thing that Coors wasn't cool. Mordy Oberstein: It was not cool, but yeah. Crystal Carter: And the Jean-Claude van Damme one was basically, he was super uncool. He was there looking really, really uncool, on a mountain. And it was so uncool it was cool, basically. It was hilarious. Mordy Oberstein: I like that. That's cool. Crystal Carter: And so he really just confronted it head on, and there's a few businesses that I've seen do that, and they're just like, "Yep, that's what we do." Mordy Oberstein: That's where they lean into it. Whatever it means to lean into it, lean into it. That's the only way you're going to deal with it. What's cool, by the way,? Barry's cool. Super cool, coolest guy I ever met. Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry Schwartz, the guy. Mordy Oberstein: So cool he could sport a goatee and it's 2024. That is so uncool it's cool. Crystal Carter: It's very cool. Mordy Oberstein: Very cool. Like a 1990s baseball player, here's Barry Schwartz and this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Two articles for you both from Barry Schwartz. What's new? First from seoroundtable.com. Study, 96% of Google AI overviews links go to informational intent pages. It is what Barry's saying, heard data from Mark Traphagan over at SEO Clarity. The links inside of the AI overviews predominantly go to informational pages. I'm sick about talking about AI overviews, so I'm just going to say, if you want to see more, click on the link on the show notes, I'm moving on. Anyway. Is that wrong? Whatever. Onto the core update, the August 2024 core update, Barry covers some data from the data providers, which I sent him. I'm covering Barry covering me. That sounds incredibly narcissistic. The title, Data Providers, Google August 2024 core update was very volatile. Barry, you have a way with words. Yes, it was very volatile. All core updates are very volatile. All right. No, but all in all seriousness, similar web in Semrush sent over a bunch of data to Barry. I do the data roundup for Semrush. I pull the data, while I ask for a data pull, they sent it over and analyze it, and then I send it to Barry, and then Barry puts into an article and everybody's happy. I'll pull the curtain back. This is one of the harder updates to pin down because, here's how the tools do this. What they do is they take a data period before the core update as the baseline. You have to do the same thing each time because what we do is we compare one core update to the next core update because it's all relative so you have to have something to compare it to. But if you're going to compare them, then you have to do the same thing each time. But the problem here was, if you recall, I think we covered it here, there was an incredible amount of rank volatility for an extended period of time before the core update rolled out, which meant the baseline period that using the data was incredibly volatile. If you look at, for example, the rank volatility change comparison chart that I sent to Barry in the article, you can see that compared to the March 2024 core update, the August 2024 core update was super tiny. In fact, for many verticals, food and drink, game health, jobs and education, the amount of volatility was significantly less. In fact, I'll pull the curtain back a little bit more, some of the verticals were more volatile before the update than during the update, which is I don't think I've ever seen that. Getting this data right was very, very, very difficult. I actually did ask Semrush to pull a data pull from way, way, way before, it's not exactly one-to-one to compare to the March 2024 because, as I mentioned, you have to do the same thing each time and do the same exact methodology each time to have some kind of accurate picture. In this inherently I'm asking to do something different. There you could see, okay, there was more of the normal increase in volatility change that you would normally see with the core update, yada, yada, yada, yada. But what we can see is the drasticness of the rank volatility. Here, for example, looking at the top 10 results, one of the things we look at is the percentage of URLs that previously before the update ranked position 20, and now after the update ranked top 10. Back in March, during the March 2024 core update, 9.38% of URLs ranking top 10 after the update came from beyond position 20 before the update, which shows you, oh, wow, that's a pretty drastic swing. You were ranking 20, 25, 30, 40, whatever it was, beforehand, now you're ranking top 10? Basically the same number for the August 2024 core update, 9.51%. You could read the rest of the article for the rest of the data. The reason why the way that's significant is that the March 2024 core update was a reassessment of the algorithm helpfulness and the helpful content, blah, blah, blah. Seeing the August update running similar numbers should tell you that was a really big update. I'm going to try to keep this short because it's a snappy news and I've already gone too long. That's this week's Snappy News. Barry, we love you and your goatee. I'm just messing. Crystal Carter: We'll see you today. It's new. Mordy Oberstein: Right. By the way, and on this show, we've talked about the Yankees, we've created content, and we've trolled Barry, so I've checked off all my things. Crystal Carter: There we go. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. Crystal Carter: Perfect day. Mordy Oberstein: Perfect day. Well almost perfect. We have one more thing we'll make it perfect. We've given you a great follow of the week, and we're talking about biases and search and search psychology. That's a new area of search we need to coin. Search psychology. The person you need to follow is Garrett Sussman from I Pull Rank. He spoke about a lot of this stuff over at MozCon. He's @Garrett, G-A-R-R-E-T-T, S-U-S-S-M-A-N, Sussman over on X and on LinkedIn under the same name. But Garrett talks a ton about this. He reads a ton of psychology books and he pulls that into search. So it's Search Psychology by Garrett Sussman. Crystal Carter: I saw this presentation. It was fantastic. The deck is available on the Moz website, and you can check it out and I think you can buy the thing to watch it as well. But it's absolutely spot on. He talks about the psychology of search and he talks about biases and he gets all into it. Garrett is a great follow, not just for that, but also- Mordy Oberstein: And a great person. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's a great person and he really stays on top of the SEO news on behalf of the team at I Pull Rank. Shout out to Mike King and everybody else at I Pull Rank as well. They've got a great squad over there and they put out some fantastic content most recently, or most notably about the Google leaks. If you haven't read that, if you haven't checked out that, you should check that out. They've got some really good insights about AI overviews as well, which Mike has shared at some events that we've hosted at the Wix Playground in New York as well. Shout out to Garrett and the team at I Pull Rank and Garrett's a great follow. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely great follow. Always sharing information. He's an active social media person. He's got a great insights, but Garrett shares on social, is what you want. It's not what you want. Cleveland. I can't stop, I'm sorry. Crystal Carter: Oh, come. Mordy Oberstein: I only did it to go full circle. Sorry, Cleveland. We love you Cleveland. We love you. Crystal Carter: You biased, man. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, there's my bias again. Crystal Carter: You're biased. Mordy Oberstein: I can't get out of it. Cleveland just leaned into it. They have, by the way, they have something cool commercial, they've leaned into it. Crystal Carter: There was one I saw, it was somewhere in Sweden I think, or something. It was for Cannes. They won an award at Cannes, and it was basically like, "Why would you come to this place? You can walk from one side to the other in five minutes, and everybody knows each other, and the food, it's just like normal food." Basically they just went the other way. They weren't talking about how exciting they were. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they've got some really cool stuff. Much like I'm crappy on Cleveland, they're a good example of leaning into it and actually using it to improve their reputation. Crystal Carter: Yeah, there you go. Mordy Oberstein: We love you, Cleveland. You've convinced me. On that happy note, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into the gray area of the algorithm, Signs Google Might Or Might Not Love You. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or your rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

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

Keywords sure aren’t what they used to be. Google is challenging SEOs to understand the user first. Here’s where to start. Crystal Carter kicks off this episode with an explanation of keywords in search and how Google has evolved its understanding of user intent (as opposed to the literal use of the word). Along with Mordy Oberstein, they break it down like this: Understanding what’s already on the SERP (like, the actual SERP) gives you the full picture of how Google understands user intent. Analyzing the current real estate shows how users are being affected along their search pursuit. SEO legend Cindy Krum of Mobile Moxie, also jumps in and provides a solid overview of how leveraging topic-cluster knowledge guides an understanding of user intent. Entities matter a lot, and they continue to make keywords less relevant. Oh, and one more thing. We need to talk about the WixVerse and Featured Snippets. Mordy and Crystal catch up with Idan Segal, Head of Organic Growth & Brand Development at Wix, as we go Inside the WixVerse. Let’s dive in Back The real deal with keyword research Keywords sure aren’t what they used to be. Google is challenging SEOs to understand the user first. Here’s where to start. Crystal Carter kicks off this episode with an explanation of keywords in search and how Google has evolved its understanding of user intent (as opposed to the literal use of the word). Along with Mordy Oberstein, they break it down like this: Understanding what’s already on the SERP (like, the actual SERP) gives you the full picture of how Google understands user intent. Analyzing the current real estate shows how users are being affected along their search pursuit. SEO legend Cindy Krum of Mobile Moxie, also jumps in and provides a solid overview of how leveraging topic-cluster knowledge guides an understanding of user intent. Entities matter a lot, and they continue to make keywords less relevant. Oh, and one more thing. We need to talk about the WixVerse and Featured Snippets. Mordy and Crystal catch up with Idan Segal, Head of Organic Growth & Brand Development at Wix, as we go Inside the WixVerse. Let’s dive in Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 04 | September 14, 2022 | 48 MIN 00:00 / 47:59 This week’s guests Cindy Krum Cindy Krum is the Founder & CEO of MobileMoxie (previously Rank-Mobile). She has been bringing fresh and creative ideas about SEO & ASO to consulting clients and digital marketing stages around the world since 2005. She regularly speaks at national and international trade events, and launched MobileMoxie in 2008 to address mobile-specific marketing needs within the traditional digital marketing specialty. Cindy’s leadership helped MobileMoxie launch the first mobile-focused SEO toolset, to help SEO's see what actual mobile search results & pages look like from anywhere and to provide insights about the impact of Mobile-First Indexing on search results; Now, free versions of these great tools are also available to all digital marketers as two easy to use Chrome Extensions. Idan Segal Idan Segal is the Head of Organic Growth at Wix.com. Idan leads SEO, Blogs, CRO, international, Social Media & Brand teams in the marketing department. Obsessed with everything related to content marketing and growth hacking Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the fabulous head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, everybody. I hope everybody's feeling gnarly and radical and tubular today. Mordy Oberstein: I'm feeling gnarly, but not radical. Crystal Carter: Not radical, not feeling radical, just feeling normal. Not- Mordy Oberstein: No, but gnarly. Crystal Carter: Gnarly. I don't know. Yeah. I just say- Mordy Oberstein: When I say it I mean nauseous like, oh, that's gnarly. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: How do you mean gnarly? Crystal Carter: I just watched Bill and Ted's and I'm just saying the things that I saw on Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so I grew up on that, right? When I said gnarly as an individual, like, awe, that's gnarly. That's messed up. Crystal Carter: Like bad? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, bad. Ah it's gnarly. Ugh. Crystal Carter: Have I used the keyword with the wrong intent there? Did I- Mordy Oberstein: No. No. I think I am. Crystal Carter: ...not do enough keyword research on my term. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Oh, SEO joke. Good SEO joke. You know what's no joke? The fact that this podcast is brought to you by Wix where 301 redirects are automatic for your main pages products and booking pages. Hello. Crystal Carter: Hello, automated automatic automations. That's right. You can also do bulk 301. Redirects take them all in bulk and poof. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I'm dancing as if the people can see me. It's a podcast. Mordy Oberstein: No, we are dancing like robots. Anyway, we're not talking about 301 redirects in this particular podcast in this podcast, [00:01:46] What's On This Episode of SERP's Up? we're talking about the real deal with keyword research. That's right. Keywords ain't what they used to be, which means your process for doing keyword research has or should have changed. We'll cover what you should be doing with keyword research, where you should be starting the process. Spoiler alert. It's not where many people say you should start keyword research, which is SEO tools. And we'll talk about where the tools do and don't come in the keyword research process and special tip from the great legend of SEO, Cindy Krum on Google keywords advancements. Also, we're talking with Wix's head of organic growth at Idan Segal, all about how he uses keyword research to capture featured snippets in his net of awesomeness. Crystal Carter: Amazing, amazing. Idan is such a Jedi when it comes to all of this stuff, it's absolutely incredible. I've studied his featured snippets. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why we're going to talk to him later, which is why you said we should invite him about this topic. Also, we're going to get a little bit philosophical here. We're talking entities and SEO, and we're going to be covering the latest and greatest in the SEO news. And of course, as we do each and every week, who you should be following out there in the SEO industry [00:02:57] Focus Topic of the Week: The Real Deal on Keyword Research so you could get some more SEO a wesomeness. But let's kick it off with the real deal on keyword research. Crystal Carter: Cool. I'm just going to do a little explainer real quick just to make sure everybody's on the same page. So when we talk about keywords, we are essentially talking about phrases that people enter into search to find the information that they need. For years Google has understood these terms, the keywords as literal, the literal words that people type in. And so just to be clear, a keyword can be one word or it can be lots of words. So we talk about a keyword as a singular thing, but it's actually the whole phrase that people enter in. It used to be that Google would understand this quite literally. So if you were writing something about coriander and you were writing something else about cilantro, then it used to be that those pages would rank differently and that you would need to spell it out really, really clearly. But a lot of SEO has been built around this sort of literal phrasing of those particular words, but Google's getting much better at understanding that cilantro and coriander are essentially the same plant. When we talk about that, that's where we start to get into the area of entities. And Google's starting to understand that they don't necessarily need to rank one page for cilantro and one page for coriander. They can rank the best content around that plant for users. So that comes into how we think about keyword research that comes into how users are experiencing the web, that comes into thinking about the common names that are seen across lots of different media. And the change from being more literal terms to being more entity-based keywords, will affect how you approach your keyword research as you go forward with your SEO activity. Mordy Oberstein: I never knew that cilantro and coriander were the same thing until right now. Crystal Carter: They're the same entity. So I'm from California and I eat a lot of Mexican food. And basically I had to start making my own when I moved to England and in England, it's called coriander and in California, it's called cilantro. So I learned that very quickly. And similarly, there's a Latin name for that plant as well, which is different again. And I'm sure they call it something else in other places. So Google knows that if I want to make guacamole and I'm in London, they will serve me whatever content is best. Even if I put in coriander for guacamole, they'll give me a good guacamole recipe, which has cilantro in it. Mordy Oberstein: I never liked cilantro until maybe relatively recently, last few years. I always hated it for some reason. It tastes like soap to me, anyway. Crystal Carter: Sir, you're incorrect. Mordy Oberstein: I said I like it now. Crystal Carter: It's good. Mordy Oberstein: I said I like it now. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Sheesh. Tough crowd. Crystal Carter: Don't come at me about guacamole Mordy Mordy Oberstein: I'm not. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I think I'm not. Crystal Carter: I take it very seriously. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry I offended you. Are we still friends? Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: That escalated so quickly. So let's start this off with where you should start with keyword research. And I always start, I've said it already on this podcast at this point, I probably said 10 times already, I always start with understanding two people. Me and you. Who am I? What do I do with my website? What's my website all about what am I trying to accomplish with my website? What's my site's identity? What am I all about as a company, a product, as a website, and what are the people who I'm trying to target? What are they all about? What are their pain points? What's their life circumstance. What's their life context? Where are they coming from? I'm trying to empathize with them. So know thyself and then know thy other, which I don't think is a real phrase, but it is now. Know thy other. And that's where I start with keyword research, which is not where many SEOs usually do. Crystal Carter: I absolutely agree that it's important to think like a user. So think about how your users are discovering your service or your products, and think about how users are talking about it. It may very well be the case that you refer to your particular product in one way, but if users are referring it to it in another way, then you need to think about that. And you need to understand that and you need to make sure that you're articulating that clearly. And that you're including those things. There are lots of tools that can help you do this. But I mentioned this before, when you're thinking about keywords, it's also important to actually talk to people who are speaking regularly to users. So if you're talking to your sales team, if you're talking to people who are front of house, if you are reading reviews, then that will give you some information about how people are interacting with your product and the kind of keywords that you should be including in your content and the kind of entities even that you should be including in your content. Mordy Oberstein: And it doesn't tell you just that. It tells you what kind of content they're looking for also. The problem with a keyword research tool, I know we all use them and I know if you're getting into SEO, you've probably heard all about them. And I know when you Google how to do keyword research, you're going to see a whole bunch of stuff about tools, which is why we're literally doing this podcast to be honest with you. Yeah. The keyword research tool can tell you, this is the keyword, but what kind of content do you create around it? Do you create a video around it? Do you create a really long post? Do you create something really salesy? Do you create something informational, but when you think about your audience or when you see what people are saying about what they want, or what they like, what they don't like. It helps you to understand what kind of content they want. Even if it's informational. Obviously you're talking about the best toaster oven. What kind of content do users want around that? Do they want something comparing multiple toaster ovens? They want a blog post just about this one toaster oven. It's all about the intent. Crystal Carter: The intent will change dramatically depending on what the term is. And also depending on what the person's trying to do with it. So I think that if you were thinking about uses for coconut oil, there's a lot of- Mordy Oberstein: Everything. On everything. Crystal Carter: On everything. Mordy Oberstein: To me it's just everything. Crystal Carter: So there's lots of different ways that you can use coconut oil. But if the intent is cooking, then that's one thing. If the intent is, I don't know, skincare, that's another thing. If the intent is wellness or something, that's another thing, but there's lots of different uses. So you can't just go literally coconut oil. Coconut oil is good. You should use coconut oil. You have to think about the intent behind that. And you have to think about how users are using it. And it might be that there's ways that users are using it, that you've never even considered, that you've never even considered. Mordy Oberstein: A hundred percent. Crystal Carter: I think YouTube is a really good example of this. On YouTube I watch a lot of hair tutorials and people are combining different products and people are saying, "Oh, I use this like this, I use that like this." That's great information for keyword research. That is a great place to do keyword research. If there's a really popular YouTube video, that's talking about your product, or talking about product in your wheelhouse, then that's a really good source for that sort of stuff, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: And then to take your coconut oil example, because my wife loves coconut oil. You have to segment those intents out. I always think of it by the way, primarily for skincare, cause my wife really likes it for skincare. And if you want to write a top 10 ways to use coconut oil and you're writing a mix of, use it for your skincare and you use it on your salad, you might be catering to nobody and everybody at the same time. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And you might need to write just 10 ways to use coconut oil for skincare. Probably don't do the whole 10 ways thing by the way. Crystal Carter: But that's the thing, I think also it has to do with your website. So if you are a spa or something or you're a dermatologist or you're a skincare professional and you write 10 ways to use coconut oil, then you should keep it to the skincare area, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: If you are a recipe blog and you're saying 10 ways to use coconut oil, then you should keep it to food. Mordy Oberstein: The key [inaudible 00:10:04] are not going to tell you that, that goes back to what we talked about before. Your identity as a site. You have a context of where you're working out of it's not coming out of nowhere. And again, the keyword research tool, you'll come down on them is not the best place for that. You what the great place for that is? The SERP. Crystal Carter: The SERP. The SERP. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP. Crystal Carter: Exactly. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Go to the actual SERP. Crystal Carter: And look up your keywords because this comes back to the user journey. You need to think about how users are actually experiencing finding your content. And it's very, very, very vague, very important that you do this on both desktop and mobile. And also particularly if you're an international branch, you have a look at some of the different mobile experiences. So I do not live in the United States, even though I am an American, the SERP in America is very different from the SERP where I live. And so if you have a lot of clients or users who are based there, that it's important to look at what the SERP looks like there and what the competition is there compared to what the conversation is, where you are. And then again, on different devices. So mobile versus desktop will again be very, very different. So if you're not on top of that, then you won't be able to understand the keywords. And Google's recommending keywords as well. So on the coconut oil, they'll say, do you mean coconut oil for skin or they'll suggest coconut oil health. Mordy Oberstein: People also search for coconut oil for your hair. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly. People also ask related searches- Mordy Oberstein: Can I use coconut oil on my hair? Does coconut oil help you retain your hair? Does it? I would like to know the answer to that one. But no, the SERP is really, really important for so many different reasons. One is you can reverse engineer it from multiple perspectives. If you see Google's showing videos and images, you can tell... Yes, and again, a keyword research tool might not be able to tell you this. They might be able in some kind of way, but you need to know, yeah, I can create a post about this, but I really need to have some kind of media in there because that's part of the intent package. You see this by the way, with recipes all the time, there's always going to be an image of the food. That's not by accident. Google wants that there. There's also something really important for understanding your keyword research and what you should or shouldn't be targeting. And that's, there are a limited number of slots on page one. And there's a limited number of slots for certain types of content. Take, for example, the go-to example, they always use it buy car insurance. So 10 years ago, every single ranking website was a place where you can buy car insurance. Now it's split up between places I can go, Geico, Allstate State Farm, to buy car insurance and places to learn about buying car insurance. What's the best policy? What kind of policies should I not consider? Where should you go to buy car insurance? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Crystal Carter: The comparison sites where you're comparing lots at once. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, review sites a hundred percent, which will be my next point. But you need to know how many slots are available. If I'm trying to ring for a commercial oriented page, maybe there's only two slots available. Maybe I need to create an informational page. And if I'm creating an informational page, what kind of informational page should I create? Should I create a listicle? Should I create a comparison? Should I create a long form blog post? I need to see what's there. And there might be three slots for a long form blog post, and only one slot for a listicle. And that's all part of the intent package on the SERP. Crystal Carter: And it's also the case that it might be that it doesn't even need to be immediately on your website. Everything should come back to your website. Your website should always be HQ. You should always have anything that you do online should always be able to be traced back to your website and supported by stuff on your website. But for instance, if it's a how to, like how to use coconut oil in your hair, it's probably going to be a video. A video's, probably going to be what people are going to expect. And you should probably put it on YouTube. That's not on your website, but you can obviously tie that back in within the comments and the links and the various different things. And you can support that on your website as well. So make sure that you're understanding where the best venue for the information is for that particular query as well as the query itself. And to be honest, I think that tools sometimes do this well, but they cannot give you the full picture. They cannot give you the full picture that you can get from the SERP. They can give you a sort of bird's eye view of certain things like featured snippets and things like video or things like images and things. They can give you a general bird's eye view, but the SERP can be very dynamic and it can change really, really quickly. Google doesn't have to tell anybody when they want to change what they [inaudible 00:14:15] what the SERP looks like. And there's also certain features that aren't included. So if you look up a lion on Google, you get a 3D AR lion. There's a penguin one, there's a 3D AR thing of the tower of London, for instance. That's not going to show up in a third party keyword research tool, but that is going to affect how people are behaving on the search. So this is something that you have to track. Mordy Oberstein: Before we end this conversation or move on from this conversation around keyword research and whatnot. Tools do play a role. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: We're not advocating you shouldn't use a keyword research tool. I like to use a keyword research tool. Once I've understood myself and my audience. I know what's out there on the SEPR. I know exactly how Google's relating to this keyword, but there's things that I missed, like subtopics that I may have never thought of or questions I may never have thought of or getting some more context about the topic overall by seeing what kind of results the keyword resources are coming back with. I like to sort of refine my process. I don't start my process with the keyword research tool. I know many people do, I don't. But I do refine my process with the keyword research tools. Crystal Carter: I always think that with anything, and particularly in SEO, I always use a couple of tools at once. So I will look at the SERP, I'll get some ideas. I'll go through the keyword research tools and see what they say. Then I'll check the SERP that they say. I'll check that in Google as well. And then you want to back that up with a few different things and experience it as a user on different devices. So there's a couple of different tools, but I don't think you should ever rely on a single source for anything. And also you should also back it up with stuff from Google Search Console. So Google Search Console will give you information on where you're getting impressions for, but maybe not necessarily getting quick clicks for. They also have a breakdown of different parts of the search. So whether it's webpages, whether it's images, whether it's videos, whether it's product pages, that sort of thing. So it's important to just spend the time to see how the keywords are showing on the different parts of the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: And there's just so many tools in there from Search Console, which everybody should be using to Semrush, Ahrefs, they have Mangools, also [inaudible 00:16:11]. There's plenty of tools out there. Have a look at them. A lot of them offer a freemium version. [inaudible 00:16:16]. If I didn't mention your tool, I'm sorry. SEOrank. I could keep going. There's really a ton of them. Crystal Carter: Many tools are available. Mordy Oberstein: Many, many tools. Now we've been mentioning and throwing around entities a little bit and we're going to get into more of that later on in the podcast, but we thought it would make sense to bring it an absolute SEO legend for you, to talk about entities, to talk about keywords, to talk about specifically, how has Google's ability to understand entities made focusing on specific keywords less relevant? [00:16:47] Focus Topic Guest: Cindy Krum Here's the founder of MobileMoxie, the one, the only Cindy Krum. Cindy Krum: So when I think about keyword research for entities, I think about topic clusters. And so your main kind of head keyword, the main concept is in the center. And then we think about ways that that topic breaks down. So if we're thinking about a breed of a dog, let's say a labradoodle. So we have labradoodle and then we have their health, coat, where to adopt a labradoodle, temperament, things like that. And so you would do the research to see what comes up around the head term. And then you would create a cluster for each topic that is a reasonable section of questions about that head term. And you can see when Google's building out entities, they do this and they add sometimes in a mobile search result, they'll add expanders under the knowledge graph where they know, and they say, Hey, here's the main topic. And here are some subtopics. And so subtopics are different from related topics. Subtopics are within the core topic and they're just a division of what you would want to know or what someone might want to know. And I think to rank well in search, in some cases, we may have to go a little bit beyond topics that our website has a financial benefit for. So for instance, let's say that we are a site that allows you to adopt Labradoodles. When we only talk about adopting Labradoodles, Google knows that people who want to adopt a pet have more questions than just where to adopt, usually. And so they are thinking about the next step of someone saying, "Well, I think I want to adopt a labradoodle," because that's how the normal process goes. You don't go, I think I want to adopt, let's do it today. You usually go through a research process. And the more you can answer those questions and help users with their journey on the topic and not just try and sell them things it seems like, the more Google is going to count that as high quality content, the more Google is going to understand the entity. The more Google is going to understand that you understand the entity and you are going to have the requisite keywords clustered somewhat together or in a meaningful way that Google uses to determine if you are authoritative and an expert. And if you're willingly giving people information to help them, or if you're just trying to make a sale. And I think that Google does seem to want the extra steps to prove that you're not an affiliate site for instance, or maybe if you are an affiliate site, that you're a great affiliate site that you're going the extra mile to keep your customers happy. In my mind, I kind of equate it to having a clean brick and mortar store. Yes, you could sell stuff in a brick and mortar store, but just selling it might not be enough. You also have to have nice educated employees. You have to have a clean store. You have to have easy parking, things like this. And since those aren't concerns, when you're shopping on the internet or when you're searching on the internet, they're looking for other things, other symbols that this is going to be a good experience for you. Mordy Oberstein: So that was super, super interesting. And what I think people don't necessarily realize is that concepts, topics are entities. I know Cindy gave the example of a labradoodle, which my in-laws used to have a labradoodle, I really did not like that dog. But anyway, topics are entities. Concepts are entities. And within a certain topic, there are certain things that are subsumed in that topic, or also known as subtopic. So if you're talking about baseball, you're going to have teams and players and rules and playoffs and world series and blah, blah, blah, blah. This goes into how machine learning works. When you talk about a certain topic... Well, let's go back a step. When Google see a certain topic, let's say Labradoodles, or let's say, I don't know, healthcare. It understands that healthcare means X. It means subtopic, A subtopic B subtopic C. And this is connected to that thing. And that things connected to this thing. This is all what constructs the concept of healthcare. And then when you talk about healthcare on your site, if your profile doesn't match that, if, when you talk about healthcare, you're not talking about A, B and C, you're talking about completely different things in the way Google understands the entity that is healthcare, the concept that is healthcare, that's not going to bode well for you. So you can be focusing on all the keywords that you want. It's not going to matter. What you need to focus on is the fact, how does Google understand this entity? And that could be, again, anything from Labradoodles, to healthcare, to bricks, to astrophysics. If you understand and talk about that entity, the same way that Google understands it, which is hopefully how everybody kind of sees it, because let's hope we all understand astrophysics the same way, then that will help you rank as opposed to focusing on the keywords. That's what I took away from that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the difference between keywords and topics or entities is very clear to me because I've seen this in action. So for instance, goggles, if I talk about goggles, there's lots of different types of goggles and the intent will change, depending on what you're talking about. So if I were to write just keyword optimizing for the word goggles, I could say, goggles are great. You can wear goggles on your face, goggles protect your eyes, buy goggles in Brazil. Yeah. I could say that. And that would be optimized for the word goggles because I said it lots of time. Or that's what old school just- Mordy Oberstein: Goggles. Crystal Carter: Goggles, right. Mordy Oberstein: Goggles. Crystal Carter: But what kind of goggles am I actually talking about? When I say that. Beer goggles, ski goggles, safety goggles, swimming goggles. What am I talking about now? Now if I said, when you are skiing, you should wear goggles to protect your eyes from sun and wind. That's giving Google a lot more information about context, topic, and more relationships for the entity of the goggles that I'm talking about. And additionally, if I were to talk about that as a topic, I might also include things like ski gloves or hats or helmets or protective clothing for skiing or maybe even sunscreen. And that helps Google to understand that I'm talking about goggles. I'm also helping the user who's probably going skiing and is probably deciding what they need to wear to be safe. And it's telling them that all of those entities are related and they understand that all of those entities are related and that they're different from if I was talking about goggles and a swimsuit and fins and a snorkel and things like that, they understand that those are different, but you have to put them in a topic together to help them to understand that the entity is the entity that you're actually talking about. Mordy Oberstein: The entity. Speaking of the entity, we've been talking a lot about entities. But the truth is what is an entity? Crystal Carter: Who am I? Mordy Oberstein: [00:24:12] Deep Thoughts, with Crystal and Mordy You are now entering a deep thought by Crystal and Mordy around entities? Mordy Oberstein: What are entities, crystal? Crystal Carter: An entity is like... It's a person, place or thing. It's a noun people. It's a noun... Wait. It's a noun. Mordy Oberstein: Oh that settles it. We have defined [inaudible 00:24:37]. We're done. Crystal Carter: We're done entities. We're done. Done here. But yeah, it's essentially, the way I think about it's very similar to Latin names. So there's a Latin name for an Oak tree, Quercus. Quercus hispanica I think is the Latin name for London plane tree, for instance. And I might call it one thing and somebody else might call it another thing, but there's a Latin name for that tree or Latin name for that animal. Like Roly-Poly bugs we used to call them when I was a kid, but my husband calls them something else. But there's a Latin name for that. And essentially in science, they settled that and they said you might call it a bear. I might call it oso, but is it a bear? And they'll settle that. Google's essentially trying to do that with entities. They're trying to apply that same logic of just understanding the concept to the world. Wider things in the world. And I think that it's- Mordy Oberstein: Which by the way, it saves them so much on resources. Crystal Carter: Saves them so much because I mentioned cilantro and coriander. Mordy Oberstein: Because they understand bear. And bear goes with honey and bear goes with Winnie. It all goes. And then the language doesn't matter. They know this is universal across the board. They don't have to figure out it again in another language by looking at the number of instances that bear went with honey on a webpage. Crystal Carter: So again, there's a Latin name for a brown bear for instance. And it doesn't matter if I call it cafe Oso or if I call it brown bear, Google understands just like scientists understand that it's the same thing. And that means that it's transferable because it's the same thing. And you've essentially distilled it to its essence. And you can see a really good way to see this as well is if you have Google photos, if you go to the Explorer area and type in a word, you can see the way that they understand entities because they classify everything into different sections. So they'll classify things into trees or birds or flowers or cars. Or if you look up goggles, you'll see lots of sunglasses because they just sort of think of it as eyewear for instance. But yeah, there's a lot of different tools around there. And a lot of people who are doing some very clever things around entities and it's very, very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I think of entities as fundamentally, something that has a unique identity. That's something that's discernible, that's distinct. And that, by the way, identity, we're going to go philosophical here for a sec. Identity can either be independent identity or dependent identity, for example. And this is where you start understanding why entities relate to other entities because they have to. For example, a keyboard. A keyboard's it's own thing, but then a keyboard has keys. So the keys on the keyboard. Is the key it's own thing or is it part of a keyboard? Crystal Carter: It's also which keyboard are you talking about? Mordy Oberstein: A keyboard on my computer. Keyboard. Crystal Carter: I thought you were talking about piano keyboard. Mordy Oberstein: Oh we're not going that way with the entities right now. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. Keyboard on my laptop, right? So the keys on my laptop, are the keys independent? Are they it's own thing? Yeah. I can obviously refer to it. That's the A key, that's the W key, but together they can also be a keyboard. So entities relate to one another because no entity is independent of another entity. Right, parent and child. I am me, but I'm also my mother's son. So entities are always going to relate to other things and be spoken about as independent things at the same time. Which is super important to know because now you could understand why Google is going to automatically connect whatever entity that you're talking about with something else. Because that is simply the nature of entity. It's not making this up out of nowhere. That's how entities work. Also important to know, and I'll end on this point is that your website is an entity. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Is your website a distinct discernible thing? I would hope so. Then it too is an entity. Crystal Carter: It too is an entity. Mordy Oberstein: Now what kind of entity is it? Let's say you have a website that talks about bricks. I [inaudible 00:28:17] saying bricks. I'm looking out my window and looking at bricks. What does it mean to be a brick website, a website that talks about bricks? It's very different than a website that talks about physics. Crystal Carter: Also there's relationships between the entities because there's keywords and with keyword research now in this space, we have to think about the modifiers, right? So you say bricks, there's lots of different types of bricks, so different bricks materials. There's also like Lego bricks. So I spend a lot of time playing Lego with my kid. So when you say bricks, I think Lego straightaway. That's what I think. And you're looking out your window and you're thinking another things. So Google says, okay, Cindy talked about the head keyword and it's like, okay, brick. They're like, great. Now if you said rusty brick, that would mean a different thing. Mordy Oberstein: That would mean Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Right, that would be Barry Schwartz. If you said Lego brick, that means a different thing. And that takes you down a different path. So it's very important to understand the modifiers. So not just the keyword, but also the modifiers that are important for those users. Mordy Oberstein: A thousand percent. And it also is really important about what you talk about, what you link out to what's linking to you on your website. Because again, if you are a brick website and you are talking about things like air conditioners, right? Yeah, that might make sense. I could see if you have a brick in your house, how do you connect your air conditioning unit to the bricks? Right? That would make sense if you have... I guess, I think. If you have a brick website that sells bricks to build your house and you're talking about football teams, does that really make sense? And when Google's looking at that, your site is an entity, your site's an entity about bricks. Your entity is a brick website. Does a brick website, talk about football teams? No. So what's going on here? Are you really a brick entity website? Crystal Carter: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: And there you have it. Crystal Carter: And there you have it. Mordy Oberstein: From philosophy to action. All on the SERP's Up podcast. Crystal Carter: That's what we're doing here, people. Mordy Oberstein: That's what we do here. All day, every day or at least once a week. But we're not done yet. We are not done yet. You thought we were done. We're not done, because we have a legend for you. [00:24:12] Inside the WixVerse: Idan Segal We have Idan Segal, the head of organic growth here at Wix. As we go across the Wixverse to bring you experts from Wix who talk about all different types of things, in this case about getting keywords for featured snippets. Let's talk with Idan. Mordy Oberstein: So as promised, I just want to preface this. A lot of the time you go out there on Twitter or wherever you consume social media content around SEO. And you see all these people with a lot of big mouths, I'm talking about myself in particular, but you don't see the people working behind the scenes doing some great things who are generally in house, because they don't feel they need to have a social presence in the same way that some other people do. And that's fine. I feel at Wix, we have so many people here that you have no idea who they are, and you might know who Ian is, I'm not talking about Idan that way, but it's so important to bring those voices out in general. So I kind of love this segment. With that, Idan is here. Idan Segal: What's up? It's nice to finally be here. Mordy Oberstein: It is. Idan, I love your eyes. I always say that. Idan Segal: Yeah. You say it a lot, I must say. Mordy Oberstein: I know. Is that weird? Crystal Carter: So much. Idan Segal: No, it's okay. It's okay. I'm already so flattered from what you said before. So what can I say now? Mordy Oberstein: Did I set you up? Idan Segal: Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, you invited me so many times and finally I'm here. I was starting to think that those [inaudible 00:31:48] invitations. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well when you know when you invite somebody your wedding or whatever, but you don't really want them to come. So you invite, "Yeah, it's at one o'clock in the morning, but we'd love to have you there." Crystal Carter: Oh, in England they do it two tier. At England there's the ceremony and that's how you know your real friends. And if they're like meh friends, you only get invited to the dinner after. Mordy Oberstein: What? I would do the opposite. I don't want to be invited to the ceremony. Invite me to the dinner. That's all I care about. Idan Segal: Anyways, for me, it's amazing. What a morning. I repaired my car. I watch the NBA finals and now I'm in a podcast. So it's a work procrastination at its best. Mordy Oberstein: So we've been talking in this episode a lot about keywords and keyword research. And you're a little bit of a legend around here because you and your team and we, all of you, but you're the head of this, so we're going to call it you, rank for a ton of featured snippets. Idan Segal: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Crystal in particular is really impressed. Not that I'm not impressed, but... Idan Segal: So yeah, I'm leading a team of rock stars. They really do the magic, not me, but it's a bunch of SEO teams and blog teams and CRO teams. But the bottom line is really amazing. I think only in the US, we're triggering more than 3,000 feature snippets. I think 54% of them, according to the May report, probably even more now are from the blog. Many of them are from product gates. And that's really cool. I must say that even the last algorithm change worked tremendously well for us. And I think we increased the amount of featured snippet that we have in 20 something percent. So that's just awesome. Mordy Oberstein: Do you get a bonus for that when you- Idan Segal: I'm not answering without my lawyer. Crystal Carter: I'm not surprised because I did an article around featured snippets for Search London recently and they used Wix as a really good case study because the featured snippets, for instance, there was one article that was 120 best blog niche ideas to write about. And if you look up topics for blogs, it shows as the featured snippet for that. If you look up blog topics for beginners, that same article shows as the people also ask. And then if you look up blog topics, it shows in an accordion as a dropdown there as well. You're also covered if you look up blogging, it shows in the knowledge panel as one of the, what is the subtopics of blogging as well. It really is an incredible case study in topic clusters of how you mapped out different topics around blogging. Can you share any insights on how you did that? Idan Segal: First of all, we are big fans of HubSpot and HubSpot Strategy in general here. We think that they're awesome. I think by the way, they are kind of a role model, to some extent. I think they even call the HTML components, some of them, when you go to the HTML, you see they call them featured snippets. Let's say that they're students of the game and they really try to get better every day. And this is my philosophy here as well. I think that here in Wix we are very lucky to have products in many niches so we can get tons of feature snippets. I think it's also a good sign for our product to show that you are capable of getting featured snippets when using the Wix blog. We have 22 different blogs in 16 languages and in most of them or all of them, we are getting featured snippets. And that's really, really cool. I think we are really trying to give the people what they want to bring real value. I don't want to say some fancy words, but we're really trying to bring value and to answer real problems. And by doing that, we also have structure that we're trying to do because we see that it's working. If we are doing a recap in the end so we're also doing a precap in the beginning, an introduction. We are trying to use things that we see that are working like ordered list and unordered list. And we have even showcases, inspirational intent content, we are trying to use scattered age free titles along the text. And you see that it's just working because we write great content and our philosophy that we're always on the hunt for more, but it's not that I detect featured snippets on the SERP and I'm trying to get them. I'm trying to even help Google educate him that it's worth a featured snippets. And I think we have tons of success by creating feature snippets on SERP's that didn't have any, and that's really cool. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really great point, because the way you usually hear this topic being talked about and even the way we introduced it was, yeah, how do you target keywords for featured snippets? Whereas you're just saying, yeah, we just target writing content and then we tell Google, this is a great place for a feature snippet. Idan Segal: Google is kind of good in what they're doing. Usually they figure it out and it's not always violets and roses here. I think in the last algo update, there was a topic that it's not really our niche, but was how to start a YouTube channel. And now of course Google is getting the featured snippet, their support. And I think we crushed. Decreased. I have it here, 67% decrease, but on the same graph we had some content about writing a bio, about blogging, about fonts, I think. And we increased in a second in between 20 to 50% in traffic. And in general featured snippet are more than 10% of our blog traffic. And that's huge. That's really huge for business. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think one of the things that I noticed again, from studying your featured snippets from the outside or whatever is that you spend a lot of time on the long tail, which is really, really core for featured snippets. A lot of the broad terms are going to be covered by things like Wikipedia or even by an instant answer. So the number of blogs you have about blogging is extensive, which means that you're going to be getting into that sort of longer tail. Can you talk to us a little bit about your research process at all? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. How do you break down topics like that? What's your approach? Idan Segal: Again, I think in the Wix blog, we're going after our products and what we're really offering to people and we're trying to go after that. So we have different clusters. One of them is about the website creation and that means that I need to cover everything. Also, things that I can't really cover on my product pages. And if I want to talk about menus and about the importance of navigation and about what is a 404, it's all about semantic depth. And again, I am a very cynical person and I am a capitalistic pig that cares about conversions. But having said that, I do try to do it while I'm trying to imagine that I'm writing to a fancy editor and to really give value because that's the right way to tackle it. So blogging is another big cluster of ours that we're trying to tackle the same way that marketing is and web design is. And we're trying to all the time to beef up and to learn from our competitors about topics that we're not covering. And also for us to lose a featured snippet, it's a wake up call. It means that we need to do something better. We need to try to learn from our competitors how to do things better. And sometimes it's just about Google turning off the feature snippet. And that's also okay. Mordy Oberstein: It's such a good point that, we were talking about this earlier in the podcast, about when you're thinking about keyword research in a nonlinear way, not so focused on the tools, it's really about being able to yourself, and you can use tools to help you do this, being able to parse out what that topic is or what that topic means and creating content around all of that in a really substantial kind of way. Just one more question before we have to let you go. When you see that you lose a feature snippet, you're talking about the YouTube content that came in and took away our feature snippets. Do you try to regain that or do you say, "Okay, look, I realize I should never have really had those to begin with and I'm not going to waste my time." Idan Segal: So, if I think that I didn't deserve it, it will affect my priorities. Having said that the fact that I got it previously means that at least I will give it a try. And I think that part of our work process here, we have tons of emphasis on redos. We want to send Google fresh signals that will keep working on our content. Huge part of our strategy is evergreen content. So for me, when I'm losing it, I'm trying to learn why I lost it. What's the other competitor, the URL that took it. I'm trying to learn from what they did. And I will try to do a redo to prioritize it in many cases the success rate is awesome. And again, all the credits to my team. And also I'm lucky to work in a company that has a great domain authority because Wix has a great product. That enables us to get those featured snippets. Crystal Carter: When I was speaking at Search London about featured snippets, someone said, "Oh, can you go over existing content to make feature snippets?" And I was like, "Yeah, you absolutely 100% can. And it's definitely, as you say, redos, going back over the content and adding bullet points or lists or tables or adding images or videos or whatever can really help. Idan Segal: There was a thread on Twitter from someone that I didn't know. Maybe you'll remember it. And if not, I will share it and you can share it later in a thread or something about someone that explained to details, how he's trying to tackle featured snippets. It was a very insightful one. Most of the things that he's trying to do we are already doing here, but I learned a trick or two. And there is a lot of technicalities when you're doing it, right? So you need to use some techniques, some HTML markup, ordered lists, unordered lists, hierarchy, amount of text, imperative verbs. There's some stuff to do, but eventually create good content and you'll enjoy the fruits. Mordy Oberstein: Idan, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day and joining us. Idan Segal: No problem. Thank you for inviting me. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Again, Idan, before you leave, where can we find you out there in the public? Where can your people find you? Idan Segal: You know, you can find me on Twitter probably. You can share the handle later on. Mordy Oberstein: I'll share the handle. It'll be in the show notes. Look for it in the show notes folks. Idan, thank you so much. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Idan Segal: Amazing. Thank you, Crystal. Thank you, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Bye, bye. Idan Segal: Ciao. Mordy Oberstein: Brilliant fellow, no? Crystal Carter: Idan never ceases to amaze. I think that he just delivers. I think there's such amazing content that comes out of that team and the way that they approach it is incredible. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why we go across the Wixverse. There's so many awesome people here. By the way, there's so many people out there in the SEO world who are not super famous who are doing super amazing things. [00:41:43] Snappy News So just know that. You know what else might be news to you other than the fact that there are SEOs out there who don't have huge profiles? The actual news, the actual news. The actual SEO, snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Let's get right into it because otherwise it wouldn't be snappy. First up for the master of disaster and last week's guest Barry, made the Schwartz be with you. From search engine round table, new Google featured snippet with multiple answers, new design call outs and more. Essentially what we have here is a featured snippet on a gray background with a call out i.e. bolded text that basically gives you the answer to the query and multiple answers from multiple URLs to boot. I'm covering this because this has been the fifth or sixth test where Google's actually using multiple URLs inside of the feature snippet. It's a big shift in how they're thinking about feature snippets and search overall. In my honest opinion, Asher just covered this and why I think Google is doing this on the Wix SEO hub. I'll link to that and I'll link to Barry's article where you can see what this feature snippet looks like. So check out the show notes. Okay. More on the old HCU the Helpful Content Update from SEJ, Search Engine Journals, Matt Southern. Google, helpful content signal, make it stronger with next core update. So the helpful content update might be a strong part of the ranking equation as time goes on. It was not a very potent part of the equation this go around as the update, as Google confirmed, has finished rolling out. This actually kind of makes sense as the HCU as we call it, the Helpful Content Update is based on machine learning properties and the machine needs to learn. And as it learns, it'll be more powerful than anything the SERP has ever known before. Okay. Maybe that's hyperbolic, but it does make sense that as time goes on, as the machine learns more, it will be a greater factor in the ranking equation. So Helpful Content Update, go get some learning done and come back soon, you hear. And with that, that is the snappiest of news. And what a set of news that was, no? Crystal Carter: It as very news news to me. Mordy Oberstein: That was very newsy. It was newsworthy, Newsies, good movie. Classic growing up as a kid, Christian Bale. Crystal Carter: I was just about to say that people don't realize the American Psycho was in Newsies. Mordy Oberstein: He was. Dancing around singing about newspapers. Crystal Carter: Do you want some news? Because he's Batman as well. That was my Batman. Mordy Oberstein: News. Crystal Carter: That's a much better Batman. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. I have specialties in doing Batman voices. Now let's talk about other stuff about SEO. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Again, before we leave you and thank you so much for listening all the way through to this point, we want to make sure that you understand that there is so much great SEO information out there besides just this podcast. And a lot of it comes from the SEO industry itself, which means the people, the people are the industry. [00:46:31] Follow of the Week And today we're going to share who you should be following out there in Twitter. And that person is Crystal. No, it is crystal. Crystal Carter: It's not me. Mordy Oberstein: You are someone we should follow. It's not what I meant. But crystal, who are we following this week? Crystal Carter: Today I would like to discuss, and I would like to put a little shine on Lazarina Stoy. I think she's amazing. She's an SEO, she's like a data phenom. She's really- Mordy Oberstein: Machine learning. Crystal Carter: Right. She's really into machine learning and she's got some great, great resources that she has particularly around keywords. She has a tool called the keyword search intent classifier tool. And it's a Google sheet that you can use to understand your keywords better and to understand the intent behind them. She also has some really good resources around big data sets as well. So she's a great person to follow. She tinkers a lot and makes a lot of really cool resources and shares some really good stuff. And she's just really, really clever. I think that if you're interested in keywords, you're interested in machine learning, you're interested in checking out somebody who's doing really cool stuff follow Lazarina. Mordy Oberstein: She's doing some really cool stuff. And that's @LazarinaStoy on Twitter. L-A-Z-A-R-I-N-A-S-T-O-Y. And of course we'll link to her Twitter profile in the show notes for this podcast. Folks, that's it. That's that's all we got. I know you wanted more, but that's all we got for you this week. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's UP podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry we're back next week with an all new episode diving into Ooh, ranking factors. Should you care? Crystal Carter: Should you? Mordy Oberstein: We have different point of views on this one I think. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, we kind of do. Mordy Oberstein: Oh boy. Going to be some drama. Well- Crystal Carter: It's going to get heated. [inaudible 00:46:43] at the guacamole discussions though. Mordy Oberstein: I will draw lines in the sand. You should not cross them. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO learning hub 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 hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Until next time everyone peace, love and SEO. See ya. Crystal Carter: Bye. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Cindy Krum Idan Segal Lazarina Stoy Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Mobile Moxie Featured Snippets In 2022 Lazarina Stoy SEO Resources Google’s shifts from authority to content diversity on the SERP News: New Google Featured Snippet With Multiple Answers, New Design, Callouts & More? Google Announces September 2022 Core Algorithm Update Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Cindy Krum Idan Segal Lazarina Stoy Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Mobile Moxie Featured Snippets In 2022 Lazarina Stoy SEO Resources Google’s shifts from authority to content diversity on the SERP News: New Google Featured Snippet With Multiple Answers, New Design, Callouts & More? Google Announces September 2022 Core Algorithm Update Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the fabulous head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, everybody. I hope everybody's feeling gnarly and radical and tubular today. Mordy Oberstein: I'm feeling gnarly, but not radical. Crystal Carter: Not radical, not feeling radical, just feeling normal. Not- Mordy Oberstein: No, but gnarly. Crystal Carter: Gnarly. I don't know. Yeah. I just say- Mordy Oberstein: When I say it I mean nauseous like, oh, that's gnarly. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: How do you mean gnarly? Crystal Carter: I just watched Bill and Ted's and I'm just saying the things that I saw on Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so I grew up on that, right? When I said gnarly as an individual, like, awe, that's gnarly. That's messed up. Crystal Carter: Like bad? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, bad. Ah it's gnarly. Ugh. Crystal Carter: Have I used the keyword with the wrong intent there? Did I- Mordy Oberstein: No. No. I think I am. Crystal Carter: ...not do enough keyword research on my term. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Oh, SEO joke. Good SEO joke. You know what's no joke? The fact that this podcast is brought to you by Wix where 301 redirects are automatic for your main pages products and booking pages. Hello. Crystal Carter: Hello, automated automatic automations. That's right. You can also do bulk 301. Redirects take them all in bulk and poof. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I'm dancing as if the people can see me. It's a podcast. Mordy Oberstein: No, we are dancing like robots. Anyway, we're not talking about 301 redirects in this particular podcast in this podcast, [00:01:46] What's On This Episode of SERP's Up? we're talking about the real deal with keyword research. That's right. Keywords ain't what they used to be, which means your process for doing keyword research has or should have changed. We'll cover what you should be doing with keyword research, where you should be starting the process. Spoiler alert. It's not where many people say you should start keyword research, which is SEO tools. And we'll talk about where the tools do and don't come in the keyword research process and special tip from the great legend of SEO, Cindy Krum on Google keywords advancements. Also, we're talking with Wix's head of organic growth at Idan Segal, all about how he uses keyword research to capture featured snippets in his net of awesomeness. Crystal Carter: Amazing, amazing. Idan is such a Jedi when it comes to all of this stuff, it's absolutely incredible. I've studied his featured snippets. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why we're going to talk to him later, which is why you said we should invite him about this topic. Also, we're going to get a little bit philosophical here. We're talking entities and SEO, and we're going to be covering the latest and greatest in the SEO news. And of course, as we do each and every week, who you should be following out there in the SEO industry [00:02:57] Focus Topic of the Week: The Real Deal on Keyword Research so you could get some more SEO a wesomeness. But let's kick it off with the real deal on keyword research. Crystal Carter: Cool. I'm just going to do a little explainer real quick just to make sure everybody's on the same page. So when we talk about keywords, we are essentially talking about phrases that people enter into search to find the information that they need. For years Google has understood these terms, the keywords as literal, the literal words that people type in. And so just to be clear, a keyword can be one word or it can be lots of words. So we talk about a keyword as a singular thing, but it's actually the whole phrase that people enter in. It used to be that Google would understand this quite literally. So if you were writing something about coriander and you were writing something else about cilantro, then it used to be that those pages would rank differently and that you would need to spell it out really, really clearly. But a lot of SEO has been built around this sort of literal phrasing of those particular words, but Google's getting much better at understanding that cilantro and coriander are essentially the same plant. When we talk about that, that's where we start to get into the area of entities. And Google's starting to understand that they don't necessarily need to rank one page for cilantro and one page for coriander. They can rank the best content around that plant for users. So that comes into how we think about keyword research that comes into how users are experiencing the web, that comes into thinking about the common names that are seen across lots of different media. And the change from being more literal terms to being more entity-based keywords, will affect how you approach your keyword research as you go forward with your SEO activity. Mordy Oberstein: I never knew that cilantro and coriander were the same thing until right now. Crystal Carter: They're the same entity. So I'm from California and I eat a lot of Mexican food. And basically I had to start making my own when I moved to England and in England, it's called coriander and in California, it's called cilantro. So I learned that very quickly. And similarly, there's a Latin name for that plant as well, which is different again. And I'm sure they call it something else in other places. So Google knows that if I want to make guacamole and I'm in London, they will serve me whatever content is best. Even if I put in coriander for guacamole, they'll give me a good guacamole recipe, which has cilantro in it. Mordy Oberstein: I never liked cilantro until maybe relatively recently, last few years. I always hated it for some reason. It tastes like soap to me, anyway. Crystal Carter: Sir, you're incorrect. Mordy Oberstein: I said I like it now. Crystal Carter: It's good. Mordy Oberstein: I said I like it now. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Sheesh. Tough crowd. Crystal Carter: Don't come at me about guacamole Mordy Mordy Oberstein: I'm not. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I think I'm not. Crystal Carter: I take it very seriously. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry I offended you. Are we still friends? Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: That escalated so quickly. So let's start this off with where you should start with keyword research. And I always start, I've said it already on this podcast at this point, I probably said 10 times already, I always start with understanding two people. Me and you. Who am I? What do I do with my website? What's my website all about what am I trying to accomplish with my website? What's my site's identity? What am I all about as a company, a product, as a website, and what are the people who I'm trying to target? What are they all about? What are their pain points? What's their life circumstance. What's their life context? Where are they coming from? I'm trying to empathize with them. So know thyself and then know thy other, which I don't think is a real phrase, but it is now. Know thy other. And that's where I start with keyword research, which is not where many SEOs usually do. Crystal Carter: I absolutely agree that it's important to think like a user. So think about how your users are discovering your service or your products, and think about how users are talking about it. It may very well be the case that you refer to your particular product in one way, but if users are referring it to it in another way, then you need to think about that. And you need to understand that and you need to make sure that you're articulating that clearly. And that you're including those things. There are lots of tools that can help you do this. But I mentioned this before, when you're thinking about keywords, it's also important to actually talk to people who are speaking regularly to users. So if you're talking to your sales team, if you're talking to people who are front of house, if you are reading reviews, then that will give you some information about how people are interacting with your product and the kind of keywords that you should be including in your content and the kind of entities even that you should be including in your content. Mordy Oberstein: And it doesn't tell you just that. It tells you what kind of content they're looking for also. The problem with a keyword research tool, I know we all use them and I know if you're getting into SEO, you've probably heard all about them. And I know when you Google how to do keyword research, you're going to see a whole bunch of stuff about tools, which is why we're literally doing this podcast to be honest with you. Yeah. The keyword research tool can tell you, this is the keyword, but what kind of content do you create around it? Do you create a video around it? Do you create a really long post? Do you create something really salesy? Do you create something informational, but when you think about your audience or when you see what people are saying about what they want, or what they like, what they don't like. It helps you to understand what kind of content they want. Even if it's informational. Obviously you're talking about the best toaster oven. What kind of content do users want around that? Do they want something comparing multiple toaster ovens? They want a blog post just about this one toaster oven. It's all about the intent. Crystal Carter: The intent will change dramatically depending on what the term is. And also depending on what the person's trying to do with it. So I think that if you were thinking about uses for coconut oil, there's a lot of- Mordy Oberstein: Everything. On everything. Crystal Carter: On everything. Mordy Oberstein: To me it's just everything. Crystal Carter: So there's lots of different ways that you can use coconut oil. But if the intent is cooking, then that's one thing. If the intent is, I don't know, skincare, that's another thing. If the intent is wellness or something, that's another thing, but there's lots of different uses. So you can't just go literally coconut oil. Coconut oil is good. You should use coconut oil. You have to think about the intent behind that. And you have to think about how users are using it. And it might be that there's ways that users are using it, that you've never even considered, that you've never even considered. Mordy Oberstein: A hundred percent. Crystal Carter: I think YouTube is a really good example of this. On YouTube I watch a lot of hair tutorials and people are combining different products and people are saying, "Oh, I use this like this, I use that like this." That's great information for keyword research. That is a great place to do keyword research. If there's a really popular YouTube video, that's talking about your product, or talking about product in your wheelhouse, then that's a really good source for that sort of stuff, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: And then to take your coconut oil example, because my wife loves coconut oil. You have to segment those intents out. I always think of it by the way, primarily for skincare, cause my wife really likes it for skincare. And if you want to write a top 10 ways to use coconut oil and you're writing a mix of, use it for your skincare and you use it on your salad, you might be catering to nobody and everybody at the same time. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And you might need to write just 10 ways to use coconut oil for skincare. Probably don't do the whole 10 ways thing by the way. Crystal Carter: But that's the thing, I think also it has to do with your website. So if you are a spa or something or you're a dermatologist or you're a skincare professional and you write 10 ways to use coconut oil, then you should keep it to the skincare area, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: If you are a recipe blog and you're saying 10 ways to use coconut oil, then you should keep it to food. Mordy Oberstein: The key [inaudible 00:10:04] are not going to tell you that, that goes back to what we talked about before. Your identity as a site. You have a context of where you're working out of it's not coming out of nowhere. And again, the keyword research tool, you'll come down on them is not the best place for that. You what the great place for that is? The SERP. Crystal Carter: The SERP. The SERP. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP. Crystal Carter: Exactly. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Go to the actual SERP. Crystal Carter: And look up your keywords because this comes back to the user journey. You need to think about how users are actually experiencing finding your content. And it's very, very, very vague, very important that you do this on both desktop and mobile. And also particularly if you're an international branch, you have a look at some of the different mobile experiences. So I do not live in the United States, even though I am an American, the SERP in America is very different from the SERP where I live. And so if you have a lot of clients or users who are based there, that it's important to look at what the SERP looks like there and what the competition is there compared to what the conversation is, where you are. And then again, on different devices. So mobile versus desktop will again be very, very different. So if you're not on top of that, then you won't be able to understand the keywords. And Google's recommending keywords as well. So on the coconut oil, they'll say, do you mean coconut oil for skin or they'll suggest coconut oil health. Mordy Oberstein: People also search for coconut oil for your hair. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly. People also ask related searches- Mordy Oberstein: Can I use coconut oil on my hair? Does coconut oil help you retain your hair? Does it? I would like to know the answer to that one. But no, the SERP is really, really important for so many different reasons. One is you can reverse engineer it from multiple perspectives. If you see Google's showing videos and images, you can tell... Yes, and again, a keyword research tool might not be able to tell you this. They might be able in some kind of way, but you need to know, yeah, I can create a post about this, but I really need to have some kind of media in there because that's part of the intent package. You see this by the way, with recipes all the time, there's always going to be an image of the food. That's not by accident. Google wants that there. There's also something really important for understanding your keyword research and what you should or shouldn't be targeting. And that's, there are a limited number of slots on page one. And there's a limited number of slots for certain types of content. Take, for example, the go-to example, they always use it buy car insurance. So 10 years ago, every single ranking website was a place where you can buy car insurance. Now it's split up between places I can go, Geico, Allstate State Farm, to buy car insurance and places to learn about buying car insurance. What's the best policy? What kind of policies should I not consider? Where should you go to buy car insurance? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Crystal Carter: The comparison sites where you're comparing lots at once. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, review sites a hundred percent, which will be my next point. But you need to know how many slots are available. If I'm trying to ring for a commercial oriented page, maybe there's only two slots available. Maybe I need to create an informational page. And if I'm creating an informational page, what kind of informational page should I create? Should I create a listicle? Should I create a comparison? Should I create a long form blog post? I need to see what's there. And there might be three slots for a long form blog post, and only one slot for a listicle. And that's all part of the intent package on the SERP. Crystal Carter: And it's also the case that it might be that it doesn't even need to be immediately on your website. Everything should come back to your website. Your website should always be HQ. You should always have anything that you do online should always be able to be traced back to your website and supported by stuff on your website. But for instance, if it's a how to, like how to use coconut oil in your hair, it's probably going to be a video. A video's, probably going to be what people are going to expect. And you should probably put it on YouTube. That's not on your website, but you can obviously tie that back in within the comments and the links and the various different things. And you can support that on your website as well. So make sure that you're understanding where the best venue for the information is for that particular query as well as the query itself. And to be honest, I think that tools sometimes do this well, but they cannot give you the full picture. They cannot give you the full picture that you can get from the SERP. They can give you a sort of bird's eye view of certain things like featured snippets and things like video or things like images and things. They can give you a general bird's eye view, but the SERP can be very dynamic and it can change really, really quickly. Google doesn't have to tell anybody when they want to change what they [inaudible 00:14:15] what the SERP looks like. And there's also certain features that aren't included. So if you look up a lion on Google, you get a 3D AR lion. There's a penguin one, there's a 3D AR thing of the tower of London, for instance. That's not going to show up in a third party keyword research tool, but that is going to affect how people are behaving on the search. So this is something that you have to track. Mordy Oberstein: Before we end this conversation or move on from this conversation around keyword research and whatnot. Tools do play a role. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: We're not advocating you shouldn't use a keyword research tool. I like to use a keyword research tool. Once I've understood myself and my audience. I know what's out there on the SEPR. I know exactly how Google's relating to this keyword, but there's things that I missed, like subtopics that I may have never thought of or questions I may never have thought of or getting some more context about the topic overall by seeing what kind of results the keyword resources are coming back with. I like to sort of refine my process. I don't start my process with the keyword research tool. I know many people do, I don't. But I do refine my process with the keyword research tools. Crystal Carter: I always think that with anything, and particularly in SEO, I always use a couple of tools at once. So I will look at the SERP, I'll get some ideas. I'll go through the keyword research tools and see what they say. Then I'll check the SERP that they say. I'll check that in Google as well. And then you want to back that up with a few different things and experience it as a user on different devices. So there's a couple of different tools, but I don't think you should ever rely on a single source for anything. And also you should also back it up with stuff from Google Search Console. So Google Search Console will give you information on where you're getting impressions for, but maybe not necessarily getting quick clicks for. They also have a breakdown of different parts of the search. So whether it's webpages, whether it's images, whether it's videos, whether it's product pages, that sort of thing. So it's important to just spend the time to see how the keywords are showing on the different parts of the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: And there's just so many tools in there from Search Console, which everybody should be using to Semrush, Ahrefs, they have Mangools, also [inaudible 00:16:11]. There's plenty of tools out there. Have a look at them. A lot of them offer a freemium version. [inaudible 00:16:16]. If I didn't mention your tool, I'm sorry. SEOrank. I could keep going. There's really a ton of them. Crystal Carter: Many tools are available. Mordy Oberstein: Many, many tools. Now we've been mentioning and throwing around entities a little bit and we're going to get into more of that later on in the podcast, but we thought it would make sense to bring it an absolute SEO legend for you, to talk about entities, to talk about keywords, to talk about specifically, how has Google's ability to understand entities made focusing on specific keywords less relevant? [00:16:47] Focus Topic Guest: Cindy Krum Here's the founder of MobileMoxie, the one, the only Cindy Krum. Cindy Krum: So when I think about keyword research for entities, I think about topic clusters. And so your main kind of head keyword, the main concept is in the center. And then we think about ways that that topic breaks down. So if we're thinking about a breed of a dog, let's say a labradoodle. So we have labradoodle and then we have their health, coat, where to adopt a labradoodle, temperament, things like that. And so you would do the research to see what comes up around the head term. And then you would create a cluster for each topic that is a reasonable section of questions about that head term. And you can see when Google's building out entities, they do this and they add sometimes in a mobile search result, they'll add expanders under the knowledge graph where they know, and they say, Hey, here's the main topic. And here are some subtopics. And so subtopics are different from related topics. Subtopics are within the core topic and they're just a division of what you would want to know or what someone might want to know. And I think to rank well in search, in some cases, we may have to go a little bit beyond topics that our website has a financial benefit for. So for instance, let's say that we are a site that allows you to adopt Labradoodles. When we only talk about adopting Labradoodles, Google knows that people who want to adopt a pet have more questions than just where to adopt, usually. And so they are thinking about the next step of someone saying, "Well, I think I want to adopt a labradoodle," because that's how the normal process goes. You don't go, I think I want to adopt, let's do it today. You usually go through a research process. And the more you can answer those questions and help users with their journey on the topic and not just try and sell them things it seems like, the more Google is going to count that as high quality content, the more Google is going to understand the entity. The more Google is going to understand that you understand the entity and you are going to have the requisite keywords clustered somewhat together or in a meaningful way that Google uses to determine if you are authoritative and an expert. And if you're willingly giving people information to help them, or if you're just trying to make a sale. And I think that Google does seem to want the extra steps to prove that you're not an affiliate site for instance, or maybe if you are an affiliate site, that you're a great affiliate site that you're going the extra mile to keep your customers happy. In my mind, I kind of equate it to having a clean brick and mortar store. Yes, you could sell stuff in a brick and mortar store, but just selling it might not be enough. You also have to have nice educated employees. You have to have a clean store. You have to have easy parking, things like this. And since those aren't concerns, when you're shopping on the internet or when you're searching on the internet, they're looking for other things, other symbols that this is going to be a good experience for you. Mordy Oberstein: So that was super, super interesting. And what I think people don't necessarily realize is that concepts, topics are entities. I know Cindy gave the example of a labradoodle, which my in-laws used to have a labradoodle, I really did not like that dog. But anyway, topics are entities. Concepts are entities. And within a certain topic, there are certain things that are subsumed in that topic, or also known as subtopic. So if you're talking about baseball, you're going to have teams and players and rules and playoffs and world series and blah, blah, blah, blah. This goes into how machine learning works. When you talk about a certain topic... Well, let's go back a step. When Google see a certain topic, let's say Labradoodles, or let's say, I don't know, healthcare. It understands that healthcare means X. It means subtopic, A subtopic B subtopic C. And this is connected to that thing. And that things connected to this thing. This is all what constructs the concept of healthcare. And then when you talk about healthcare on your site, if your profile doesn't match that, if, when you talk about healthcare, you're not talking about A, B and C, you're talking about completely different things in the way Google understands the entity that is healthcare, the concept that is healthcare, that's not going to bode well for you. So you can be focusing on all the keywords that you want. It's not going to matter. What you need to focus on is the fact, how does Google understand this entity? And that could be, again, anything from Labradoodles, to healthcare, to bricks, to astrophysics. If you understand and talk about that entity, the same way that Google understands it, which is hopefully how everybody kind of sees it, because let's hope we all understand astrophysics the same way, then that will help you rank as opposed to focusing on the keywords. That's what I took away from that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the difference between keywords and topics or entities is very clear to me because I've seen this in action. So for instance, goggles, if I talk about goggles, there's lots of different types of goggles and the intent will change, depending on what you're talking about. So if I were to write just keyword optimizing for the word goggles, I could say, goggles are great. You can wear goggles on your face, goggles protect your eyes, buy goggles in Brazil. Yeah. I could say that. And that would be optimized for the word goggles because I said it lots of time. Or that's what old school just- Mordy Oberstein: Goggles. Crystal Carter: Goggles, right. Mordy Oberstein: Goggles. Crystal Carter: But what kind of goggles am I actually talking about? When I say that. Beer goggles, ski goggles, safety goggles, swimming goggles. What am I talking about now? Now if I said, when you are skiing, you should wear goggles to protect your eyes from sun and wind. That's giving Google a lot more information about context, topic, and more relationships for the entity of the goggles that I'm talking about. And additionally, if I were to talk about that as a topic, I might also include things like ski gloves or hats or helmets or protective clothing for skiing or maybe even sunscreen. And that helps Google to understand that I'm talking about goggles. I'm also helping the user who's probably going skiing and is probably deciding what they need to wear to be safe. And it's telling them that all of those entities are related and they understand that all of those entities are related and that they're different from if I was talking about goggles and a swimsuit and fins and a snorkel and things like that, they understand that those are different, but you have to put them in a topic together to help them to understand that the entity is the entity that you're actually talking about. Mordy Oberstein: The entity. Speaking of the entity, we've been talking a lot about entities. But the truth is what is an entity? Crystal Carter: Who am I? Mordy Oberstein: [00:24:12] Deep Thoughts, with Crystal and Mordy You are now entering a deep thought by Crystal and Mordy around entities? Mordy Oberstein: What are entities, crystal? Crystal Carter: An entity is like... It's a person, place or thing. It's a noun people. It's a noun... Wait. It's a noun. Mordy Oberstein: Oh that settles it. We have defined [inaudible 00:24:37]. We're done. Crystal Carter: We're done entities. We're done. Done here. But yeah, it's essentially, the way I think about it's very similar to Latin names. So there's a Latin name for an Oak tree, Quercus. Quercus hispanica I think is the Latin name for London plane tree, for instance. And I might call it one thing and somebody else might call it another thing, but there's a Latin name for that tree or Latin name for that animal. Like Roly-Poly bugs we used to call them when I was a kid, but my husband calls them something else. But there's a Latin name for that. And essentially in science, they settled that and they said you might call it a bear. I might call it oso, but is it a bear? And they'll settle that. Google's essentially trying to do that with entities. They're trying to apply that same logic of just understanding the concept to the world. Wider things in the world. And I think that it's- Mordy Oberstein: Which by the way, it saves them so much on resources. Crystal Carter: Saves them so much because I mentioned cilantro and coriander. Mordy Oberstein: Because they understand bear. And bear goes with honey and bear goes with Winnie. It all goes. And then the language doesn't matter. They know this is universal across the board. They don't have to figure out it again in another language by looking at the number of instances that bear went with honey on a webpage. Crystal Carter: So again, there's a Latin name for a brown bear for instance. And it doesn't matter if I call it cafe Oso or if I call it brown bear, Google understands just like scientists understand that it's the same thing. And that means that it's transferable because it's the same thing. And you've essentially distilled it to its essence. And you can see a really good way to see this as well is if you have Google photos, if you go to the Explorer area and type in a word, you can see the way that they understand entities because they classify everything into different sections. So they'll classify things into trees or birds or flowers or cars. Or if you look up goggles, you'll see lots of sunglasses because they just sort of think of it as eyewear for instance. But yeah, there's a lot of different tools around there. And a lot of people who are doing some very clever things around entities and it's very, very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I think of entities as fundamentally, something that has a unique identity. That's something that's discernible, that's distinct. And that, by the way, identity, we're going to go philosophical here for a sec. Identity can either be independent identity or dependent identity, for example. And this is where you start understanding why entities relate to other entities because they have to. For example, a keyboard. A keyboard's it's own thing, but then a keyboard has keys. So the keys on the keyboard. Is the key it's own thing or is it part of a keyboard? Crystal Carter: It's also which keyboard are you talking about? Mordy Oberstein: A keyboard on my computer. Keyboard. Crystal Carter: I thought you were talking about piano keyboard. Mordy Oberstein: Oh we're not going that way with the entities right now. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. Keyboard on my laptop, right? So the keys on my laptop, are the keys independent? Are they it's own thing? Yeah. I can obviously refer to it. That's the A key, that's the W key, but together they can also be a keyboard. So entities relate to one another because no entity is independent of another entity. Right, parent and child. I am me, but I'm also my mother's son. So entities are always going to relate to other things and be spoken about as independent things at the same time. Which is super important to know because now you could understand why Google is going to automatically connect whatever entity that you're talking about with something else. Because that is simply the nature of entity. It's not making this up out of nowhere. That's how entities work. Also important to know, and I'll end on this point is that your website is an entity. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Is your website a distinct discernible thing? I would hope so. Then it too is an entity. Crystal Carter: It too is an entity. Mordy Oberstein: Now what kind of entity is it? Let's say you have a website that talks about bricks. I [inaudible 00:28:17] saying bricks. I'm looking out my window and looking at bricks. What does it mean to be a brick website, a website that talks about bricks? It's very different than a website that talks about physics. Crystal Carter: Also there's relationships between the entities because there's keywords and with keyword research now in this space, we have to think about the modifiers, right? So you say bricks, there's lots of different types of bricks, so different bricks materials. There's also like Lego bricks. So I spend a lot of time playing Lego with my kid. So when you say bricks, I think Lego straightaway. That's what I think. And you're looking out your window and you're thinking another things. So Google says, okay, Cindy talked about the head keyword and it's like, okay, brick. They're like, great. Now if you said rusty brick, that would mean a different thing. Mordy Oberstein: That would mean Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Right, that would be Barry Schwartz. If you said Lego brick, that means a different thing. And that takes you down a different path. So it's very important to understand the modifiers. So not just the keyword, but also the modifiers that are important for those users. Mordy Oberstein: A thousand percent. And it also is really important about what you talk about, what you link out to what's linking to you on your website. Because again, if you are a brick website and you are talking about things like air conditioners, right? Yeah, that might make sense. I could see if you have a brick in your house, how do you connect your air conditioning unit to the bricks? Right? That would make sense if you have... I guess, I think. If you have a brick website that sells bricks to build your house and you're talking about football teams, does that really make sense? And when Google's looking at that, your site is an entity, your site's an entity about bricks. Your entity is a brick website. Does a brick website, talk about football teams? No. So what's going on here? Are you really a brick entity website? Crystal Carter: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: And there you have it. Crystal Carter: And there you have it. Mordy Oberstein: From philosophy to action. All on the SERP's Up podcast. Crystal Carter: That's what we're doing here, people. Mordy Oberstein: That's what we do here. All day, every day or at least once a week. But we're not done yet. We are not done yet. You thought we were done. We're not done, because we have a legend for you. [00:24:12] Inside the WixVerse: Idan Segal We have Idan Segal, the head of organic growth here at Wix. As we go across the Wixverse to bring you experts from Wix who talk about all different types of things, in this case about getting keywords for featured snippets. Let's talk with Idan. Mordy Oberstein: So as promised, I just want to preface this. A lot of the time you go out there on Twitter or wherever you consume social media content around SEO. And you see all these people with a lot of big mouths, I'm talking about myself in particular, but you don't see the people working behind the scenes doing some great things who are generally in house, because they don't feel they need to have a social presence in the same way that some other people do. And that's fine. I feel at Wix, we have so many people here that you have no idea who they are, and you might know who Ian is, I'm not talking about Idan that way, but it's so important to bring those voices out in general. So I kind of love this segment. With that, Idan is here. Idan Segal: What's up? It's nice to finally be here. Mordy Oberstein: It is. Idan, I love your eyes. I always say that. Idan Segal: Yeah. You say it a lot, I must say. Mordy Oberstein: I know. Is that weird? Crystal Carter: So much. Idan Segal: No, it's okay. It's okay. I'm already so flattered from what you said before. So what can I say now? Mordy Oberstein: Did I set you up? Idan Segal: Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, you invited me so many times and finally I'm here. I was starting to think that those [inaudible 00:31:48] invitations. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well when you know when you invite somebody your wedding or whatever, but you don't really want them to come. So you invite, "Yeah, it's at one o'clock in the morning, but we'd love to have you there." Crystal Carter: Oh, in England they do it two tier. At England there's the ceremony and that's how you know your real friends. And if they're like meh friends, you only get invited to the dinner after. Mordy Oberstein: What? I would do the opposite. I don't want to be invited to the ceremony. Invite me to the dinner. That's all I care about. Idan Segal: Anyways, for me, it's amazing. What a morning. I repaired my car. I watch the NBA finals and now I'm in a podcast. So it's a work procrastination at its best. Mordy Oberstein: So we've been talking in this episode a lot about keywords and keyword research. And you're a little bit of a legend around here because you and your team and we, all of you, but you're the head of this, so we're going to call it you, rank for a ton of featured snippets. Idan Segal: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Crystal in particular is really impressed. Not that I'm not impressed, but... Idan Segal: So yeah, I'm leading a team of rock stars. They really do the magic, not me, but it's a bunch of SEO teams and blog teams and CRO teams. But the bottom line is really amazing. I think only in the US, we're triggering more than 3,000 feature snippets. I think 54% of them, according to the May report, probably even more now are from the blog. Many of them are from product gates. And that's really cool. I must say that even the last algorithm change worked tremendously well for us. And I think we increased the amount of featured snippet that we have in 20 something percent. So that's just awesome. Mordy Oberstein: Do you get a bonus for that when you- Idan Segal: I'm not answering without my lawyer. Crystal Carter: I'm not surprised because I did an article around featured snippets for Search London recently and they used Wix as a really good case study because the featured snippets, for instance, there was one article that was 120 best blog niche ideas to write about. And if you look up topics for blogs, it shows as the featured snippet for that. If you look up blog topics for beginners, that same article shows as the people also ask. And then if you look up blog topics, it shows in an accordion as a dropdown there as well. You're also covered if you look up blogging, it shows in the knowledge panel as one of the, what is the subtopics of blogging as well. It really is an incredible case study in topic clusters of how you mapped out different topics around blogging. Can you share any insights on how you did that? Idan Segal: First of all, we are big fans of HubSpot and HubSpot Strategy in general here. We think that they're awesome. I think by the way, they are kind of a role model, to some extent. I think they even call the HTML components, some of them, when you go to the HTML, you see they call them featured snippets. Let's say that they're students of the game and they really try to get better every day. And this is my philosophy here as well. I think that here in Wix we are very lucky to have products in many niches so we can get tons of feature snippets. I think it's also a good sign for our product to show that you are capable of getting featured snippets when using the Wix blog. We have 22 different blogs in 16 languages and in most of them or all of them, we are getting featured snippets. And that's really, really cool. I think we are really trying to give the people what they want to bring real value. I don't want to say some fancy words, but we're really trying to bring value and to answer real problems. And by doing that, we also have structure that we're trying to do because we see that it's working. If we are doing a recap in the end so we're also doing a precap in the beginning, an introduction. We are trying to use things that we see that are working like ordered list and unordered list. And we have even showcases, inspirational intent content, we are trying to use scattered age free titles along the text. And you see that it's just working because we write great content and our philosophy that we're always on the hunt for more, but it's not that I detect featured snippets on the SERP and I'm trying to get them. I'm trying to even help Google educate him that it's worth a featured snippets. And I think we have tons of success by creating feature snippets on SERP's that didn't have any, and that's really cool. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really great point, because the way you usually hear this topic being talked about and even the way we introduced it was, yeah, how do you target keywords for featured snippets? Whereas you're just saying, yeah, we just target writing content and then we tell Google, this is a great place for a feature snippet. Idan Segal: Google is kind of good in what they're doing. Usually they figure it out and it's not always violets and roses here. I think in the last algo update, there was a topic that it's not really our niche, but was how to start a YouTube channel. And now of course Google is getting the featured snippet, their support. And I think we crushed. Decreased. I have it here, 67% decrease, but on the same graph we had some content about writing a bio, about blogging, about fonts, I think. And we increased in a second in between 20 to 50% in traffic. And in general featured snippet are more than 10% of our blog traffic. And that's huge. That's really huge for business. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think one of the things that I noticed again, from studying your featured snippets from the outside or whatever is that you spend a lot of time on the long tail, which is really, really core for featured snippets. A lot of the broad terms are going to be covered by things like Wikipedia or even by an instant answer. So the number of blogs you have about blogging is extensive, which means that you're going to be getting into that sort of longer tail. Can you talk to us a little bit about your research process at all? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. How do you break down topics like that? What's your approach? Idan Segal: Again, I think in the Wix blog, we're going after our products and what we're really offering to people and we're trying to go after that. So we have different clusters. One of them is about the website creation and that means that I need to cover everything. Also, things that I can't really cover on my product pages. And if I want to talk about menus and about the importance of navigation and about what is a 404, it's all about semantic depth. And again, I am a very cynical person and I am a capitalistic pig that cares about conversions. But having said that, I do try to do it while I'm trying to imagine that I'm writing to a fancy editor and to really give value because that's the right way to tackle it. So blogging is another big cluster of ours that we're trying to tackle the same way that marketing is and web design is. And we're trying to all the time to beef up and to learn from our competitors about topics that we're not covering. And also for us to lose a featured snippet, it's a wake up call. It means that we need to do something better. We need to try to learn from our competitors how to do things better. And sometimes it's just about Google turning off the feature snippet. And that's also okay. Mordy Oberstein: It's such a good point that, we were talking about this earlier in the podcast, about when you're thinking about keyword research in a nonlinear way, not so focused on the tools, it's really about being able to yourself, and you can use tools to help you do this, being able to parse out what that topic is or what that topic means and creating content around all of that in a really substantial kind of way. Just one more question before we have to let you go. When you see that you lose a feature snippet, you're talking about the YouTube content that came in and took away our feature snippets. Do you try to regain that or do you say, "Okay, look, I realize I should never have really had those to begin with and I'm not going to waste my time." Idan Segal: So, if I think that I didn't deserve it, it will affect my priorities. Having said that the fact that I got it previously means that at least I will give it a try. And I think that part of our work process here, we have tons of emphasis on redos. We want to send Google fresh signals that will keep working on our content. Huge part of our strategy is evergreen content. So for me, when I'm losing it, I'm trying to learn why I lost it. What's the other competitor, the URL that took it. I'm trying to learn from what they did. And I will try to do a redo to prioritize it in many cases the success rate is awesome. And again, all the credits to my team. And also I'm lucky to work in a company that has a great domain authority because Wix has a great product. That enables us to get those featured snippets. Crystal Carter: When I was speaking at Search London about featured snippets, someone said, "Oh, can you go over existing content to make feature snippets?" And I was like, "Yeah, you absolutely 100% can. And it's definitely, as you say, redos, going back over the content and adding bullet points or lists or tables or adding images or videos or whatever can really help. Idan Segal: There was a thread on Twitter from someone that I didn't know. Maybe you'll remember it. And if not, I will share it and you can share it later in a thread or something about someone that explained to details, how he's trying to tackle featured snippets. It was a very insightful one. Most of the things that he's trying to do we are already doing here, but I learned a trick or two. And there is a lot of technicalities when you're doing it, right? So you need to use some techniques, some HTML markup, ordered lists, unordered lists, hierarchy, amount of text, imperative verbs. There's some stuff to do, but eventually create good content and you'll enjoy the fruits. Mordy Oberstein: Idan, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day and joining us. Idan Segal: No problem. Thank you for inviting me. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Again, Idan, before you leave, where can we find you out there in the public? Where can your people find you? Idan Segal: You know, you can find me on Twitter probably. You can share the handle later on. Mordy Oberstein: I'll share the handle. It'll be in the show notes. Look for it in the show notes folks. Idan, thank you so much. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Idan Segal: Amazing. Thank you, Crystal. Thank you, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Bye, bye. Idan Segal: Ciao. Mordy Oberstein: Brilliant fellow, no? Crystal Carter: Idan never ceases to amaze. I think that he just delivers. I think there's such amazing content that comes out of that team and the way that they approach it is incredible. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why we go across the Wixverse. There's so many awesome people here. By the way, there's so many people out there in the SEO world who are not super famous who are doing super amazing things. [00:41:43] Snappy News So just know that. You know what else might be news to you other than the fact that there are SEOs out there who don't have huge profiles? The actual news, the actual news. The actual SEO, snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Let's get right into it because otherwise it wouldn't be snappy. First up for the master of disaster and last week's guest Barry, made the Schwartz be with you. From search engine round table, new Google featured snippet with multiple answers, new design call outs and more. Essentially what we have here is a featured snippet on a gray background with a call out i.e. bolded text that basically gives you the answer to the query and multiple answers from multiple URLs to boot. I'm covering this because this has been the fifth or sixth test where Google's actually using multiple URLs inside of the feature snippet. It's a big shift in how they're thinking about feature snippets and search overall. In my honest opinion, Asher just covered this and why I think Google is doing this on the Wix SEO hub. I'll link to that and I'll link to Barry's article where you can see what this feature snippet looks like. So check out the show notes. Okay. More on the old HCU the Helpful Content Update from SEJ, Search Engine Journals, Matt Southern. Google, helpful content signal, make it stronger with next core update. So the helpful content update might be a strong part of the ranking equation as time goes on. It was not a very potent part of the equation this go around as the update, as Google confirmed, has finished rolling out. This actually kind of makes sense as the HCU as we call it, the Helpful Content Update is based on machine learning properties and the machine needs to learn. And as it learns, it'll be more powerful than anything the SERP has ever known before. Okay. Maybe that's hyperbolic, but it does make sense that as time goes on, as the machine learns more, it will be a greater factor in the ranking equation. So Helpful Content Update, go get some learning done and come back soon, you hear. And with that, that is the snappiest of news. And what a set of news that was, no? Crystal Carter: It as very news news to me. Mordy Oberstein: That was very newsy. It was newsworthy, Newsies, good movie. Classic growing up as a kid, Christian Bale. Crystal Carter: I was just about to say that people don't realize the American Psycho was in Newsies. Mordy Oberstein: He was. Dancing around singing about newspapers. Crystal Carter: Do you want some news? Because he's Batman as well. That was my Batman. Mordy Oberstein: News. Crystal Carter: That's a much better Batman. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. I have specialties in doing Batman voices. Now let's talk about other stuff about SEO. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Again, before we leave you and thank you so much for listening all the way through to this point, we want to make sure that you understand that there is so much great SEO information out there besides just this podcast. And a lot of it comes from the SEO industry itself, which means the people, the people are the industry. [00:46:31] Follow of the Week And today we're going to share who you should be following out there in Twitter. And that person is Crystal. No, it is crystal. Crystal Carter: It's not me. Mordy Oberstein: You are someone we should follow. It's not what I meant. But crystal, who are we following this week? Crystal Carter: Today I would like to discuss, and I would like to put a little shine on Lazarina Stoy. I think she's amazing. She's an SEO, she's like a data phenom. She's really- Mordy Oberstein: Machine learning. Crystal Carter: Right. She's really into machine learning and she's got some great, great resources that she has particularly around keywords. She has a tool called the keyword search intent classifier tool. And it's a Google sheet that you can use to understand your keywords better and to understand the intent behind them. She also has some really good resources around big data sets as well. So she's a great person to follow. She tinkers a lot and makes a lot of really cool resources and shares some really good stuff. And she's just really, really clever. I think that if you're interested in keywords, you're interested in machine learning, you're interested in checking out somebody who's doing really cool stuff follow Lazarina. Mordy Oberstein: She's doing some really cool stuff. And that's @LazarinaStoy on Twitter. L-A-Z-A-R-I-N-A-S-T-O-Y. And of course we'll link to her Twitter profile in the show notes for this podcast. Folks, that's it. That's that's all we got. I know you wanted more, but that's all we got for you this week. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's UP podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry we're back next week with an all new episode diving into Ooh, ranking factors. Should you care? Crystal Carter: Should you? Mordy Oberstein: We have different point of views on this one I think. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, we kind of do. Mordy Oberstein: Oh boy. Going to be some drama. Well- Crystal Carter: It's going to get heated. [inaudible 00:46:43] at the guacamole discussions though. Mordy Oberstein: I will draw lines in the sand. You should not cross them. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO learning hub 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 hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Until next time everyone peace, love and SEO. See ya. Crystal Carter: Bye. 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Change. It's the one constant in life…and Google. What we relied on back years ago on the SERP (10 Blue Links) is a distant memory as search engines have added features to match the customer’s intent and journey. Mordy and Crystal tackle the challenges and opportunities of SERP features with Kevin Indig, creator of the Growth Memo newsletter and host of the Tech Bound podcast. Jump in as we look at the SERP and all of the boxes and rectangles and squares and expandable carousels, and tabs, and more. Learn what Google’s SERP features say about users and Google itself… and how you can leverage them both tactically and strategically. The team also has Fun with People Also Asked again this week with a case that shows maybe you shouldn’t tie all your content to the questions inside of the PAA box! Back SERP Features - Google's secret sauce Change. It's the one constant in life…and Google. What we relied on back years ago on the SERP (10 Blue Links) is a distant memory as search engines have added features to match the customer’s intent and journey. Mordy and Crystal tackle the challenges and opportunities of SERP features with Kevin Indig, creator of the Growth Memo newsletter and host of the Tech Bound podcast. Jump in as we look at the SERP and all of the boxes and rectangles and squares and expandable carousels, and tabs, and more. Learn what Google’s SERP features say about users and Google itself… and how you can leverage them both tactically and strategically. The team also has Fun with People Also Asked again this week with a case that shows maybe you shouldn’t tie all your content to the questions inside of the PAA box! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 11 | November 2, 2022 | 42 MIN 00:00 / 41:34 This week’s guests Kevin Indig Kevin Indig is a strategic Growth Advisor, creator of the Growth Memo newsletter and host of the Tech Bound podcast. He ran SEO organizations for companies like Shopify, G2 and Atlassian, consulted for big brands like Ramp, Eventbrite, or Finder and is an active angel investor. Kevin believes is on a quest to accelerate technology that can solve impactful problems. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's a new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPs Up. Aloha, mahalo, for joining this SERPs Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by our one, our only, Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, all you groovy internet people. It's me, it's you, it's all of us. We're here. Hello. Mordy Oberstein: And it's another special groovy internet person, but I'm not going to tell you who it is. But he'll be joining us shortly. He's quite groovy. Crystal Carter: Very groovy, very groovy. Mordy Oberstein: He might have a massive hangover at this point, but he's quite groovy. Crystal Carter: Groovy, insightful. Mordy Oberstein: I wonder who could it be? Who could it be? Crystal Carter: Who could it be? Who could it be? Who could it possibly be? It's very interesting, it's our first time having a guest on this portion of the show, so it's great. Mordy Oberstein: It is, which reminds us that this podcast and this portion of the show, as all the rest of the portions of the show, are brought to you by Wix, where you can pragmatically build, create custom site functionality. Integrate with all sorts of tools, customize and scale the heck out of your Wix website with our own full stack dev tool, Velo. By the way, shout out to Colt Sliver for writing an awesome post, I'll link to it in the show notes, about doing that. Check it out at wix.com/velo. Okay, crazy show today. We're talking about boxes, lots of boxes. Boxes, boxes everywhere and not a URL to spare. Hi, I'm an SEO poet. Crystal Carter: You can't keep me in a box. Don't fence me in. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, I guess you can keep us in a box, because basically this week we're diving into the squares, rectangles, carousels, drop down menus that Google loves showing us on the results page as we take a very special dive into Google's special SERP features. We'll talk which features matter, how to best leverage Google's SERP features, what they mean for the SERP and for you and your competitors and your family and your family of your competitors. You get a SERP feature, you get a SERP feature, we all get a SERP feature. Hopefully, we all get a SERP feature. Crystal, do you have SERP feature? Crystal Carter: Do I have SERP feature? Like a featured snippet? Mordy Oberstein: Mm-hmm, maybe. Crystal Carter: Or a feature about crystals? There's probably a feature about crystals. If you look up crystals, there's probably lots of those sorts of things. Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot of SERP features about crystals. Crystal Carter: Yeah, there's special crystals that you can get that will help you to do better on your SEO. I know. Mordy Oberstein: We're going to get into all of that. We will not, however, have our usual guests share their usual thoughts in our usual clip of SEO exquisiteness. No, no, no, no, no. Rather, we're going to have a guest co-host for the majority of this podcast. Again, who can it be? Wait and see. Plus, we'll take a look at what I call the universal SERP feature, the People Also Ask box, as we explore a possible scenario where I think you should not target the questions inside the People Also Ask box, and we'll see why we have some fun with the old PAA box. And of course, of Snappy SEO News and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. Episode number 11 of the SERPs Up Podcast is live. So back in the day when you searched for something on Google, you got a list of results and ads. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we call them the plain blue links. Mordy Oberstein: Right. The 10 blue links, which we still call them the 10 blue links, even though there are not 10 anymore. Crystal Carter: No, there's not 10. You can expand it if you try and change your settings to show 100 at a time if you want. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, right and there's also the scrolling. However, well, the question I guess is, why are there not 10 anymore? Part of the reason is, well, there's a bunch of reasons, but a big part of them is SERP features. So type in pizza near me and you get a big old square block thingy with usually three local businesses where you can grab a slice, and we call this the local pack. Google, how many home runs did Babe Ruth hit? 714 in case you cared. And Google gives you the answer in a box. Same if you type in Tom Hanks movies, you get a carousel listing his movies or the weather in New York, Google gives you the forecast right there at the top of the result page. And of course, no URL's, meaning Google giving you the answer, and you don't need to visit a website anymore, which has caused a lot of perhaps needless controversy around it. I think a little bit is legit. I think a lot of the controversy around the lack of URLs is not legit, but different conversation for a different time because today we're talking about the plenty of SERP features that do and don't have a link as Google has things like, I don't know, feature snippets for when you search for how to install Windows. Google will give you a snippet with the initial steps to follow, followed by a URL with a full process. Search for your favorite sports team, and to the right of the organic results, you get a knowledge panel giving you all sorts of information on the team, including a link to their social media profiles or Wikipedia page, and even a link to the team's website. The point is, Google's results are far richer than they used to be. They're far more than just the standard organic results. SERP features play a huge role, which is why we have a very, very, very, very special guest to help sift through all of the SERP feature noise. You may know him from his very popular newsletter, Growth Memo. He's also one of the most prominent, most respected, brightest thought leaders in all of SEO land. Welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast, Kevin Indig. Kevin Indig: Mahalo. Hey. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, jumping right in with the Hawaiian theme. Kevin Indig: I'm trying to match your energy here, man. I've been to October Fest, I'm still feeling groggy. Just trying to get back to life here. Mordy Oberstein: We're glad you're plowing through the hangover to join us and talk about SERP features. It's one of the topics that you've written a lot about, and feel free to plug away at all the pieces that you wrote about, and we will link them in the show notes. But I want to start off with one thing. We've talked about in the past, the SEO world's been hyper focused on feature snippets or direct answers that have no URL, and Google, quote, unquote, "stealing clicks." But when I look at their SERP now and I see the SERP features that are there now, one of the things that stands out to me is how many filters there are, different carousels, different bubble filters, different expandable tabs that sort of get you from your initial query to other queries. And it seems to me like Google's like, we kind of understand that users, you may search for a head term or a very top level keyword, but we know you want something more specific and they're trying to get users through the SERP features to those more specific results. Crystal Carter: And in many ways, they're sort of guiding the searches. I think one of the things you see with this is, it's sort of an evolution of the mobile first thing, because essentially you're on a mobile, it can be sometimes very difficult to type out something really, really long. Whereas, it's much easier to just click the suggested, the related searches, or to click one of the SERP features that has an image and has a card and that sort of thing. How do you think that mobile plays into the evolution of SERP features, Kevin? Kevin Indig: Yeah, I think it plays into the evolution a lot. And the way that I explain this whole kind of thing with SERP features and filters to myself is that basically every user is on a journey. Every search is kind of part of a journey. And Google actually thinks about that the same way. They're very vocal and public about this. There was this very interesting case study that Google published on Think with Google. So Think with Google is their, it's a little bit of a marketing think tank. It's actually like a blog. But they published some really cool insights. And there was one case study where they showed that people who are booking a flight have over hundreds, sometimes over 500 touchpoints with Google search. And it can be small little things like how is the weather in Rome? Or do I need a Visa for Rome? Very small searches that could be yes or no. But also very long searches like booking the flight or booking a hotel or putting together an itinerary. Basically, what Google's trying to do with SERP features is they're trying to shorten the time that it takes for people to complete their search journey. And as you already correctly pointed out, sometimes you have to refine your search or change your search, and that's a little bit of friction. And instead, Google provides you little apps or little features in the search results to click on a different result or to filter results in a way that they make more sense for you. So it's all about shortening the time for people to complete their journey. And in the context of websites, that could also mean few people clicking through to websites and people staying in the search results longer where Google shows them more ads. Crystal Carter: I think that can be the case. I mean, one of the ways that I tend to advise people about trying to navigate this is to try to get more involved with the SERP feature. So you mentioned hotels and travel, Google Hotels, Google Travel, that sort of space. If you're not on the board, if you're in that space, if that's your niche, then it will be behoove you to make sure that you're eligible for that content and that you're eligible to show on that content so that even if they don't click through to you, they're seeing you regularly in that SERP feature. And it's similar for Google for Jobs and for other features as well. Have you seen that work for people or brands? Kevin Indig: For certain SERP features, absolutely. So there's some SERP features that you can quote, unquote, "rank in" or be visible in, like image carousels, video carousels, featured snippets, people also asked, those kind of things. But then there are others where you just, as a brand, sometimes you can bid, you can pay for being visible in the case of the Google Flights search module, for example, you can literal bid to be visible, but there are also some where you just can't do anything at all, like a Google Knowledge card, for example. And that's when the only thing you can do is just be aware that this happens in the search results, and understand what the impact on your traffic could be. A lot of the conversation about SERP features, it really starts with understanding. And that's not that easy because I don't think there are many tools that have a very, very accurate reflection of what's happening with SERP results. Two, there's a lot of change. So Google does a lot of testing with these SERP features. They might be seasonal even. And then three, there are all sorts of different consolations. So sometimes you'll see a featured snippet and top ads and a map pack, and then sometimes it will be just a map pack, and then other times it will be product listing ads. So there's a lot of different permutations and combinations that make all of this a bit more difficult. Crystal Carter: We think about one SERP feature at a time, but oftentimes you see a combination. So you'll see a featured snippet that also has an image carousel or also has a video, or also has an accordion dropdown. So if you're showing for one of those, then that'll affect how many people are coming to your website and you're showing for other ones as well. And yeah, I think you're entirely right about how often it changes. Looking on how search works, and they have a section about rigorous testing, and it says they're launching 750,000 search quality tests, 11,000 traffic experiments, and that sort of thing where they're testing different parts of the SERP, and they'll try features, they'll remove them, they'll add them, they'll take them away. So it can be tricky to track. Mordy Oberstein: They're super strategic about it too. For example, when they went to infinite scroll to not really infinite scroll. So two, three weeks before that, they started implementing much larger and many more visual images on mobile, which makes a lot of sense because if you're going to start infinite scroll, if you're scrolling down and it's just a standard 10 blue links kind of feel to it, it's not really engaging. So infinite scroll needs to have a more visual SERP. So what they did was they first rolled that out because they knew they were, I think, because they knew they were going to roll out infinite scroll afterwards. Now, when you go through a mobile and you scroll through after scroll, after scroll, after scroll, it kind of has almost like a social media feel to it because the SERP is so visual. Kevin Indig: Yep, totally. I think that the search results are more of a feed these days than the classic 10 blue links and use it as an intro. Matter of fact, even though desktop Google doesn't show 10 blue links anymore for most of the searches, less than a half. Actually, most of the times they show eight or nine results.. But yeah, the search results are constantly changing, it makes a lot of sense. Most platforms, and especially consumer platforms these days are feeds where if you're not happy with a result that you see right now, you just swipe or you just scroll. So it's a very, very normal behavior. And as you said, it makes a lot of sense to also visualize the search results a bit more because everything is getting more visual. Everything is also getting more oriented around videos. If you look at some of the most successful platforms, consumer platforms these days, it's all about video, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, even Spotify added more videos for podcasts and songs and all that kind of stuff. So video's kind of the format of the hour. And Google is thinking about how can they bring more video to the search results in a way that it feels native and it makes sense. And so for example, another SERP feature that has been shown up lately that's been really killing it are short videos. They're often dominated by TikTok, not always, but that's going to be another playing field where people are just going to look for the... I have a search query, or I'm on a journey, what's the one minute video answer to my problem? So that's something that brands will have to think about. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it's funny to me because the SERP is one of these places where you see something like that, where they're adding on shorts like that. And you could say, as a marketer, that's a moment to say, "Stop. Wait a second. If Google's doing that, reverse that." Oh, that must mean people are looking for that kind of content. I don't have that kind of content. I should probably be creating that kind of content, and SERP features and what Google does on the SERP, to me at least, it's great to reverse engineer that to figure out what you should be doing with your own website. Kevin Indig: A hundred percent. Crystal Carter: I think also with video, a lot of people will say, "Oh, but the thing I do is really boring." I don't know, not to say anything about tax attorneys, but you don't think about tax attorneys when you think about video, for instance. And you might say, "Oh, nobody wants to..." But that is precisely the time to make that kind of content because your competition is going to be incredibly low. So if you make any kind of content, you're going to get a lot more air time than somebody who's trying to make dance routine videos. It's going to be very difficult to compete there. But I mean, if you're a dancing tax attorney, that's even better. But yeah, I think that even if you think that it might not be a vertical that lends itself to video, be creative, try some interesting things there. And just one more thing about video and about SERP features, Google Search Console is a really good place also to get information about how you're performing on different SERP features. And Google recently updated the information that they share about videos, which is another sign that they're leaning more heavily on this type of media, and it's something to pay attention to. It's something that you can track much better now. Kevin Indig: Yeah, absolutely. But one thing that they said, Mordy, that's really smart, we wanted to comment on very quickly is that the SERP features can be compass for us. So one thing that's super important for all sorts of brands and websites to understand is this concept of user intent, which just means what are people really trying to accomplish? And since Google is trying to understand user intent as well, sometimes it can be very clear, other times very ambiguously, we can kind of use the SERP features that appear for certain keywords to understand what the actual user intent is. Are people trying to buy something? Are they trying to learn something? Are they looking for inspiration? And then tune our content toward that user intent. That's incredibly valuable. And a little bit of a hack to understand user intent at scale for lots of keywords. Mordy Oberstein: Looking back at doing that, looking at the SERP, seeing what's there now, what features Google's showing, what that means for what people are looking for, because I know you've been studying this for a long, long time. Going back, if you look back at what Google used to do and you fast forward to now, how would you describe what's changed? Kevin Indig: That's a great question. I think the SERP features themselves have become a lot better. One example are people also asked where the questions are just so much more relevant to the actual search query that people are looking for. And those little questions, those little guys, they're tuned for engagement. So oftentimes when you search, for example, for a brand and the SERP feature is, the big question is like, oh, is this brand legit? Is this brand legal? All this kind of stuff. So very tuned to engagement, and so much more relevance. Another thing that I noticed is that Google rank so much better to seasonality. One of my favorite examples is the search query or the search term Independence Day that most of the time of the year means the movie with Will Smith. But once a year, of course it means the holiday in the US, and you see that Google is very good at just finding the right time to switch the layout of the search results when people start having more of an intent that's related to the holiday, and just being present at the right time. So I feel like this whole SERP feature construct has been very, very choppy in the beginning, and now it's very smooth. It's like it's very tailored to users and it makes a lot of sense. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I've definitely seen some really cool things they do dynamically. For example, knowledge panels. Let's say you Google a sports team, if it's during their season or it's before their season, there's different news around the team. Different things are important to that team, depending upon what's going on. If you're, before the season, signing new players, contracts might be really important. During the season, stats might be really important. I'm making this up. Google changes the bubble filters there on the knowledge panel, depending on what's going on with the team at the time. So all of a sudden contracts will show up as a tab in the knowledge panel because yeah, it's the preseason. Everyone's trying to sign new players. It's amazing what they do dynamically. Crystal Carter: And I think also another one is, so within the Google business profile, you can see if a place is busy before you decide to go to the beer hall, you can see if it's busy and if you're going to have to wait in line or not, for instance. And I think that's something that's fantastic as well. And I think that's another good example of ways that Google combines some of their systems. So they're able to look at information from Google Maps, if lots of people are asking for directions to that place, then they'll know more information about that, you're also able to layer that with information on the SERP and lots of other content. So for instance, if you query something, the example I always use is vegan donuts. I like donuts. So if you're looking at vegan donuts, they'll give you a Google business profile result that says on their website, they talk about vegan donuts, even if it doesn't say it in their Google business profile. So they're able to layer lots of different parts of their tools to create dynamic information that serves the user, because Google wants to serve the user at the end of the day. Kevin Indig: It's a great call out. And while we're talking about maps, I recently did an analysis of 20,000 e-commerce keywords, and I noticed that over 80% of these keywords show a map pack. So Google is leaning very heavily into maps in general. It's a new avenue. First of all, I mean, it's very helpful product. Second of all, it's a new area where they can show a lot more ads to drive more revenue and all that good stuff. And that has a profound impact on how much traffic you can get if you're not present in a map pack. Not every business is local, but if you compete in e-commerce, then that means you also compete against local businesses, and that's kind of a new dimension of competition that a lot of businesses don't have on their radar that is really, really important to understand and track. So it might be that if Google shows a map pack at the top of the SERPs, the percentage of clicks you get from all the searches can be minimal, can be as low as even 5%, even if you rank number one. So it adds a new flavor to SERPs. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, SERP feature's great in a scenario where you really have to qualify your rankings. Ranking number one might be great, but now you might be actually below the fold, so it might not be so great. But you actually beat me to it. I was going to ask you about e-com, because it's such an interesting space when it comes to SERP features, and it's kind of what, generally speaking, what you see happening out there in the e-com space. Obviously, now you talking about the map packs, but just there's so many. There's PLAs and product carousel with multiple kinds out there. Google seems to really be immersive. And of course, that ties into Google shopping and all its efforts to beat out Amazon. So just kind of curious what you're seeing out there in the space. Kevin Indig: So the one in charge you already called is the product listings that are coming from the organic feed of Google shopping and sometimes from image search. So that is getting, it's really important. And even more poignant on mobile search. So one thing to always keep in mind is difference between desktop and mobile. And on mobile, these carousels just stick out so much more, they're so much more interactive. Mordy Oberstein: So much space. Kevin Indig: Yeah, so much more space. It's nuts. So if you can look at the difference between desktop and mobile when it comes to your keyword performance, keyword ranks, keyword click-through rate, that's a great first step to do to just get a better understanding of what's happening in keywords that are important to you. So there's one trend. Second trend what we talk about is maps. Third trend is just more image carousels, especially when it comes to inspiration. So one interesting search that I came across is smiley face nails. So apparently you can kind of, I don't know, paint emojis on your fingernails. Mordy Oberstein: I must have this now. Crystal Carter: I'll get right on that. Kevin Indig: But no, it's very interesting. And you see that there are a lot of images obviously popping up because Google wants to help people with inspiration. But some of the image search is also connected to Google shopping. So sometimes Google will mix products in image search, and that gets really interesting. That means that you might have a shortcut to compete in a very competitive search result with an image instead of an organic listing. And it opens up a whole new playing field for SEOs and for driving traffic and maybe even conversions. So image search, getting really important. And then a fourth trend that I would add is product listing ads. Product listing ads are very different than the classic top ads, which are just text, product listing ads have images, they might have reviews, pricing, shipping information. They're very, very engaging for users. Users love to click them, and they have a very different kind of feel than the classic ads because they already show the product, they already show a lot of information about the product. So people are much more likely to click on product listing ads than the classic ads, which means less traffic for organic results as well. Crystal Carter: And I think it's interesting with those ads, how to differentiate when you have similar products, because you have to figure out which part of the SERP feature will make the difference with the click-through. So you talked about some of the things they showed, and sometimes they don't show the review for the product, sometimes it'll show the review for the shop, and there's images, there's prices, you can have promotions on it. Lots of information there. In my experience, I've seen it where I had a client who was doing some of that, and we had it where everyone was selling the same product, everybody pretty much had the same product. So I just picked one that had a ridiculous picture. So everyone was selling, it was like a uniform, and everyone's uniforms were gray and black and beige, and they had a polka-dotted one. And I was like, "We put that one in the picture." And they were like, "What?" I was like, "You put that one in the picture because it'll stand out." And it did. And they got loads of traffic to the other stuff. But it's important to figure out ways to differentiate yourself and to make yourself look unique. Kevin Indig: A hundred percent. Yep, I think this whole idea of image optimization is going to become much more important. Not in the classic sense of alt tag and file name and surrounding text, but much more like what can you see in the image? What does a background look like? How can you stand out just a little more than your competition? It's going to be a thing. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. I've done a lot on visual search in the last few months, but yeah I agree. Mordy Oberstein: We'll link to it in the show notes. Crystal Carter: I agree. Mordy Oberstein: So I'll sum this up, because we're running out of time, unfortunately. We could talk about this literally for another hour or two hours. If you're serious about ranking and you're serious about doing well organically and bringing in traffic, you need to go to the SERP and look at all the boxes and rectangles and squares, and expandable carousel and tabs and whatnot, because if you don't, you really don't know what's happening and you really don't know what opportunities are there waiting for you. Crystal Carter: Say it louder, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Don't dare me to do that because you know that I will. Crystal Carter: Look at the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: Look at the SERP. Crystal Carter: Just actually Google it. Actually follow the user journey that someone would follow to find your product or website or whatever. Mordy Oberstein: And when you do, search for Kevin Indig so you can find him. Of course, we'll link to all of your wonderful assets you produce, your social profiles, everything, you just let us know. Follow the links Kevin, let us know what you want us to link to and we'll link to it in the show notes. Kevin Indig: Thanks so much. I'll send you a Google Talk or a spreadsheet. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, please if you could, keep it at a minimum of like two or three tabs. Seriously, Kevin, thank you so much. Always great talking with you, and I'm not sure how to end this, because we've never had a guest on this show before. I'm so lost, we didn't even thank you. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much, Kevin, it's been an absolute pleasure. Kevin Indig: Thank you as well. Maybe we just don't end this, maybe we just stay on for a day or something. Mordy Oberstein: Just silence for a second. Kevin Indig: Until we go to sleep. Mordy Oberstein: Perfect. That was absolutely amazing. You should definitely follow Kevin on social media. He is not our follow of the week, not that he doesn't qualify to be, but he's already here. We have another follow of the week, but that's later. But first, here's a fun little game we play. Both to sort of mess with each other by a tad to understand what's happening with Google. And in this case, I think it highlights some of Google's shortcomings, which by the way, everyone has shortcomings, search engines included. We're all just people. Crystal Carter: They're handling thousands and thousands and thousands of searches every day. And my entire back catalog of every image I've ever taken a screenshot on my phone, they're busy. It's a lot to manage. Mordy Oberstein: It's a lot. So we feel, oh, Google's going to get it right. They're not supposed to get it right every time. So when I say I don't think they got it right this time, I don't mean it in a negative way. I mean, they're just being human. Crystal Carter: Google's being human. Is that okay? Mordy Oberstein: I'm taking this to a new level, I don't want SEOs to get upset at me for saying that, but I said it, and we're just going to leave it at that for a minute. But first off, wouldn't it be super scary if they always got it right? I'd be freaked out if every single time Google got it exactly right, I would think something's not right here. Crystal Carter: Well, and also they can only work with the material they got. So if other people haven't written anything that's decent, what are you going to do? Mordy Oberstein: People gloss over that point all the time. I just spoke about that in the conference in Brazil, can't remember the name. Terrible. But I literally spoke about it, it's our fault. It's not Google's fault, it's our fault. But anyway- Crystal Carter: Make better content. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Make better content. Say it louder, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Make better content. Mordy Oberstein: Yo, make better content. Anyway, we're looking at the four, well usually four, questions Google lists on the results page, when you expand the tabs, they sit and reveal a secret answer along with the URL. Well, usually it's with a URL, sometimes not. And it's not really a secret answer. Anyway, let's have some fun with, People Also Ask. Crystal, this time you're on the hot seat. Crystal Carter: Okay all right, I'm ready. What are we doing? Mordy Oberstein: Are you ready? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So I'm going to ask Crystal, I typed in a keyword, and this has to do with Crystal's background. Crystal can elaborate or not elaborate, it's not my business. But the keyword is- Crystal Carter: I'm surprised, I don't know what you're going to ask me. Mordy Oberstein: I know you don't know. I know you don't know. This could be terrible and horrible or fantastic. We don't know how it's going to go yet. We're doing it live. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Is it fair that military families have to move so often? That's the key word. Crystal Carter: Oh, this is... Okay. So just the background on the background is that I'm a military brat. So yes, I would say... Oh, I don't know. Yes, might the answer be? Or they might have two because it's not easy for families and stuff, but likes families often move because of …. Mordy Oberstein: Right, that's true. Crystal Carter: So yeah, I would say they might have... What does is say? Mordy Oberstein: Let's see what Google asks. They have four questions. Crystal Carter: Oh, I thought that was the question. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm sorry. That was the keyword I put in. Crystal Carter: Okay, got you. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. That keyword brought up what people also asked, So there are four questions, and when I expand any of the tabs, I get an answer. So let's start with the first one, I have a whole point to this, at the end of this. It's not just silliness for the sake of silliness. There is an SEO point to all of this. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. First question. How often do military families have to move? Crystal Carter: Ooh. In my experience, one to two years. Mordy Oberstein: Well, not bad. About every three years. Military families move about every three years, but sometimes more frequently. The move is called a PCS or a Permanent Change of Station. Okay. Crystal Carter: Okay, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: All right, so far so good. Okay. Second question. Why do military families have to move so much? Crystal Carter: Because whoever's in the military, the adult who's in the family, who's in the military, will change where they're based. So they might be based in Hawaii, they might be based in Florida, they might be based in San Diego, but when they switch where they're based, then the family has to move. Mordy Oberstein: And that's basically what Google says. So far we're so good. Google's asking questions, Crystal's giving the answers. We're all locked up here. How often do military spouses move? Crystal Carter: They tend to move with their spouse. So the same as the family, if they'd said three years for the first one, I would guess they would say three years for the …. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they say every two to three years. Okay, fine. They give a whole thing. How about this question, last one. Do military spouses have to move? Crystal Carter: Well, the answer is no. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Well, no one. Yeah, they could say, "I want a divorce, I'm not doing this." Crystal Carter: I mean, to give you real insight to it, sometimes people decide like, "Oh, we'll stay. You'll go for a little while," because , don't know if you want to get into it, but sometimes sailors are out to sea for most of the time anyway, so it doesn't make much difference whether they're there or not. Anyway, it's a whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: Crystal, Google says the good news is that the military will pay for your spouse to move as long as you live in the same home together, depending on the amount of leave you have, your spouse may be the one making most of the moving arrangements, which doesn't really answer the question, but okay. So what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Crystal Carter: Yeah, I'm interested in where you're going. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. First off, I need to ask Crystal, where was the coolest place you lived? Crystal Carter: Oh, this is what this is. This is the setup for the whole thing. This is the whole reason why this is. The coolest place I ever lived was in Hawaii. I lived in Hawaii, I lived in O'ahu. So yes, I did mayday presentations and learned how to do the hula, and we did mele kalikimaka, and all of that stuff. So yeah, that- Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. And was it frustrating? So, setting you up here. I'm setting you up. But was it frustrating to have to move so often? Was that fun? Crystal Carter: It was tricky, but it was fun sometimes. When we moved to Hawaii, I lived in a hotel for three months when we first got there, and we were right next to the Hilton. And so we got to see the fireworks every Friday night. Mordy Oberstein: That is actually awesome. Okay, fireworks are awesome. So two points here, and this kind of goes about what I was just saying a second, one is, okay, Google's a little bit redundant with the whole spouse moving thing. And Google. People also ask sometimes they do that, and that happens. But what I was really interested in, when I was searching this, imagine I was putting myself in your shoes. I'm a kid, I'm going to have to move. Think of the keyword. Is it fair that military families have to move so often and Google totally missed a word fair. Crystal Carter: That's very interesting, you're right. That is interesting. So there's an emotion there. Mordy Oberstein: There's an emotion. There's a bias in the question. The question assumes it's not fair. And what I'm already looking for is either information about why this has to be this way or some sort of emotional support of an identification. So maybe a blog. I would've thought better than a People Also Ask, what would've been cool to show here, which they didn't show, would be a carousel from Quora or Reddit or one of the other social media platforms where I can see other people's answers, not Google's answer to the question, which goes back to my original point. Sometimes, which by the way, on mobile, they do have a bunch of those carousels there, whatever. My original point is, sometimes we say, "People also ask, take those questions, great keyword research tool, use them, write a blog post, take those four questions and write a blog post for each one of them." In this case, I don't know, maybe you shouldn't use them. Crystal Carter: So I sometimes find, when I'm searching, that sometimes the People Also Ask doesn't make sense. Sometimes I'm like, "I'm not asking that at all. I don't know why anyone would ask that, that's nothing to do with it." And I think it's interesting because when he first asked me the question I thought you were asking me the People Also Ask, and I said, "Sometimes it's tricky." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, see. Sometimes it's part of it. It's part of the intent. Crystal Carter: So yeah, because sometimes it's tricky. And I think that that question is asking for some empathy, isn't it? It's asking for some empathy about a situation that is sometimes tricky. I think to your point, if that is a query that you're seeing that people are actually asking, if you're finding that people are asking that in your conversations with people, or that you've seen it show up in a tool, that people are genuinely asking that or that's a query people have, answer the question. Create content that answers the question, not necessarily content that the shows in People Also Ask because the People Also Ask questions are generated, regularly. So they will generate new ones if they're finding that people aren't actually engaging with the People also ask questions that they have, and also with regards to which content they show in the answers, they change around what that is. So if you're able to better answer that question than the content that's currently there, then you can move into that spot and they might also even create a question based on your content. So I think that as you say, it's worth referencing it, but also thinking with your own brain, and- Mordy Oberstein: And think a little bit, does this actually solve the person's question? If they expand the tab, Like why's this question even here? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Think qualitatively, not just quantitative. SEO is not linear. That's the lesson for today, from the SERP features to the people also ask box, which is a SERP feature, don't think linearly about the SERP. Crystal Carter: There we go. Thank you very much. That was quite the journey for me, Mordy. I was …. Mordy Oberstein: I'm sorry to make you relive your childhood, just for the sake of a podcast. Crystal Carter: You're just like, "Hey there. How about some childhood trauma?" No, I'm kidding. My childhood was lovely. I had a lovely childhood. It was very nice. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Well, every time you've talked about it, it's only been positive, things like going to Hawaii. So I figured I can go there. Crystal Carter: Yeah, no, it's fine. It's fine. But no, I think you're right about empathy. But also I think sometimes with content, you are talking about sensitive issues, and it's important to approach that content sensitively to be able to help users. And if you're able to show compassion in your content, then that is something that will engage with clients, with users, and with the people that are engaging with that content a lot more than just a keyword because they'll think, oh, this company, this person, this author, has some empathy with my situation. And that's a really good thing. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, empathy is always good. I think that's the moral of the story; empathy is always good. You know what else is always good? Crystal Carter: What's always good? Mordy Oberstein: News. Crystal Carter: News. Mordy Oberstein: News is always good. Everyone loves news. So here is some Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Been a hot minute since I've come across a really nice SEO study, but our dear friends at Semrush and the author of the... Been a hot minute since I've come across a really nice SEO study. But our dear friends at Sun Rush, by the way, plug for the Wix, Semrush integration, check that out, have a really nice study for us authored by Marcus Tober. This one looks at zero click searches. Let me take y'all back in time a little bit. A few years ago, Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, and SparkToro, did a study showing that 50% of all Google searches do not result in a click, and the SEO world went nuts. "Google is stealing clicks." "No one needs websites the way Google is set up." "They're answering all the questions themselves," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The most recent data Rand put out was that Google searches result in, 65% of them, result in zero clicks. Now, nothing against the study itself or Rand, who has contributed greatly to the SEO community over the years, but this was not my favorite study for two reasons. One, 50% of searches not resulting in a click to a URL on the Google results page isn't entirely helpful. For example, how many of those no clicks were actually query refinement or keyword refinement, meaning you search, you don't find exactly what you're looking for on that set of Google results. So you search again, that's a zero click, or clicks where you don't click a URL, for example, but you click on one of the other filters Google has on the page. So for example, you move from the traditional Google SERP and you click on where it says images, and you look at all the images there, that's technically a zero click search. So how many of those zero clicks that we studied way back when were actually those, which is not the zero click, the nefarious zero click that people are all upset about. The other reason why I didn't really love the study is that not every time there's no click on a set of Google results, is that a bad thing? I don't want a website, when I type in weather in New York City or Yankees score, I don't want to go to a website. I'll be honest with you. As a user, I just want the answer. And that's just the evolution of content delivery. Which is, by the way, Semrush in their study does a really good job of explaining. So the end of the whole study itself, there's a whole nice piece on the analysis of the study, so check that part of the study out as well. Now, the Semrush study was a little bit more nuanced, or a lot of bit more nuanced. It tried to better explain the data categories than split them up as much as possible. For example, as opposed to saying, "65% of all searches on Google do not result into a... Do not result." Let's try that again. "Do not result in a click to a URL." Semrush showed, well, about 10% of searches were users moving from one SERP to the next. For example, they were on the main SERP. They typed in, Tom Brady, they went to the main SERP obviously, and then they clicked maybe on images and looked at all the pictures of Tom Brady, whatever it is. Semrush separated those out, and those were about 10% of the time that was happening. So that's 10% of zero clicks are just people moving from maybe the main SERP to, let's say, the shopping results. Now, 18% were zero clicks, but were actually query refinement, where you maybe entered another new keyword. Meaning, you searched for one thing, didn't see what you found, didn't click on anything, and typed in a new keyword or a more specific keyword. Now within that, there might be some actual zero search, zero click searches in there, mixed in with that, according to the Semrush data, but fine. On top of that, there are a legit 25% of cases where it's a real zero click, where you just maybe found the answer on the SERP. Technically speaking, the way the data's structured, you could have just left the page open for two minutes and not have done anything, the Semrush data would've counted a zero click. But leave that aside, the bottom line is, around 25% of the time, perhaps a little more, if you look at the data the way it's structured, perhaps. I'll try that again, bottom line is, around 25% of the time, perhaps a little bit more, based upon how the data is structured, you're not seeing a click to organic result or an organic URL, when someone searches on Google, which is far, far less than 65%. So great job, Semrush, love the nuance. Have a look at the study. We'll obviously link to it in the show notes. It's really important to understand. I will say this, it's really important to understand the Google ecosystem, how things are set up, whether you're an SEO, whether you're a digital marketer, whether you're a business owner, whether you're a site... Whatever it is, super important to understand the ecosystem, and this study does a great job of doing that. So thank you Semrush, and that's all this week for the Snappy News. Now, before we duly depart, we have one last little treat for you, and that's our follow of the week. And do we have a treat for you this week? We do. Crystal Carter: We do. Mordy Oberstein: Isn't every week>? Let's be honest. Crystal Carter: It's all a gift, you're welcome people. No, I'm kidding. Mordy Oberstein: Our gift this week from a data scientist at Moz, he's the doctor of SEO, Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz. Crystal Carter: Is there a doctor in the house? I think there is. Mordy Oberstein: There is now. Crystal Carter: Dr. Pete. Mordy Oberstein: Dr. Pete. He's amazing. Crystal Carter: He's so smart and so nice. I love his writing because he talks about some fantastic things around SERP features, around things that are happening, and around what's happening with Google algorithms and all sorts of things. But he always writes with such humility and such empathy to people who are trying to figure out what's happening. He had an article about featured snippets. He was like, "Featured snippets are down this much." And then the next week he was like, "They're back. What was that about?" And that was the first time I was like, "Yeah, okay, Dr. Pete. I'm with you on this." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there should be a button, like a sticker, "I'm with Dr. Pete." Crystal Carter: I'm with Dr. Pete. I'm not sure if he wants all of us with him. I'm sure that sometimes he'd like to just go places by himself and not have hoards of SEOs tagging along. Mordy Oberstein: Well, we are all following him now. Crystal Carter: We all follow him. Everyone should follow him. Also, follow him because he has some amazing cleaning tips. He's really into wipes. Mordy Oberstein: Remember his tweet about baby wipes? And it's true. Always use baby wipes to clean because they're great at cleaning everything. Crystal Carter: I did not know this. I did not see that one. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a good tip from Dr. Pete. Crystal Carter: I think I saw one about handheld vacuum cleaners, which like the handheld vacuum cleaner literally changed my life. It's literally a life-changing device. You heard it here first people. Mordy Oberstein: And also because he happens to be one of the most honest people in the SEO industry. When Dr. Pete gets something... We all get things wrong but Dr. Pete will say, "Yeah, in that study I did, that was a mistake," and he'll correct it. So you can trust that the data that you're looking at from Dr. Pete has been thoroughly analyzed, questioned, and if there's a problem with it, Dr. Pete will be the first one to point that out, which is very rare and unusual. It's a great trait. Crystal Carter: He's clever, he's kind, he's a good dude. And apparently his house is like clean AF. I've never been there, but from what I hear, he keeps it very clean. Mordy Oberstein: Runs a clean ship, huh? Crystal Carter: Clean ship. Mordy Oberstein: Like they do in the military, like you did in Hawaii, going back full circle. Anyway, Dr. Pete, you could find him on Twitter. We'll link to it in the show notes. But his Twitter handle is @dr, as in doctor, underscore, Pete, P-E-T-E. So, D-R underscore P-E-T-E, check it out on Twitter. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERPs Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with an all new episode as we dive into Google Search Console. Is it the most important SEO tool? Crystal Carter: We'll find out. Mordy Oberstein: We'll find out. Look for, wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Kevin Indig Dr. Pete Meyers Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Programmatic content expansion with Python and Velo Growth Memo News: Zero-Clicks Study Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Kevin Indig Dr. Pete Meyers Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Programmatic content expansion with Python and Velo Growth Memo News: Zero-Clicks Study Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's a new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPs Up. Aloha, mahalo, for joining this SERPs Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by our one, our only, Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, all you groovy internet people. It's me, it's you, it's all of us. We're here. Hello. Mordy Oberstein: And it's another special groovy internet person, but I'm not going to tell you who it is. But he'll be joining us shortly. He's quite groovy. Crystal Carter: Very groovy, very groovy. Mordy Oberstein: He might have a massive hangover at this point, but he's quite groovy. Crystal Carter: Groovy, insightful. Mordy Oberstein: I wonder who could it be? Who could it be? Crystal Carter: Who could it be? Who could it be? Who could it possibly be? It's very interesting, it's our first time having a guest on this portion of the show, so it's great. Mordy Oberstein: It is, which reminds us that this podcast and this portion of the show, as all the rest of the portions of the show, are brought to you by Wix, where you can pragmatically build, create custom site functionality. Integrate with all sorts of tools, customize and scale the heck out of your Wix website with our own full stack dev tool, Velo. By the way, shout out to Colt Sliver for writing an awesome post, I'll link to it in the show notes, about doing that. Check it out at wix.com/velo. Okay, crazy show today. We're talking about boxes, lots of boxes. Boxes, boxes everywhere and not a URL to spare. Hi, I'm an SEO poet. Crystal Carter: You can't keep me in a box. Don't fence me in. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, I guess you can keep us in a box, because basically this week we're diving into the squares, rectangles, carousels, drop down menus that Google loves showing us on the results page as we take a very special dive into Google's special SERP features. We'll talk which features matter, how to best leverage Google's SERP features, what they mean for the SERP and for you and your competitors and your family and your family of your competitors. You get a SERP feature, you get a SERP feature, we all get a SERP feature. Hopefully, we all get a SERP feature. Crystal, do you have SERP feature? Crystal Carter: Do I have SERP feature? Like a featured snippet? Mordy Oberstein: Mm-hmm, maybe. Crystal Carter: Or a feature about crystals? There's probably a feature about crystals. If you look up crystals, there's probably lots of those sorts of things. Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot of SERP features about crystals. Crystal Carter: Yeah, there's special crystals that you can get that will help you to do better on your SEO. I know. Mordy Oberstein: We're going to get into all of that. We will not, however, have our usual guests share their usual thoughts in our usual clip of SEO exquisiteness. No, no, no, no, no. Rather, we're going to have a guest co-host for the majority of this podcast. Again, who can it be? Wait and see. Plus, we'll take a look at what I call the universal SERP feature, the People Also Ask box, as we explore a possible scenario where I think you should not target the questions inside the People Also Ask box, and we'll see why we have some fun with the old PAA box. And of course, of Snappy SEO News and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. Episode number 11 of the SERPs Up Podcast is live. So back in the day when you searched for something on Google, you got a list of results and ads. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we call them the plain blue links. Mordy Oberstein: Right. The 10 blue links, which we still call them the 10 blue links, even though there are not 10 anymore. Crystal Carter: No, there's not 10. You can expand it if you try and change your settings to show 100 at a time if you want. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, right and there's also the scrolling. However, well, the question I guess is, why are there not 10 anymore? Part of the reason is, well, there's a bunch of reasons, but a big part of them is SERP features. So type in pizza near me and you get a big old square block thingy with usually three local businesses where you can grab a slice, and we call this the local pack. Google, how many home runs did Babe Ruth hit? 714 in case you cared. And Google gives you the answer in a box. Same if you type in Tom Hanks movies, you get a carousel listing his movies or the weather in New York, Google gives you the forecast right there at the top of the result page. And of course, no URL's, meaning Google giving you the answer, and you don't need to visit a website anymore, which has caused a lot of perhaps needless controversy around it. I think a little bit is legit. I think a lot of the controversy around the lack of URLs is not legit, but different conversation for a different time because today we're talking about the plenty of SERP features that do and don't have a link as Google has things like, I don't know, feature snippets for when you search for how to install Windows. Google will give you a snippet with the initial steps to follow, followed by a URL with a full process. Search for your favorite sports team, and to the right of the organic results, you get a knowledge panel giving you all sorts of information on the team, including a link to their social media profiles or Wikipedia page, and even a link to the team's website. The point is, Google's results are far richer than they used to be. They're far more than just the standard organic results. SERP features play a huge role, which is why we have a very, very, very, very special guest to help sift through all of the SERP feature noise. You may know him from his very popular newsletter, Growth Memo. He's also one of the most prominent, most respected, brightest thought leaders in all of SEO land. Welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast, Kevin Indig. Kevin Indig: Mahalo. Hey. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, jumping right in with the Hawaiian theme. Kevin Indig: I'm trying to match your energy here, man. I've been to October Fest, I'm still feeling groggy. Just trying to get back to life here. Mordy Oberstein: We're glad you're plowing through the hangover to join us and talk about SERP features. It's one of the topics that you've written a lot about, and feel free to plug away at all the pieces that you wrote about, and we will link them in the show notes. But I want to start off with one thing. We've talked about in the past, the SEO world's been hyper focused on feature snippets or direct answers that have no URL, and Google, quote, unquote, "stealing clicks." But when I look at their SERP now and I see the SERP features that are there now, one of the things that stands out to me is how many filters there are, different carousels, different bubble filters, different expandable tabs that sort of get you from your initial query to other queries. And it seems to me like Google's like, we kind of understand that users, you may search for a head term or a very top level keyword, but we know you want something more specific and they're trying to get users through the SERP features to those more specific results. Crystal Carter: And in many ways, they're sort of guiding the searches. I think one of the things you see with this is, it's sort of an evolution of the mobile first thing, because essentially you're on a mobile, it can be sometimes very difficult to type out something really, really long. Whereas, it's much easier to just click the suggested, the related searches, or to click one of the SERP features that has an image and has a card and that sort of thing. How do you think that mobile plays into the evolution of SERP features, Kevin? Kevin Indig: Yeah, I think it plays into the evolution a lot. And the way that I explain this whole kind of thing with SERP features and filters to myself is that basically every user is on a journey. Every search is kind of part of a journey. And Google actually thinks about that the same way. They're very vocal and public about this. There was this very interesting case study that Google published on Think with Google. So Think with Google is their, it's a little bit of a marketing think tank. It's actually like a blog. But they published some really cool insights. And there was one case study where they showed that people who are booking a flight have over hundreds, sometimes over 500 touchpoints with Google search. And it can be small little things like how is the weather in Rome? Or do I need a Visa for Rome? Very small searches that could be yes or no. But also very long searches like booking the flight or booking a hotel or putting together an itinerary. Basically, what Google's trying to do with SERP features is they're trying to shorten the time that it takes for people to complete their search journey. And as you already correctly pointed out, sometimes you have to refine your search or change your search, and that's a little bit of friction. And instead, Google provides you little apps or little features in the search results to click on a different result or to filter results in a way that they make more sense for you. So it's all about shortening the time for people to complete their journey. And in the context of websites, that could also mean few people clicking through to websites and people staying in the search results longer where Google shows them more ads. Crystal Carter: I think that can be the case. I mean, one of the ways that I tend to advise people about trying to navigate this is to try to get more involved with the SERP feature. So you mentioned hotels and travel, Google Hotels, Google Travel, that sort of space. If you're not on the board, if you're in that space, if that's your niche, then it will be behoove you to make sure that you're eligible for that content and that you're eligible to show on that content so that even if they don't click through to you, they're seeing you regularly in that SERP feature. And it's similar for Google for Jobs and for other features as well. Have you seen that work for people or brands? Kevin Indig: For certain SERP features, absolutely. So there's some SERP features that you can quote, unquote, "rank in" or be visible in, like image carousels, video carousels, featured snippets, people also asked, those kind of things. But then there are others where you just, as a brand, sometimes you can bid, you can pay for being visible in the case of the Google Flights search module, for example, you can literal bid to be visible, but there are also some where you just can't do anything at all, like a Google Knowledge card, for example. And that's when the only thing you can do is just be aware that this happens in the search results, and understand what the impact on your traffic could be. A lot of the conversation about SERP features, it really starts with understanding. And that's not that easy because I don't think there are many tools that have a very, very accurate reflection of what's happening with SERP results. Two, there's a lot of change. So Google does a lot of testing with these SERP features. They might be seasonal even. And then three, there are all sorts of different consolations. So sometimes you'll see a featured snippet and top ads and a map pack, and then sometimes it will be just a map pack, and then other times it will be product listing ads. So there's a lot of different permutations and combinations that make all of this a bit more difficult. Crystal Carter: We think about one SERP feature at a time, but oftentimes you see a combination. So you'll see a featured snippet that also has an image carousel or also has a video, or also has an accordion dropdown. So if you're showing for one of those, then that'll affect how many people are coming to your website and you're showing for other ones as well. And yeah, I think you're entirely right about how often it changes. Looking on how search works, and they have a section about rigorous testing, and it says they're launching 750,000 search quality tests, 11,000 traffic experiments, and that sort of thing where they're testing different parts of the SERP, and they'll try features, they'll remove them, they'll add them, they'll take them away. So it can be tricky to track. Mordy Oberstein: They're super strategic about it too. For example, when they went to infinite scroll to not really infinite scroll. So two, three weeks before that, they started implementing much larger and many more visual images on mobile, which makes a lot of sense because if you're going to start infinite scroll, if you're scrolling down and it's just a standard 10 blue links kind of feel to it, it's not really engaging. So infinite scroll needs to have a more visual SERP. So what they did was they first rolled that out because they knew they were, I think, because they knew they were going to roll out infinite scroll afterwards. Now, when you go through a mobile and you scroll through after scroll, after scroll, after scroll, it kind of has almost like a social media feel to it because the SERP is so visual. Kevin Indig: Yep, totally. I think that the search results are more of a feed these days than the classic 10 blue links and use it as an intro. Matter of fact, even though desktop Google doesn't show 10 blue links anymore for most of the searches, less than a half. Actually, most of the times they show eight or nine results.. But yeah, the search results are constantly changing, it makes a lot of sense. Most platforms, and especially consumer platforms these days are feeds where if you're not happy with a result that you see right now, you just swipe or you just scroll. So it's a very, very normal behavior. And as you said, it makes a lot of sense to also visualize the search results a bit more because everything is getting more visual. Everything is also getting more oriented around videos. If you look at some of the most successful platforms, consumer platforms these days, it's all about video, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, even Spotify added more videos for podcasts and songs and all that kind of stuff. So video's kind of the format of the hour. And Google is thinking about how can they bring more video to the search results in a way that it feels native and it makes sense. And so for example, another SERP feature that has been shown up lately that's been really killing it are short videos. They're often dominated by TikTok, not always, but that's going to be another playing field where people are just going to look for the... I have a search query, or I'm on a journey, what's the one minute video answer to my problem? So that's something that brands will have to think about. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it's funny to me because the SERP is one of these places where you see something like that, where they're adding on shorts like that. And you could say, as a marketer, that's a moment to say, "Stop. Wait a second. If Google's doing that, reverse that." Oh, that must mean people are looking for that kind of content. I don't have that kind of content. I should probably be creating that kind of content, and SERP features and what Google does on the SERP, to me at least, it's great to reverse engineer that to figure out what you should be doing with your own website. Kevin Indig: A hundred percent. Crystal Carter: I think also with video, a lot of people will say, "Oh, but the thing I do is really boring." I don't know, not to say anything about tax attorneys, but you don't think about tax attorneys when you think about video, for instance. And you might say, "Oh, nobody wants to..." But that is precisely the time to make that kind of content because your competition is going to be incredibly low. So if you make any kind of content, you're going to get a lot more air time than somebody who's trying to make dance routine videos. It's going to be very difficult to compete there. But I mean, if you're a dancing tax attorney, that's even better. But yeah, I think that even if you think that it might not be a vertical that lends itself to video, be creative, try some interesting things there. And just one more thing about video and about SERP features, Google Search Console is a really good place also to get information about how you're performing on different SERP features. And Google recently updated the information that they share about videos, which is another sign that they're leaning more heavily on this type of media, and it's something to pay attention to. It's something that you can track much better now. Kevin Indig: Yeah, absolutely. But one thing that they said, Mordy, that's really smart, we wanted to comment on very quickly is that the SERP features can be compass for us. So one thing that's super important for all sorts of brands and websites to understand is this concept of user intent, which just means what are people really trying to accomplish? And since Google is trying to understand user intent as well, sometimes it can be very clear, other times very ambiguously, we can kind of use the SERP features that appear for certain keywords to understand what the actual user intent is. Are people trying to buy something? Are they trying to learn something? Are they looking for inspiration? And then tune our content toward that user intent. That's incredibly valuable. And a little bit of a hack to understand user intent at scale for lots of keywords. Mordy Oberstein: Looking back at doing that, looking at the SERP, seeing what's there now, what features Google's showing, what that means for what people are looking for, because I know you've been studying this for a long, long time. Going back, if you look back at what Google used to do and you fast forward to now, how would you describe what's changed? Kevin Indig: That's a great question. I think the SERP features themselves have become a lot better. One example are people also asked where the questions are just so much more relevant to the actual search query that people are looking for. And those little questions, those little guys, they're tuned for engagement. So oftentimes when you search, for example, for a brand and the SERP feature is, the big question is like, oh, is this brand legit? Is this brand legal? All this kind of stuff. So very tuned to engagement, and so much more relevance. Another thing that I noticed is that Google rank so much better to seasonality. One of my favorite examples is the search query or the search term Independence Day that most of the time of the year means the movie with Will Smith. But once a year, of course it means the holiday in the US, and you see that Google is very good at just finding the right time to switch the layout of the search results when people start having more of an intent that's related to the holiday, and just being present at the right time. So I feel like this whole SERP feature construct has been very, very choppy in the beginning, and now it's very smooth. It's like it's very tailored to users and it makes a lot of sense. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I've definitely seen some really cool things they do dynamically. For example, knowledge panels. Let's say you Google a sports team, if it's during their season or it's before their season, there's different news around the team. Different things are important to that team, depending upon what's going on. If you're, before the season, signing new players, contracts might be really important. During the season, stats might be really important. I'm making this up. Google changes the bubble filters there on the knowledge panel, depending on what's going on with the team at the time. So all of a sudden contracts will show up as a tab in the knowledge panel because yeah, it's the preseason. Everyone's trying to sign new players. It's amazing what they do dynamically. Crystal Carter: And I think also another one is, so within the Google business profile, you can see if a place is busy before you decide to go to the beer hall, you can see if it's busy and if you're going to have to wait in line or not, for instance. And I think that's something that's fantastic as well. And I think that's another good example of ways that Google combines some of their systems. So they're able to look at information from Google Maps, if lots of people are asking for directions to that place, then they'll know more information about that, you're also able to layer that with information on the SERP and lots of other content. So for instance, if you query something, the example I always use is vegan donuts. I like donuts. So if you're looking at vegan donuts, they'll give you a Google business profile result that says on their website, they talk about vegan donuts, even if it doesn't say it in their Google business profile. So they're able to layer lots of different parts of their tools to create dynamic information that serves the user, because Google wants to serve the user at the end of the day. Kevin Indig: It's a great call out. And while we're talking about maps, I recently did an analysis of 20,000 e-commerce keywords, and I noticed that over 80% of these keywords show a map pack. So Google is leaning very heavily into maps in general. It's a new avenue. First of all, I mean, it's very helpful product. Second of all, it's a new area where they can show a lot more ads to drive more revenue and all that good stuff. And that has a profound impact on how much traffic you can get if you're not present in a map pack. Not every business is local, but if you compete in e-commerce, then that means you also compete against local businesses, and that's kind of a new dimension of competition that a lot of businesses don't have on their radar that is really, really important to understand and track. So it might be that if Google shows a map pack at the top of the SERPs, the percentage of clicks you get from all the searches can be minimal, can be as low as even 5%, even if you rank number one. So it adds a new flavor to SERPs. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, SERP feature's great in a scenario where you really have to qualify your rankings. Ranking number one might be great, but now you might be actually below the fold, so it might not be so great. But you actually beat me to it. I was going to ask you about e-com, because it's such an interesting space when it comes to SERP features, and it's kind of what, generally speaking, what you see happening out there in the e-com space. Obviously, now you talking about the map packs, but just there's so many. There's PLAs and product carousel with multiple kinds out there. Google seems to really be immersive. And of course, that ties into Google shopping and all its efforts to beat out Amazon. So just kind of curious what you're seeing out there in the space. Kevin Indig: So the one in charge you already called is the product listings that are coming from the organic feed of Google shopping and sometimes from image search. So that is getting, it's really important. And even more poignant on mobile search. So one thing to always keep in mind is difference between desktop and mobile. And on mobile, these carousels just stick out so much more, they're so much more interactive. Mordy Oberstein: So much space. Kevin Indig: Yeah, so much more space. It's nuts. So if you can look at the difference between desktop and mobile when it comes to your keyword performance, keyword ranks, keyword click-through rate, that's a great first step to do to just get a better understanding of what's happening in keywords that are important to you. So there's one trend. Second trend what we talk about is maps. Third trend is just more image carousels, especially when it comes to inspiration. So one interesting search that I came across is smiley face nails. So apparently you can kind of, I don't know, paint emojis on your fingernails. Mordy Oberstein: I must have this now. Crystal Carter: I'll get right on that. Kevin Indig: But no, it's very interesting. And you see that there are a lot of images obviously popping up because Google wants to help people with inspiration. But some of the image search is also connected to Google shopping. So sometimes Google will mix products in image search, and that gets really interesting. That means that you might have a shortcut to compete in a very competitive search result with an image instead of an organic listing. And it opens up a whole new playing field for SEOs and for driving traffic and maybe even conversions. So image search, getting really important. And then a fourth trend that I would add is product listing ads. Product listing ads are very different than the classic top ads, which are just text, product listing ads have images, they might have reviews, pricing, shipping information. They're very, very engaging for users. Users love to click them, and they have a very different kind of feel than the classic ads because they already show the product, they already show a lot of information about the product. So people are much more likely to click on product listing ads than the classic ads, which means less traffic for organic results as well. Crystal Carter: And I think it's interesting with those ads, how to differentiate when you have similar products, because you have to figure out which part of the SERP feature will make the difference with the click-through. So you talked about some of the things they showed, and sometimes they don't show the review for the product, sometimes it'll show the review for the shop, and there's images, there's prices, you can have promotions on it. Lots of information there. In my experience, I've seen it where I had a client who was doing some of that, and we had it where everyone was selling the same product, everybody pretty much had the same product. So I just picked one that had a ridiculous picture. So everyone was selling, it was like a uniform, and everyone's uniforms were gray and black and beige, and they had a polka-dotted one. And I was like, "We put that one in the picture." And they were like, "What?" I was like, "You put that one in the picture because it'll stand out." And it did. And they got loads of traffic to the other stuff. But it's important to figure out ways to differentiate yourself and to make yourself look unique. Kevin Indig: A hundred percent. Yep, I think this whole idea of image optimization is going to become much more important. Not in the classic sense of alt tag and file name and surrounding text, but much more like what can you see in the image? What does a background look like? How can you stand out just a little more than your competition? It's going to be a thing. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. I've done a lot on visual search in the last few months, but yeah I agree. Mordy Oberstein: We'll link to it in the show notes. Crystal Carter: I agree. Mordy Oberstein: So I'll sum this up, because we're running out of time, unfortunately. We could talk about this literally for another hour or two hours. If you're serious about ranking and you're serious about doing well organically and bringing in traffic, you need to go to the SERP and look at all the boxes and rectangles and squares, and expandable carousel and tabs and whatnot, because if you don't, you really don't know what's happening and you really don't know what opportunities are there waiting for you. Crystal Carter: Say it louder, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Don't dare me to do that because you know that I will. Crystal Carter: Look at the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: Look at the SERP. Crystal Carter: Just actually Google it. Actually follow the user journey that someone would follow to find your product or website or whatever. Mordy Oberstein: And when you do, search for Kevin Indig so you can find him. Of course, we'll link to all of your wonderful assets you produce, your social profiles, everything, you just let us know. Follow the links Kevin, let us know what you want us to link to and we'll link to it in the show notes. Kevin Indig: Thanks so much. I'll send you a Google Talk or a spreadsheet. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, please if you could, keep it at a minimum of like two or three tabs. Seriously, Kevin, thank you so much. Always great talking with you, and I'm not sure how to end this, because we've never had a guest on this show before. I'm so lost, we didn't even thank you. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much, Kevin, it's been an absolute pleasure. Kevin Indig: Thank you as well. Maybe we just don't end this, maybe we just stay on for a day or something. Mordy Oberstein: Just silence for a second. Kevin Indig: Until we go to sleep. Mordy Oberstein: Perfect. That was absolutely amazing. You should definitely follow Kevin on social media. He is not our follow of the week, not that he doesn't qualify to be, but he's already here. We have another follow of the week, but that's later. But first, here's a fun little game we play. Both to sort of mess with each other by a tad to understand what's happening with Google. And in this case, I think it highlights some of Google's shortcomings, which by the way, everyone has shortcomings, search engines included. We're all just people. Crystal Carter: They're handling thousands and thousands and thousands of searches every day. And my entire back catalog of every image I've ever taken a screenshot on my phone, they're busy. It's a lot to manage. Mordy Oberstein: It's a lot. So we feel, oh, Google's going to get it right. They're not supposed to get it right every time. So when I say I don't think they got it right this time, I don't mean it in a negative way. I mean, they're just being human. Crystal Carter: Google's being human. Is that okay? Mordy Oberstein: I'm taking this to a new level, I don't want SEOs to get upset at me for saying that, but I said it, and we're just going to leave it at that for a minute. But first off, wouldn't it be super scary if they always got it right? I'd be freaked out if every single time Google got it exactly right, I would think something's not right here. Crystal Carter: Well, and also they can only work with the material they got. So if other people haven't written anything that's decent, what are you going to do? Mordy Oberstein: People gloss over that point all the time. I just spoke about that in the conference in Brazil, can't remember the name. Terrible. But I literally spoke about it, it's our fault. It's not Google's fault, it's our fault. But anyway- Crystal Carter: Make better content. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Make better content. Say it louder, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Make better content. Mordy Oberstein: Yo, make better content. Anyway, we're looking at the four, well usually four, questions Google lists on the results page, when you expand the tabs, they sit and reveal a secret answer along with the URL. Well, usually it's with a URL, sometimes not. And it's not really a secret answer. Anyway, let's have some fun with, People Also Ask. Crystal, this time you're on the hot seat. Crystal Carter: Okay all right, I'm ready. What are we doing? Mordy Oberstein: Are you ready? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So I'm going to ask Crystal, I typed in a keyword, and this has to do with Crystal's background. Crystal can elaborate or not elaborate, it's not my business. But the keyword is- Crystal Carter: I'm surprised, I don't know what you're going to ask me. Mordy Oberstein: I know you don't know. I know you don't know. This could be terrible and horrible or fantastic. We don't know how it's going to go yet. We're doing it live. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Is it fair that military families have to move so often? That's the key word. Crystal Carter: Oh, this is... Okay. So just the background on the background is that I'm a military brat. So yes, I would say... Oh, I don't know. Yes, might the answer be? Or they might have two because it's not easy for families and stuff, but likes families often move because of …. Mordy Oberstein: Right, that's true. Crystal Carter: So yeah, I would say they might have... What does is say? Mordy Oberstein: Let's see what Google asks. They have four questions. Crystal Carter: Oh, I thought that was the question. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm sorry. That was the keyword I put in. Crystal Carter: Okay, got you. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. That keyword brought up what people also asked, So there are four questions, and when I expand any of the tabs, I get an answer. So let's start with the first one, I have a whole point to this, at the end of this. It's not just silliness for the sake of silliness. There is an SEO point to all of this. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. First question. How often do military families have to move? Crystal Carter: Ooh. In my experience, one to two years. Mordy Oberstein: Well, not bad. About every three years. Military families move about every three years, but sometimes more frequently. The move is called a PCS or a Permanent Change of Station. Okay. Crystal Carter: Okay, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: All right, so far so good. Okay. Second question. Why do military families have to move so much? Crystal Carter: Because whoever's in the military, the adult who's in the family, who's in the military, will change where they're based. So they might be based in Hawaii, they might be based in Florida, they might be based in San Diego, but when they switch where they're based, then the family has to move. Mordy Oberstein: And that's basically what Google says. So far we're so good. Google's asking questions, Crystal's giving the answers. We're all locked up here. How often do military spouses move? Crystal Carter: They tend to move with their spouse. So the same as the family, if they'd said three years for the first one, I would guess they would say three years for the …. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they say every two to three years. Okay, fine. They give a whole thing. How about this question, last one. Do military spouses have to move? Crystal Carter: Well, the answer is no. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Well, no one. Yeah, they could say, "I want a divorce, I'm not doing this." Crystal Carter: I mean, to give you real insight to it, sometimes people decide like, "Oh, we'll stay. You'll go for a little while," because , don't know if you want to get into it, but sometimes sailors are out to sea for most of the time anyway, so it doesn't make much difference whether they're there or not. Anyway, it's a whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: Crystal, Google says the good news is that the military will pay for your spouse to move as long as you live in the same home together, depending on the amount of leave you have, your spouse may be the one making most of the moving arrangements, which doesn't really answer the question, but okay. So what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Crystal Carter: Yeah, I'm interested in where you're going. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. First off, I need to ask Crystal, where was the coolest place you lived? Crystal Carter: Oh, this is what this is. This is the setup for the whole thing. This is the whole reason why this is. The coolest place I ever lived was in Hawaii. I lived in Hawaii, I lived in O'ahu. So yes, I did mayday presentations and learned how to do the hula, and we did mele kalikimaka, and all of that stuff. So yeah, that- Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. And was it frustrating? So, setting you up here. I'm setting you up. But was it frustrating to have to move so often? Was that fun? Crystal Carter: It was tricky, but it was fun sometimes. When we moved to Hawaii, I lived in a hotel for three months when we first got there, and we were right next to the Hilton. And so we got to see the fireworks every Friday night. Mordy Oberstein: That is actually awesome. Okay, fireworks are awesome. So two points here, and this kind of goes about what I was just saying a second, one is, okay, Google's a little bit redundant with the whole spouse moving thing. And Google. People also ask sometimes they do that, and that happens. But what I was really interested in, when I was searching this, imagine I was putting myself in your shoes. I'm a kid, I'm going to have to move. Think of the keyword. Is it fair that military families have to move so often and Google totally missed a word fair. Crystal Carter: That's very interesting, you're right. That is interesting. So there's an emotion there. Mordy Oberstein: There's an emotion. There's a bias in the question. The question assumes it's not fair. And what I'm already looking for is either information about why this has to be this way or some sort of emotional support of an identification. So maybe a blog. I would've thought better than a People Also Ask, what would've been cool to show here, which they didn't show, would be a carousel from Quora or Reddit or one of the other social media platforms where I can see other people's answers, not Google's answer to the question, which goes back to my original point. Sometimes, which by the way, on mobile, they do have a bunch of those carousels there, whatever. My original point is, sometimes we say, "People also ask, take those questions, great keyword research tool, use them, write a blog post, take those four questions and write a blog post for each one of them." In this case, I don't know, maybe you shouldn't use them. Crystal Carter: So I sometimes find, when I'm searching, that sometimes the People Also Ask doesn't make sense. Sometimes I'm like, "I'm not asking that at all. I don't know why anyone would ask that, that's nothing to do with it." And I think it's interesting because when he first asked me the question I thought you were asking me the People Also Ask, and I said, "Sometimes it's tricky." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, see. Sometimes it's part of it. It's part of the intent. Crystal Carter: So yeah, because sometimes it's tricky. And I think that that question is asking for some empathy, isn't it? It's asking for some empathy about a situation that is sometimes tricky. I think to your point, if that is a query that you're seeing that people are actually asking, if you're finding that people are asking that in your conversations with people, or that you've seen it show up in a tool, that people are genuinely asking that or that's a query people have, answer the question. Create content that answers the question, not necessarily content that the shows in People Also Ask because the People Also Ask questions are generated, regularly. So they will generate new ones if they're finding that people aren't actually engaging with the People also ask questions that they have, and also with regards to which content they show in the answers, they change around what that is. So if you're able to better answer that question than the content that's currently there, then you can move into that spot and they might also even create a question based on your content. So I think that as you say, it's worth referencing it, but also thinking with your own brain, and- Mordy Oberstein: And think a little bit, does this actually solve the person's question? If they expand the tab, Like why's this question even here? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Think qualitatively, not just quantitative. SEO is not linear. That's the lesson for today, from the SERP features to the people also ask box, which is a SERP feature, don't think linearly about the SERP. Crystal Carter: There we go. Thank you very much. That was quite the journey for me, Mordy. I was …. Mordy Oberstein: I'm sorry to make you relive your childhood, just for the sake of a podcast. Crystal Carter: You're just like, "Hey there. How about some childhood trauma?" No, I'm kidding. My childhood was lovely. I had a lovely childhood. It was very nice. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Well, every time you've talked about it, it's only been positive, things like going to Hawaii. So I figured I can go there. Crystal Carter: Yeah, no, it's fine. It's fine. But no, I think you're right about empathy. But also I think sometimes with content, you are talking about sensitive issues, and it's important to approach that content sensitively to be able to help users. And if you're able to show compassion in your content, then that is something that will engage with clients, with users, and with the people that are engaging with that content a lot more than just a keyword because they'll think, oh, this company, this person, this author, has some empathy with my situation. And that's a really good thing. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, empathy is always good. I think that's the moral of the story; empathy is always good. You know what else is always good? Crystal Carter: What's always good? Mordy Oberstein: News. Crystal Carter: News. Mordy Oberstein: News is always good. Everyone loves news. So here is some Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Been a hot minute since I've come across a really nice SEO study, but our dear friends at Semrush and the author of the... Been a hot minute since I've come across a really nice SEO study. But our dear friends at Sun Rush, by the way, plug for the Wix, Semrush integration, check that out, have a really nice study for us authored by Marcus Tober. This one looks at zero click searches. Let me take y'all back in time a little bit. A few years ago, Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, and SparkToro, did a study showing that 50% of all Google searches do not result in a click, and the SEO world went nuts. "Google is stealing clicks." "No one needs websites the way Google is set up." "They're answering all the questions themselves," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The most recent data Rand put out was that Google searches result in, 65% of them, result in zero clicks. Now, nothing against the study itself or Rand, who has contributed greatly to the SEO community over the years, but this was not my favorite study for two reasons. One, 50% of searches not resulting in a click to a URL on the Google results page isn't entirely helpful. For example, how many of those no clicks were actually query refinement or keyword refinement, meaning you search, you don't find exactly what you're looking for on that set of Google results. So you search again, that's a zero click, or clicks where you don't click a URL, for example, but you click on one of the other filters Google has on the page. So for example, you move from the traditional Google SERP and you click on where it says images, and you look at all the images there, that's technically a zero click search. So how many of those zero clicks that we studied way back when were actually those, which is not the zero click, the nefarious zero click that people are all upset about. The other reason why I didn't really love the study is that not every time there's no click on a set of Google results, is that a bad thing? I don't want a website, when I type in weather in New York City or Yankees score, I don't want to go to a website. I'll be honest with you. As a user, I just want the answer. And that's just the evolution of content delivery. Which is, by the way, Semrush in their study does a really good job of explaining. So the end of the whole study itself, there's a whole nice piece on the analysis of the study, so check that part of the study out as well. Now, the Semrush study was a little bit more nuanced, or a lot of bit more nuanced. It tried to better explain the data categories than split them up as much as possible. For example, as opposed to saying, "65% of all searches on Google do not result into a... Do not result." Let's try that again. "Do not result in a click to a URL." Semrush showed, well, about 10% of searches were users moving from one SERP to the next. For example, they were on the main SERP. They typed in, Tom Brady, they went to the main SERP obviously, and then they clicked maybe on images and looked at all the pictures of Tom Brady, whatever it is. Semrush separated those out, and those were about 10% of the time that was happening. So that's 10% of zero clicks are just people moving from maybe the main SERP to, let's say, the shopping results. Now, 18% were zero clicks, but were actually query refinement, where you maybe entered another new keyword. Meaning, you searched for one thing, didn't see what you found, didn't click on anything, and typed in a new keyword or a more specific keyword. Now within that, there might be some actual zero search, zero click searches in there, mixed in with that, according to the Semrush data, but fine. On top of that, there are a legit 25% of cases where it's a real zero click, where you just maybe found the answer on the SERP. Technically speaking, the way the data's structured, you could have just left the page open for two minutes and not have done anything, the Semrush data would've counted a zero click. But leave that aside, the bottom line is, around 25% of the time, perhaps a little more, if you look at the data the way it's structured, perhaps. I'll try that again, bottom line is, around 25% of the time, perhaps a little bit more, based upon how the data is structured, you're not seeing a click to organic result or an organic URL, when someone searches on Google, which is far, far less than 65%. So great job, Semrush, love the nuance. Have a look at the study. We'll obviously link to it in the show notes. It's really important to understand. I will say this, it's really important to understand the Google ecosystem, how things are set up, whether you're an SEO, whether you're a digital marketer, whether you're a business owner, whether you're a site... Whatever it is, super important to understand the ecosystem, and this study does a great job of doing that. So thank you Semrush, and that's all this week for the Snappy News. Now, before we duly depart, we have one last little treat for you, and that's our follow of the week. And do we have a treat for you this week? We do. Crystal Carter: We do. Mordy Oberstein: Isn't every week>? Let's be honest. Crystal Carter: It's all a gift, you're welcome people. No, I'm kidding. Mordy Oberstein: Our gift this week from a data scientist at Moz, he's the doctor of SEO, Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz. Crystal Carter: Is there a doctor in the house? I think there is. Mordy Oberstein: There is now. Crystal Carter: Dr. Pete. Mordy Oberstein: Dr. Pete. He's amazing. Crystal Carter: He's so smart and so nice. I love his writing because he talks about some fantastic things around SERP features, around things that are happening, and around what's happening with Google algorithms and all sorts of things. But he always writes with such humility and such empathy to people who are trying to figure out what's happening. He had an article about featured snippets. He was like, "Featured snippets are down this much." And then the next week he was like, "They're back. What was that about?" And that was the first time I was like, "Yeah, okay, Dr. Pete. I'm with you on this." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there should be a button, like a sticker, "I'm with Dr. Pete." Crystal Carter: I'm with Dr. Pete. I'm not sure if he wants all of us with him. I'm sure that sometimes he'd like to just go places by himself and not have hoards of SEOs tagging along. Mordy Oberstein: Well, we are all following him now. Crystal Carter: We all follow him. Everyone should follow him. Also, follow him because he has some amazing cleaning tips. He's really into wipes. Mordy Oberstein: Remember his tweet about baby wipes? And it's true. Always use baby wipes to clean because they're great at cleaning everything. Crystal Carter: I did not know this. I did not see that one. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a good tip from Dr. Pete. Crystal Carter: I think I saw one about handheld vacuum cleaners, which like the handheld vacuum cleaner literally changed my life. It's literally a life-changing device. You heard it here first people. Mordy Oberstein: And also because he happens to be one of the most honest people in the SEO industry. When Dr. Pete gets something... We all get things wrong but Dr. Pete will say, "Yeah, in that study I did, that was a mistake," and he'll correct it. So you can trust that the data that you're looking at from Dr. Pete has been thoroughly analyzed, questioned, and if there's a problem with it, Dr. Pete will be the first one to point that out, which is very rare and unusual. It's a great trait. Crystal Carter: He's clever, he's kind, he's a good dude. And apparently his house is like clean AF. I've never been there, but from what I hear, he keeps it very clean. Mordy Oberstein: Runs a clean ship, huh? Crystal Carter: Clean ship. Mordy Oberstein: Like they do in the military, like you did in Hawaii, going back full circle. Anyway, Dr. Pete, you could find him on Twitter. We'll link to it in the show notes. But his Twitter handle is @dr, as in doctor, underscore, Pete, P-E-T-E. So, D-R underscore P-E-T-E, check it out on Twitter. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERPs Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with an all new episode as we dive into Google Search Console. Is it the most important SEO tool? Crystal Carter: We'll find out. Mordy Oberstein: We'll find out. Look for, wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. 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How do you make local SEO scaleable? When should you be scaling your local SEO? How do you maintain consistency with your local SEO across a multi-location organization? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter talk about how you can level up your local SEO production. Learn what you should be doing in order to work more efficiently when doing SEO for sites with a local business presence. Sterling Sky’s Elizabeth Rule stops by giving direction on scaling your SEO when dealing with a multi-location business with some of her top tips. Climb on as this week’s SERP’s Up SEO Podcast will help you scale the ladder of local SEO! Back How to scale local SEO How do you make local SEO scaleable? When should you be scaling your local SEO? How do you maintain consistency with your local SEO across a multi-location organization? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter talk about how you can level up your local SEO production. Learn what you should be doing in order to work more efficiently when doing SEO for sites with a local business presence. Sterling Sky’s Elizabeth Rule stops by giving direction on scaling your SEO when dealing with a multi-location business with some of her top tips. Climb on as this week’s SERP’s Up SEO Podcast will help you scale the ladder of local SEO! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 51 | August 16, 2023 | 37 MIN 00:00 / 36:59 This week’s guests Elizabeth Rule Elizabeth is an expert local SEO analyst who has been working in the industry since 2015. She has a passion for content creation and loves working with local businesses to develop their website’s authority and expertise through well written, helpful content As a Google Business Profile Product Expert she is also in the unique position to help businesses crack the code to gain valuable visibility in local search maps and help solve complex GBP issues. In 2023, she was nominated as one of BrightLocal's Rising Stars of Local SEO. She currently works as a Local SEO Analyst at Sterling Sky, a Local SEO Agency in Canada and the USA. She is also a faculty member and speaker at Local U SEO Conference. 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, overseeing the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, the always on point, always on target, always insightful, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you for that fantastic intro. I'm exactly where I want to be. Mordy Oberstein: For free. Crystal Carter: In the building. She's in the place. There's one announcer, speaking of local things, there's a local announcer in Cleveland, or he was in Cleveland who used to do the Cavaliers commentating, and every time anyone did a slam dunk, he would go, "Throw the hammer down." It was amazing. I feel like they should get him do commentary for Thor. So whenever Thor throws the hammer down, he would go, "And Thor throws the hammer down." Mordy Oberstein: Or if you're a carpenter, you could hire him to watch you as you work. Crystal Carter: Precisely. I feel like you could get a sound on your phone or something, and then just whenever you finish doing your carpentry, you just go- Mordy Oberstein: Every time you're hammering. Crystal Carter: Right, that sort of thing. But that's one of the fantastic things though about local sports announcers, is that each city will have their local announcers and it is unique to that location. So it's something that adds local color and helps you create a bespoke experience for people in that vicinity. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, bespoke. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you cannot only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also grab competitor analysis insights without ever leaving Wix, with our brand new SEO ranking app, a huge pull of competitor insights. Look for it in the Wix app market today. What does that have to do with today's topic? Absolutely nothing-ish. Well, no, no, not true, not true. Let me find the connection on the spot, fresh for you off the cuff. You can use the tool that I just mentioned to advance your local SEO efforts. Because oh, oh, oh, today is local SEO. We're talking how you can make your local SEO scalable. We're talking about leveling up local SEO production, scaling local landing pages like a beast, when to scale local SEO and when not to, and how to maintain consistency when scaling local SEO. To help us scale the ladder of local SEO, Elizabeth Rule over a sterling sky shares her most important tip to know when working with a business that has multiple locations. Plus, we take a look at what Google's People Also Ask teaches us about SMBs and SEO. And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following in social media for more SEO awesomeness. So put on your best Spider-Man costume and join us as we scale the walls of local SEO in episode number 51 of the SERP's Up podcast. Disclaimer; if you wear a Spider-Man costume does not mean you'll be able to scale walls. Crystal Carter: No. You won't. Mordy Oberstein: But do try. Crystal Carter: No, please don't try. Don't try. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry. I mean, don't try. Don't try. Unless the wall is you're not high up and you're just trying to climb a wall, in which case you would look a little bit weird, but no harm would come to you. Crystal Carter: I'm sure Spider-Man jumped over short walls as well sometimes, if he was just in somebody's backyard or something. There's no need to do a full leap and bound, if you can just do a little hop. Mordy Oberstein: No, no. If you're Spider-Man, you jump over with maximum effort. Crystal Carter: Okay, I got you. I got you. Well, we are your friendly neighborhood SEOs, and we are going to be talking today about what it means to scale local SEO, why this is something that even needs to be discussed, and some of the challenges that I've experienced and other folks have experienced along the way. So when we say scaling local SEO, essentially what we mean is when you have multiple location businesses, or you might even have a franchise business model where you need to essentially scale your local SEO tasks. So these are all of the standard local SEO tasks. Things like location landing pages, like your Google business profile, like your citation management, reviews management, local keyword research. All of those things that you would do for a single business for local SEO, you now need to do for multiple businesses across local SEO. And this can get very complex very quickly, even as soon as you have two businesses, you have to start thinking about this. I've worked with clients who have three or four locations and they have similar challenges to clients who have had closer to 400 locations via franchisees. And this is something that can be really, really tricky. And the thing that's tricky about it is maintaining consistency and making sure that you're monitoring the implementation that you've established. So it's one of those things that actually thinking about some of the superhero things that you're talking about, it's a little bit like Batman. If you're trying to scale local SEO, one of the first things you need is tools. Just like Batman. Mordy Oberstein: And a Cape. Crystal Carter: And a Cape. And someone named Alfred as well will generally help. Mordy Oberstein: An acrobatic sidekick. Crystal Carter: Yes, of course. These are all important things when you're scaling. Mordy Oberstein: And a really awesome car. Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Shall I keep going? Crystal Carter: Theme song? Theme song. I think a theme song would be good. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, always need a theme song. Crystal Carter: Yeah, of course, obviously. So, you're going to need some tools. Tools are going to be incredibly important for you and incredibly useful for you. So if you think about something like Bright Local or something like Uberall, these are tools that come to mind when I think about managing citations for instance. And if you're not sure what a citation is, this is essentially a listing in the Yellow Pages or Yelp or in other things like that, you're going to want to make sure that you've got all of the listings for where your business is and your business information consistent across every single place your citation is listed. And this can get very tricky very quickly because if you're not managing this with a tool, with a centralized tool, then sometimes what can happen is you can have duplication, you can have the wrong information, people can leave the business, and then maybe you don't have the information to hand or don't have access to the accounts and things like that, which is why tools like Uberall, like Bright Local exist. So those can be really, really helpful. Mordy Oberstein: Also, there's Uberall app in the Wix marketplace, parenthetically. Crystal Carter: There is an Uberall. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry to interrupt, sorry. Had to, marketer's going to market. Crystal Carter: There is an Uberall app in the Wix marketplace, so you can get a look at that and get a taste of what that can do for you. And I've worked with clients where they don't know who set it up, they don't know where it came from. And so even if you only have one or two businesses at business locations, this is something that's really useful. The other thing that's really useful to think about is a Google business profile. They have some tools set up for helping you to manage multiple location businesses. So you can put all of the business locations for a single business into a folder. So if you have a Dairy Queen for instance, you can have a Dairy Queen folder and then you can have all the different locations for all of the places where you can go and get a lovely frosty treat there as well. Crystal Carter: The other tools you might want to think about is tools for social posting and managing some of the posts on your Google business profile. So one of the things that can again get really, really tricky with multiple business locations is, do you have separate Facebook pages for everything? Do you have a centralized Facebook page thing as well? These are things that can come up a lot, and also it's something that can be tricky to manage because if you don't have them all underneath the same account, then it can be tricky to get the logins and all of those sorts of things. So it's also really important to have your systems in place. So you want to make sure that you've got good systems. And when you're thinking about your location pages, that's something that's important as well. So making sure that you're templatizing how your pages are created. So things like your location, schema, your FAQ, your imagery, even how your heading tags are organized and how the page looks can be really important. So if you look at large scale businesses like McDonald's, they will have a template that is the same for every single location to make sure that it's consistent across every single location, so that everyone who comes to find a McDonald's location will be able to find that information. Mordy Oberstein: That's not to say though that you should have the exact same content across all 4,000 location pages, which is a very common problem, which is a no. Don't do that. Crystal Carter: Right. No, you absolutely shouldn't. You should have unique information, but the format of it should be similar. So for instance, again, you're going to have your schema, your location, your map, what services are available, all of that sort of thing. But they should also be specific to you. And you also touched on a point about content. Content can be very tricky when scaling local SEO, because you get into site architecture. Do you have one blog for everyone? Do you have mini blogs for other people? Do you have one website for everyone and then send out the information there? Do you have micro sites for each location? These are things to think about as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's really complicated, especially on the blog side. For example, let's say you're not McDonald's and you're not trying to rank for french fry, because it doesn't matter, right? Because as long as they get to McDonald's, there's a McDonald's near you no matter what. But if you're, let's say, only in LA, Boston, and Miami, then the blog content will probably have to be locally centric. So let's say you're offering medical services, I don't know, medical testing. So you have medical testing in Miami and medical testing in Boston. Ranking for medical testing as a keyword itself is probably not entirely relevant. Great if you can, but there's a lot of traffic that just could be not qualified because all the other locations people are searching from are not relevant to you. Then how do you do that? Because now you have one blog with multo….. If I'm coming from Boston, I don't care about the blog post about Miami. Crystal Carter: Right. So then you have to plan your content strategy to include touch points where you are doing specific local things. Like let's say you've got your medical testing or something, and let's say the medical test is for diabetes, and let's say there is a diabetes fun run, or something, like a charity fund run that's happening in Boston where your business is. Well, yeah, you should have some content around that if you're involved in that particular thing. But do you put that on the main blog? Do you put that on the thing? How do you spread that around? So you have to think about your site architecture, you have to think about your blog strategy. Crystal Carter: So you have to think about your site architecture. You have to think about your blog strategy and your content strategy so that your content includes those things and that you're surfacing it in places that are important. So for instance, if you have a location page for your Boston business and you have one blog a month that's specifically dedicated to Boston stuff, then you should make sure that on the feed for your Boston location page that you have the Boston specific blogs on that feed. There's no point putting the Miami specific ones on the Boston one. That will make things confusing. But you also want to think about things like your imagery so that you've got local imagery on there, that you've got people for the local team that are visible on that particular page as well. But basically when you're thinking about scaling SEO, you need to be extremely organized. The long and short of it is that you need to be extremely organized. And even if you're just thinking about three businesses, four businesses, or even if you're thinking about 400 business locations that you need to manage, you need to have systems in place so that you don't end up tripping over yourself, duplicating content, sending people to the wrong page, ranking on places where you shouldn't be, having content that's out of date or that is inaccurate in one location and not another, and things like that. So essentially you need to be extremely organized and you're going to need tools. We have a blog on the Wix SEO learning hub that says, do you need SEO tools? Not for everything, not all the time, but for this, you're going to need some tools. You're going to need some tools. Mordy Oberstein: Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with tools. Those are great. By the way, quick thing on the blog, if you're doing this, and let's say you have a location in Miami, Boston, and New York, so you could just make the locations of categories. So you show up at the blog, right? It's just blog or whatever. It describes the blog itself, and then you have the categories, and if you're from Boston, you click through the Boston. If you're from New York, you click through New York. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's one way to do it. You can do them with sub folders. There's a couple of ways to do it, so to have a think about your architecture, but yeah, you do need to think about your architecture. And also if you're planning on expanding further, that's something to think about as well. So how you're going to potentially expand. The other one to think about, I worked with a client who is dealing with franchisees and they were spinning up all kinds of websites and content and things, because another way that sometimes people do content for local things is they'll syndicate essentially. So you have one central blog that creates content and send it out to franchisees, and then franchisees can publish it on their smaller blogs things. The trick with that though is that you end up with a lot of content that's very similar across a lot of different URLs, which can be tricky. Mordy Oberstein: It's a big problem getting it all indexed. It's something you really have to think about, right? You think, okay, fine, I'm smart, right? I've automated all the content, it's all coming from a spreadsheet. It's all being automatically populated, which by the way, separate point, I will read to you from Google's guidelines around the helpful content update, describing something that is not helpful. Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics equals unhelpful. Side point. But yeah, if those pages are too similar outset of it not being helpful or it being unhelpful, Google will be like, this page looks like that page. I index it. Crystal Carter: And even if you think about users, users can't tell. They'll be like, this looks the same as the other page, and I can't tell this is the same page. I can't tell if this is the same page that I just looked at or not. So these are important things to think about, and I think with franchisees it's really useful to give them guidance. And I think for this particular client, it had all gotten very out of hand, and so my team had to just bring it all back in. So we centralized everything, and I'm working on another project right now with a local charity that's doing a similar thing and they've got 50 plus locations and everyone's been kind of doing things as ad hoc, which also can happen with legacy products. So for instance, this is an organization that's been around for a while and they have some content that was on Facebook, for instance, before Facebook centralized more of the multi-location pages. So that means that they have to retrofit how they are distributing their content and scaling their activity. So now that there's more tools available, they're able to centralize it. But again, this is one of the reasons why keeping things organized both within the actual content that you're outputting, but also who is the contact for the information about the location. If you're working with franchises or if you're working with multiple marketing teams, then you're going to need to make sure that you have the details for all of the multiple marketing teams and that you have access to all of the accounts for all the listing pages, for all the other things. Because I think one of the things that people forget about local SEO is there's a lot of off page SEO that happens with local SEO, and you sort of need to be able to do that and need to be able to manage that, and you have to be extremely, extremely organized in order to scale your local SEO. So if you learn nothing else from this, get yourself together, get a spreadsheet, get a checklist, get yourself together, make a plan before you start scaling local SEO. Mordy Oberstein: That's especially because it can be super complicated on the site structure side. For example, let's say you're a business that you have in New York, you have five locations, and in Boston, Massachusetts rather, you only have one location, but now the hierarchy is going to have to be different from New York if you want each page to have... Each location rather than have a specific page. A good one, yeah. Crystal Carter: Precisely. And I think sometimes you get where businesses are pretty much right next to each other, and that can be tricky as well. Mordy Oberstein: It's also very confusing. By the way, real quick one, if you can pull this out one way to differentiate for you, forget SEO for a second, because it is really weird. Sometimes you show up on a website and you're looking at multiple pages, say, I don't know. Let's say I'm looking at, I don't know, Bob's Burger, Bob's got a burger place on one block and like a Starbucks. There's a Starbucks on this street and Starbucks on the next street, and I don't even know which one I'm looking at anymore because they're exactly the same. Show a picture of the branch at the top of the page because it'll usually look different. Crystal Carter: Yeah, photos are really, really important, and I talked about this before, but photos are also particularly important with regards to visual search because if somebody is doing a visual search or Google's looking up what's near them, Google is able to discern location landmarks from images when they're doing their visual search information assessment. So if you're able to add in some landmarks, for instance, if you have a Bob's Burgers that's on Coney Island and you've got the big wheel behind you, Google's going to be able to place you and they can geotarget those things, particularly if there's a specific landmark on it. If you're Bob's Burgers on Liberty Island, is that the island that the Statue of Liberty's on? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Yes. By the way, my immediate association to Liberty Island, when you said that was X-Men. If you're from New York and I've been to Liberty Island like a dozen times. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: My state, that's how we're wired. That's pathetic. Sorry, everybody. Crystal Carter: I was thinking of Liberty City, which I think is the GTA game from years ago. Mordy Oberstein: There is a Liberty Science Center in New Jersey. Crystal Carter: There we go. But yeah, look, I think it's just really important to keep organized. We've got some great resources around local SEO on the Wix SEO hub from some fantastic local SEOs, Claire Carlisle, Crystal Tang, Darren Shaw. They talk about a lot of this stuff, and they're all very well versed in scaling local SEO and also Amanda Jordan also has some great information about local landing pages. If you have a look at those and potentially get in touch with them, they're all super friendly and super, super involved with this kind of thing. So if you are interested in scaling this, and if you're looking at your local SEO situation and you have multiple locations and you are not organized and you are seeing that you do not have the consistent information for your businesses across all of your locations, that you don't quite have a content plan that's working for all of your locations, then have a look, get in touch, and try to get yourself together a little bit. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, I know we mentioned it in the intro, when you have to start thinking about local SEO at scale, and when you have more than one location, like two. Crystal Carter: Literally. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of local SEO at scale, we wanted to know what the most important thing to consider when working with a business that has multiple locations from an SEO point of view. So we asked just that to Elizabeth Rule, an SEO analyst over at Sterling Sky. So here's Elizabeth on what she thinks is the most important thing to remember or to know when working with a business that has multiple locations from an SEO point of view. Elizabeth Rule: Hey there, this is Elizabeth Rule, a local SEO analyst with Sterling Sky. One of the most important things I think business owners should know about managing multiple locations is that more isn't necessarily better when it comes to Google Maps. So Google Maps rankings, most people know the three pack that shows up directly in the search results. What people don't know is that Google really doesn't show the same business twice in that map pack, that three pack ever. So if you have two locations for the same business in one city, you're going to have a really tough time ranking both of those in the same map pack. So if your locations are too close together that they would be eligible to show in the map pack together just because of their proximity, it's probably better to just focus on one and put all your effort into one of those locations to help it do better, rather than having two locations that are too close together. Trying to get both of those to rank is going to be pretty much impossible. What we recommend business owners do is to get locations outside of their main city to expand their service area if they're looking to get more traction on Google Maps. But you of course want to own your backyard first, but if you're looking to expand, you're really going to want to look outside of your current city to do that if you're looking to expand on Google Maps. But there is always the opportunity to expand organically, really anywhere. So business owners that are looking to expand their visibility outside of their current one location, I always tell them instead of looking for another location to get a Google business profile, which is extremely expensive most of the time, try adding more service area pages to your site and optimizing those for the people that are located- Elizabeth Rule: And optimizing those for the people that are located in your service area you're not currently serving because they're not finding you on Google Maps. Organic is still a great way to get a lot of local traffic and it's pretty inexpensive. You can create tons of service area pages and optimize them, add the information people are looking for pretty cheaply compared to getting an entire lease and maintaining a location, a physical location to have a Google Business Profile listing. So this is my biggest tip for people trying to manage multiple locations on Google Maps or local search, invest in service area pages aka city pages. They are going to be one of the biggest in best investments you can do for your local site to improve that local SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much Elizabeth for that. You can definitely follow Elizabeth over on Twitter @ownyourserp. That's O-W-N Y-O-U-R S-E-R-P. Own your SERP, get it? Own your SERP because it's a local business. You got to own your SERP. Elizabeth works over with Sterling Sky, with Jay Hawkins. Sterling Sky does amazing content about local SEO, a bunch of studies and Elizabeth is constantly sharing her knowledge about local SEO on Twitter, and you definitely want to give her a follow, join in the conversation with her. She's a lot of fun. And again, check her out on Twitter @ownyourserp. A link to her profile in the show notes. Now, speaking of local SEO, one of the things that you never actually look at when you're doing local, but you should be, is the PAA box? Crystal Carter: Mm-hmm. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Why? I'm going to show you why, because it's a wealth of information. As we go ahead and have some fun with Google's People Also Ask. So when you search for, are you thinking about rather local SEO and research and tools, as you mentioned before, one of the things you're probably not thinking about are the People Also Ask box. Crystal Carter: Yeah. But you absolutely should. You absolutely completely, completely, completely, absolutely should. I've looked at the ODEON Luxe Leicester Square, for instance in London, and it's a prime example of the kinds of things that you'll get there. The thing about the PAA is that they are actually from the questions that people are asking. And what it will do is it will tell you the kinds of things that people want to know about your business. And this is something that I actually got clued up to from Lily Ray, and she was saying that it's worth looking at these things and seeing which questions you are answering on your website and which questions other people are answering on their website. And looking at the Leicester Square results I found, so for instance, they were asking how many seats does the ODEON Leicester Square have and the answer comes from Wikipedia. What's the biggest cinema in Leicester Square? And it says, oh Leicester Square ODEON and that comes from London Tourist Guide. Which screen is the best screen at the ODEON Leicester Square and that comes from insideci.co.uk. None of those are from Leicester Square ODEON. Y'all, guys. Guys, this is a huge opportunity for you. Mordy Oberstein: Super Hot Chili Pepper song talks about Leicester Square. That's totally random. No, that's totally random. Crystal Carter: My favorite thing is that in England you always get Americans who are like, "I'm going to Leicester Square." Mordy Oberstein: Nice. I had an Uncle Lester when I was a kid. My grandfather's friend, Uncle Lester. Anyway, one of the things that I like to do with this is when you were looking at a local business, if you look at the People Also Ask box, which again, those four questions, it's usually four, that Google shows that are questions that people also ask that you expand them. You get an answer with a URL to where the answer came from. Kind of like a featured snippet in there is you get to profile like what might be some problems with this business and also what are some unique things you could probably create content around. For example, I used to work in the West Village in New York City, and there was a great cafe on MacDougal Street between Bleecker and West Third, West Fourth, West Fourth called Caffe Reggio. And it's famous, it's been in a bunch of movies. I think it's in The Godfather. Yeah. For example, it says, what movie is Caffe Reggio in? What is Caffe Reggio known for? What is a history of Caffe Reggio? No one's asking what time do they serve their breakfast menu until, no one's asking how many flavors of coffee do they have at Caffe Reggio. They want to know about the movie. So you should have content about the movie on the website, which I didn't check. Maybe they do or don't. I don't know. I didn't look. I should have looked. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's absolutely worth doing it. I think it's also interesting you mentioned the problems. I've definitely had it where I've looked up at something and I've looked up the business and then it said something that was a negative that I'd never even thought of. Mordy Oberstein: I saw the same thing for Peter Luger was a famous steakhouse in Brooklyn. So the questions from the People Also Asked box are one, does Peter Luger have a Michelin Star? Two, how much do Peter Luger waiters make? We'll ignore that for a minute. Three, why did Peter Luger lose a Michelin Star? Crystal Carter: Okay, right. Mordy Oberstein: So addressing that Michelin Star fiasco, I'm assuming it's probably something- Crystal Carter: I'm sure Peter's making great food. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Peter Luger is famous. I don't know what the deal... I have no idea. I've never eaten there before, so I don't know. But it's something that you're going to have to, if you're a local SEO, it's something you're going to have to deal with because if that's in the People Also Ask box, it's probably in the reviews also. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it can sometimes be hot gossip. It's like you're going around, you're just searching for whatever it is- Mordy Oberstein: Meet up at Peter Lugers? Crystal Carter: Like you're going around and you're just searching for whatever, and then they're just like, "Why did so-and-so disappear?" And you're like, "What? I didn't even know that was a... that's a thing? I didn't even know that happened." And then suddenly you're looking at this saying for this other type of information from this business, but I think it's again, the business that we talked about, own your SERP. This is entirely a perfect example of how you should own your SERP for good, for bad, whatever. If your people are asking questions about you, you should be answering them. They shouldn't be getting that information from someone else. Mordy Oberstein: How about this one? Speaking of famous New York eatery landmarks, Tavern On The Green in Central Park. One of the questions in there, first one is, why is Tavern On The Green famous? What do people wear to Tavern On The Green? And three, is Tavern On The Green still around? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, that's a scandalous one for a business. Close down at one point and they opened up again. I think it's happened multiple times if I remember correctly. Let's mean you're going as a marketer and as an SEO, you clearly have something to deal with here because people don't even know that you're still around. So your client being SEO, SEO, SEO, SEO, maybe you need to go one step beyond SEO to like local advertising or local community stuff because people don't actually know that you're actually still around. They think you're not still around. So let them know you're still alive. Crystal Carter: Right. And also I think it can again, give you opportunities to sort of see about potential links as well. So for instance, if there's an article that's an older article that's saying that you closed and maybe you closed and reopened, or maybe you closed and you moved and someone posted a blog mistakenly maybe that said, "This business isn't here anymore. It's not there, you can't find it," and you're like, "No, we are here. We're just down the street," then it can give you an idea of maybe which communities you need to reach out to, maybe where you need to do some more link building in order to make sure that people know that you are still indeed around. Mordy Oberstein: And you know what we're going to do right now then, we're going to help the SEO news sites build their links as we get into this week's snappy news. The links to which will be in the show notes to read all the articles there. You're welcome to all the SEO publications that we're going to link to. Here's this week's snappy SEO news. Snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news. Let's start with a good SEO scandal. Who doesn't love a good SEO scandal. From Search Engine Land's Danny Goodwin, Google warns against content pruning as CNET deletes thousands of pages. So CNET said they want to prune their content by deleting old pages of content as they believe Google only awards new content. I've seen many, many sites do this, and it's really the wrong way to go more often than not. In this case, Danny Goodwin writes quoting CNET, that content deprecation "sends a signal to Google that says CNET is fresh, relevant, and worthy of being placed higher than our competitors in search results," that Danny says was according to an internal memo over at CNET. Danny goes on to write "Deleting content does not signal those three things. Publishing relevant, trustworthy, helpful, quality content for your audience on a technically sound website is what makes you worthy of greater organic visibility." Danny, I could not agree more. As I've said, I've seen sites delete content that wasn't getting a lot of traffic as they thought it would help Google see what pages should actually rank. More often than not, in my honest opinion, you are removing pages that help position your site as an authority. Just because a page per se doesn't get traffic or doesn't rank doesn't mean that it's not part of that authority equation that helps the other pages that do rank rank. So read the whole article. There's a lot of little juicy little tidbits in there. It's a great little case study about SEO and I think is for most instances an SEO myth. Okay, a little bit of sad news for you from Roger Montti over at Search Engine Journal, he writes, "Google downgrades visibility of HowTo and FAQ rich results." So the FAQ feature took FAQ structured data markup and produced a set of expandable cards that was essentially your FAQ on your actual webpage on this Google Results page, on the SERP itself. It really made your results take up a lot more space on the results page and the HowTo carousel is very similar in that it was a set of visual cards that appeared on your result or within your result as a carousel that walked you through how to do something. So say how to sew a button, you get a little set of- Mordy Oberstein: How to do something. So say, how to sew a button. You get a little set of cards that visually show you how to sew a button with a couple of words on each card. So, that's basically gone well, I guess. I really like those. I really like the FAQ feature in particular. I felt that if your site was smart about it, it's a great way to compete with some of the larger powerhouse sites that maybe weren't paying attention to the FAQ feature. You could add markup for your FAQ, get a much bigger result as maybe one of your big competitors who wasn't really paying attention. But I guess, oh well, it's gone. If your site had them, they probably don't have them anymore, and it can really cause an impact on traffic from Google. So, keep an eye on your data to see if anything changed. The FAQ feature will still be there in select cases. Google has said, "Going forward, FAQ from FAQ page structured data, rich results will only be shown for well-known authoritative government and health websites. For all other sites, this rich result will no longer be shown. Regularly, sites may automatically be considered for this treatment depending on rather their eligibility." So this is basically talking your Harvard Health, Mayo Clinics, Web MDs of the world. Again, I thought it was a great feature, I'm sad to see it go. There's speculation that maybe it's because SCOs were kind of abusing it as putting FAQ markup and everything, I don't know. Anyway, last but not least, from search engine land, but not from Barry Schwartz, but rather about Barry Schwartz, this one coming from SEO legend JR Oakes. It's called Tracking 20 Years of Search: Key takeaways and findings from an analysis of SE Roundtable's historical Google Analytics data from 2003 to 2023. So, you all know at this point, Barry Schwartz covers the SEO news. We featured him on basically every show. He has been covering the news, as you can see here for 20 years. He's written over 30,000 articles. Anything and everything that's happened in SEO has been covered on seroundtable.com, which makes it really interesting, a really interesting place to study and see how SEO has evolved over time, which is what JR did. JR had access from Barry to search into Roundtable's Google Analytics data, and he used it to pull and create some really cool insights that will help you get a really nice history, as I mentioned, of SEO. As again, Barry has literally been the one creating the narrative around SEO by covering everything in SEO. So for example, you can read the article, you can see things around the popularity of various search engines based on how often Barry covered them over the years, which Google updates got the industry talking, the relevancy of certain aspects of SEO over time. For example, more recently, you see there's a little bit less about mobile SEO than in the past. I cannot more highly recommend you read this article. I will link to it in the show notes, check it out. It's a great ode to Barry, but it's also a great way for you to get a really nice understanding of how SEO has sort of evolved over time. And I'll just take the opportunity again to say I always try to thank Barry for his 20 years of service, 2003 to 2023, at least from the Google Analytics data here, for covering the SEO industry as well as he does, and as consistently he does. As JR says in the article, Barry is like a robot. He just covers everything all the time. So thank you Barry, and that is this week's snappy news. Always so snappy, always so newsy, and you're welcome for the links. Crystal Carter: You're welcome. There you go. Mordy Oberstein: That's all we're going to say. Now, speaking of that, I have no actual natural connection to this, but a follow up week, you thought there was going to be because I'm always so good at it, but I have nothing. I am out. Nada. No smart pivot. Crystal Carter: No smart pivot, just- Mordy Oberstein: No smart pivot. Crystal Carter: ... Just a straight pivot. Mordy Oberstein: I do have a smart SEO for you. There's a pivot. And I do have a smart SEO for you. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Which you should be following on Twitter, and/or whatever social media platform he's on, such as Threads, is now the new hot one. He's there also. He is local SEO legend Greg Gifford. Crystal Carter: Greg to the Gifford. The Gifford, the amazing Greg Gifford. Mordy Oberstein: The Giffster. Crystal Carter: He is the absolutely... He is absolutely a local SEO legend, and such a nice guy and such a fond of knowledge. Mordy Oberstein: Super nice guy. Crystal Carter: And he's full of energy and full of warmth and so kind, and you see him on lots of things. He's done the Semrush Introduction to SEO course as well. So, he's the guy with the glasses and the beard that you've seen on lots of things. And he seems really warm and friendly, and then you meet him in person and he's really warm and friendly. Mordy Oberstein: He's really warm and friendly, and he's got an amazing knowledge of pop culture. It's like- Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Savant level knowledge of pop culture. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. He's so bubbly and friendly, but if you ask him specifically about SEO stuff, he goes straight into nerd mode. Mordy Oberstein: And it's just like, oh, epic decks. He's always a pop culture thing for all of his decks. He speaks all over the place. By the way, he works for some great people over at SearchLab, that's Mark Belan's Company out of Chicago. Greg puts on some great content local search Tuesdays, where he is giving you tips about local SEO, so we'll link to that in the show notes as well. He's an absolute legend, an absolute great follow. So please, give a follow over to Greg. Learn something about local SEO as you follow @Greg Gifford over on Twitter. And that's it. I don't have another pivots. I'm pivot-less today. Crystal Carter: Pivot near me. Mordy Oberstein: Pivot near me? Oh, I see. Perhaps I should next time scale all of my pivots so that I have a whole series to pick from. Crystal Carter: Yeah, pivot Chicago, pivot New York, pivot Los Angeles, pivot... Mordy Oberstein: Why did I pivot as a Michelin star? Because I didn't have any, that's why. Crystal Carter: Because it it moved to Montana? I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: I would love to move to Montana. Crystal Carter: Have you heard about the TV show Yellowstone? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's over. Crystal Carter: I know, you've been telling me about Yellowstone for months. Mordy Oberstein: Over. Kevin Costner's not coming back. It's over. It's a sore point for me. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Are you looking for Yellowstone? You're not going to find it, but are you looking for the Serves Up podcast? If you're going to miss us, don't worry. We're back next week with new episodes as we dive into the role quality plays, and the people also ask Box. Look forward to wherever you can consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning over at, you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Elizabeth Rule Greg Gifford Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Sterling Sky SEO Agency News: Google warns against content pruning as CNET deletes thousands of pages Google Downgrades Visibility of HowTo and FAQ Rich Results Tracking 20 years of search Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Elizabeth Rule Greg Gifford Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Sterling Sky SEO Agency News: Google warns against content pruning as CNET deletes thousands of pages Google Downgrades Visibility of HowTo and FAQ Rich Results Tracking 20 years of search 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, overseeing the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, the always on point, always on target, always insightful, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you for that fantastic intro. I'm exactly where I want to be. Mordy Oberstein: For free. Crystal Carter: In the building. She's in the place. There's one announcer, speaking of local things, there's a local announcer in Cleveland, or he was in Cleveland who used to do the Cavaliers commentating, and every time anyone did a slam dunk, he would go, "Throw the hammer down." It was amazing. I feel like they should get him do commentary for Thor. So whenever Thor throws the hammer down, he would go, "And Thor throws the hammer down." Mordy Oberstein: Or if you're a carpenter, you could hire him to watch you as you work. Crystal Carter: Precisely. I feel like you could get a sound on your phone or something, and then just whenever you finish doing your carpentry, you just go- Mordy Oberstein: Every time you're hammering. Crystal Carter: Right, that sort of thing. But that's one of the fantastic things though about local sports announcers, is that each city will have their local announcers and it is unique to that location. So it's something that adds local color and helps you create a bespoke experience for people in that vicinity. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, bespoke. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you cannot only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also grab competitor analysis insights without ever leaving Wix, with our brand new SEO ranking app, a huge pull of competitor insights. Look for it in the Wix app market today. What does that have to do with today's topic? Absolutely nothing-ish. Well, no, no, not true, not true. Let me find the connection on the spot, fresh for you off the cuff. You can use the tool that I just mentioned to advance your local SEO efforts. Because oh, oh, oh, today is local SEO. We're talking how you can make your local SEO scalable. We're talking about leveling up local SEO production, scaling local landing pages like a beast, when to scale local SEO and when not to, and how to maintain consistency when scaling local SEO. To help us scale the ladder of local SEO, Elizabeth Rule over a sterling sky shares her most important tip to know when working with a business that has multiple locations. Plus, we take a look at what Google's People Also Ask teaches us about SMBs and SEO. And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following in social media for more SEO awesomeness. So put on your best Spider-Man costume and join us as we scale the walls of local SEO in episode number 51 of the SERP's Up podcast. Disclaimer; if you wear a Spider-Man costume does not mean you'll be able to scale walls. Crystal Carter: No. You won't. Mordy Oberstein: But do try. Crystal Carter: No, please don't try. Don't try. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry. I mean, don't try. Don't try. Unless the wall is you're not high up and you're just trying to climb a wall, in which case you would look a little bit weird, but no harm would come to you. Crystal Carter: I'm sure Spider-Man jumped over short walls as well sometimes, if he was just in somebody's backyard or something. There's no need to do a full leap and bound, if you can just do a little hop. Mordy Oberstein: No, no. If you're Spider-Man, you jump over with maximum effort. Crystal Carter: Okay, I got you. I got you. Well, we are your friendly neighborhood SEOs, and we are going to be talking today about what it means to scale local SEO, why this is something that even needs to be discussed, and some of the challenges that I've experienced and other folks have experienced along the way. So when we say scaling local SEO, essentially what we mean is when you have multiple location businesses, or you might even have a franchise business model where you need to essentially scale your local SEO tasks. So these are all of the standard local SEO tasks. Things like location landing pages, like your Google business profile, like your citation management, reviews management, local keyword research. All of those things that you would do for a single business for local SEO, you now need to do for multiple businesses across local SEO. And this can get very complex very quickly, even as soon as you have two businesses, you have to start thinking about this. I've worked with clients who have three or four locations and they have similar challenges to clients who have had closer to 400 locations via franchisees. And this is something that can be really, really tricky. And the thing that's tricky about it is maintaining consistency and making sure that you're monitoring the implementation that you've established. So it's one of those things that actually thinking about some of the superhero things that you're talking about, it's a little bit like Batman. If you're trying to scale local SEO, one of the first things you need is tools. Just like Batman. Mordy Oberstein: And a Cape. Crystal Carter: And a Cape. And someone named Alfred as well will generally help. Mordy Oberstein: An acrobatic sidekick. Crystal Carter: Yes, of course. These are all important things when you're scaling. Mordy Oberstein: And a really awesome car. Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Shall I keep going? Crystal Carter: Theme song? Theme song. I think a theme song would be good. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, always need a theme song. Crystal Carter: Yeah, of course, obviously. So, you're going to need some tools. Tools are going to be incredibly important for you and incredibly useful for you. So if you think about something like Bright Local or something like Uberall, these are tools that come to mind when I think about managing citations for instance. And if you're not sure what a citation is, this is essentially a listing in the Yellow Pages or Yelp or in other things like that, you're going to want to make sure that you've got all of the listings for where your business is and your business information consistent across every single place your citation is listed. And this can get very tricky very quickly because if you're not managing this with a tool, with a centralized tool, then sometimes what can happen is you can have duplication, you can have the wrong information, people can leave the business, and then maybe you don't have the information to hand or don't have access to the accounts and things like that, which is why tools like Uberall, like Bright Local exist. So those can be really, really helpful. Mordy Oberstein: Also, there's Uberall app in the Wix marketplace, parenthetically. Crystal Carter: There is an Uberall. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry to interrupt, sorry. Had to, marketer's going to market. Crystal Carter: There is an Uberall app in the Wix marketplace, so you can get a look at that and get a taste of what that can do for you. And I've worked with clients where they don't know who set it up, they don't know where it came from. And so even if you only have one or two businesses at business locations, this is something that's really useful. The other thing that's really useful to think about is a Google business profile. They have some tools set up for helping you to manage multiple location businesses. So you can put all of the business locations for a single business into a folder. So if you have a Dairy Queen for instance, you can have a Dairy Queen folder and then you can have all the different locations for all of the places where you can go and get a lovely frosty treat there as well. Crystal Carter: The other tools you might want to think about is tools for social posting and managing some of the posts on your Google business profile. So one of the things that can again get really, really tricky with multiple business locations is, do you have separate Facebook pages for everything? Do you have a centralized Facebook page thing as well? These are things that can come up a lot, and also it's something that can be tricky to manage because if you don't have them all underneath the same account, then it can be tricky to get the logins and all of those sorts of things. So it's also really important to have your systems in place. So you want to make sure that you've got good systems. And when you're thinking about your location pages, that's something that's important as well. So making sure that you're templatizing how your pages are created. So things like your location, schema, your FAQ, your imagery, even how your heading tags are organized and how the page looks can be really important. So if you look at large scale businesses like McDonald's, they will have a template that is the same for every single location to make sure that it's consistent across every single location, so that everyone who comes to find a McDonald's location will be able to find that information. Mordy Oberstein: That's not to say though that you should have the exact same content across all 4,000 location pages, which is a very common problem, which is a no. Don't do that. Crystal Carter: Right. No, you absolutely shouldn't. You should have unique information, but the format of it should be similar. So for instance, again, you're going to have your schema, your location, your map, what services are available, all of that sort of thing. But they should also be specific to you. And you also touched on a point about content. Content can be very tricky when scaling local SEO, because you get into site architecture. Do you have one blog for everyone? Do you have mini blogs for other people? Do you have one website for everyone and then send out the information there? Do you have micro sites for each location? These are things to think about as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's really complicated, especially on the blog side. For example, let's say you're not McDonald's and you're not trying to rank for french fry, because it doesn't matter, right? Because as long as they get to McDonald's, there's a McDonald's near you no matter what. But if you're, let's say, only in LA, Boston, and Miami, then the blog content will probably have to be locally centric. So let's say you're offering medical services, I don't know, medical testing. So you have medical testing in Miami and medical testing in Boston. Ranking for medical testing as a keyword itself is probably not entirely relevant. Great if you can, but there's a lot of traffic that just could be not qualified because all the other locations people are searching from are not relevant to you. Then how do you do that? Because now you have one blog with multo….. If I'm coming from Boston, I don't care about the blog post about Miami. Crystal Carter: Right. So then you have to plan your content strategy to include touch points where you are doing specific local things. Like let's say you've got your medical testing or something, and let's say the medical test is for diabetes, and let's say there is a diabetes fun run, or something, like a charity fund run that's happening in Boston where your business is. Well, yeah, you should have some content around that if you're involved in that particular thing. But do you put that on the main blog? Do you put that on the thing? How do you spread that around? So you have to think about your site architecture, you have to think about your blog strategy. Crystal Carter: So you have to think about your site architecture. You have to think about your blog strategy and your content strategy so that your content includes those things and that you're surfacing it in places that are important. So for instance, if you have a location page for your Boston business and you have one blog a month that's specifically dedicated to Boston stuff, then you should make sure that on the feed for your Boston location page that you have the Boston specific blogs on that feed. There's no point putting the Miami specific ones on the Boston one. That will make things confusing. But you also want to think about things like your imagery so that you've got local imagery on there, that you've got people for the local team that are visible on that particular page as well. But basically when you're thinking about scaling SEO, you need to be extremely organized. The long and short of it is that you need to be extremely organized. And even if you're just thinking about three businesses, four businesses, or even if you're thinking about 400 business locations that you need to manage, you need to have systems in place so that you don't end up tripping over yourself, duplicating content, sending people to the wrong page, ranking on places where you shouldn't be, having content that's out of date or that is inaccurate in one location and not another, and things like that. So essentially you need to be extremely organized and you're going to need tools. We have a blog on the Wix SEO learning hub that says, do you need SEO tools? Not for everything, not all the time, but for this, you're going to need some tools. You're going to need some tools. Mordy Oberstein: Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with tools. Those are great. By the way, quick thing on the blog, if you're doing this, and let's say you have a location in Miami, Boston, and New York, so you could just make the locations of categories. So you show up at the blog, right? It's just blog or whatever. It describes the blog itself, and then you have the categories, and if you're from Boston, you click through the Boston. If you're from New York, you click through New York. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's one way to do it. You can do them with sub folders. There's a couple of ways to do it, so to have a think about your architecture, but yeah, you do need to think about your architecture. And also if you're planning on expanding further, that's something to think about as well. So how you're going to potentially expand. The other one to think about, I worked with a client who is dealing with franchisees and they were spinning up all kinds of websites and content and things, because another way that sometimes people do content for local things is they'll syndicate essentially. So you have one central blog that creates content and send it out to franchisees, and then franchisees can publish it on their smaller blogs things. The trick with that though is that you end up with a lot of content that's very similar across a lot of different URLs, which can be tricky. Mordy Oberstein: It's a big problem getting it all indexed. It's something you really have to think about, right? You think, okay, fine, I'm smart, right? I've automated all the content, it's all coming from a spreadsheet. It's all being automatically populated, which by the way, separate point, I will read to you from Google's guidelines around the helpful content update, describing something that is not helpful. Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics equals unhelpful. Side point. But yeah, if those pages are too similar outset of it not being helpful or it being unhelpful, Google will be like, this page looks like that page. I index it. Crystal Carter: And even if you think about users, users can't tell. They'll be like, this looks the same as the other page, and I can't tell this is the same page. I can't tell if this is the same page that I just looked at or not. So these are important things to think about, and I think with franchisees it's really useful to give them guidance. And I think for this particular client, it had all gotten very out of hand, and so my team had to just bring it all back in. So we centralized everything, and I'm working on another project right now with a local charity that's doing a similar thing and they've got 50 plus locations and everyone's been kind of doing things as ad hoc, which also can happen with legacy products. So for instance, this is an organization that's been around for a while and they have some content that was on Facebook, for instance, before Facebook centralized more of the multi-location pages. So that means that they have to retrofit how they are distributing their content and scaling their activity. So now that there's more tools available, they're able to centralize it. But again, this is one of the reasons why keeping things organized both within the actual content that you're outputting, but also who is the contact for the information about the location. If you're working with franchises or if you're working with multiple marketing teams, then you're going to need to make sure that you have the details for all of the multiple marketing teams and that you have access to all of the accounts for all the listing pages, for all the other things. Because I think one of the things that people forget about local SEO is there's a lot of off page SEO that happens with local SEO, and you sort of need to be able to do that and need to be able to manage that, and you have to be extremely, extremely organized in order to scale your local SEO. So if you learn nothing else from this, get yourself together, get a spreadsheet, get a checklist, get yourself together, make a plan before you start scaling local SEO. Mordy Oberstein: That's especially because it can be super complicated on the site structure side. For example, let's say you're a business that you have in New York, you have five locations, and in Boston, Massachusetts rather, you only have one location, but now the hierarchy is going to have to be different from New York if you want each page to have... Each location rather than have a specific page. A good one, yeah. Crystal Carter: Precisely. And I think sometimes you get where businesses are pretty much right next to each other, and that can be tricky as well. Mordy Oberstein: It's also very confusing. By the way, real quick one, if you can pull this out one way to differentiate for you, forget SEO for a second, because it is really weird. Sometimes you show up on a website and you're looking at multiple pages, say, I don't know. Let's say I'm looking at, I don't know, Bob's Burger, Bob's got a burger place on one block and like a Starbucks. There's a Starbucks on this street and Starbucks on the next street, and I don't even know which one I'm looking at anymore because they're exactly the same. Show a picture of the branch at the top of the page because it'll usually look different. Crystal Carter: Yeah, photos are really, really important, and I talked about this before, but photos are also particularly important with regards to visual search because if somebody is doing a visual search or Google's looking up what's near them, Google is able to discern location landmarks from images when they're doing their visual search information assessment. So if you're able to add in some landmarks, for instance, if you have a Bob's Burgers that's on Coney Island and you've got the big wheel behind you, Google's going to be able to place you and they can geotarget those things, particularly if there's a specific landmark on it. If you're Bob's Burgers on Liberty Island, is that the island that the Statue of Liberty's on? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Yes. By the way, my immediate association to Liberty Island, when you said that was X-Men. If you're from New York and I've been to Liberty Island like a dozen times. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: My state, that's how we're wired. That's pathetic. Sorry, everybody. Crystal Carter: I was thinking of Liberty City, which I think is the GTA game from years ago. Mordy Oberstein: There is a Liberty Science Center in New Jersey. Crystal Carter: There we go. But yeah, look, I think it's just really important to keep organized. We've got some great resources around local SEO on the Wix SEO hub from some fantastic local SEOs, Claire Carlisle, Crystal Tang, Darren Shaw. They talk about a lot of this stuff, and they're all very well versed in scaling local SEO and also Amanda Jordan also has some great information about local landing pages. If you have a look at those and potentially get in touch with them, they're all super friendly and super, super involved with this kind of thing. So if you are interested in scaling this, and if you're looking at your local SEO situation and you have multiple locations and you are not organized and you are seeing that you do not have the consistent information for your businesses across all of your locations, that you don't quite have a content plan that's working for all of your locations, then have a look, get in touch, and try to get yourself together a little bit. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, I know we mentioned it in the intro, when you have to start thinking about local SEO at scale, and when you have more than one location, like two. Crystal Carter: Literally. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of local SEO at scale, we wanted to know what the most important thing to consider when working with a business that has multiple locations from an SEO point of view. So we asked just that to Elizabeth Rule, an SEO analyst over at Sterling Sky. So here's Elizabeth on what she thinks is the most important thing to remember or to know when working with a business that has multiple locations from an SEO point of view. Elizabeth Rule: Hey there, this is Elizabeth Rule, a local SEO analyst with Sterling Sky. One of the most important things I think business owners should know about managing multiple locations is that more isn't necessarily better when it comes to Google Maps. So Google Maps rankings, most people know the three pack that shows up directly in the search results. What people don't know is that Google really doesn't show the same business twice in that map pack, that three pack ever. So if you have two locations for the same business in one city, you're going to have a really tough time ranking both of those in the same map pack. So if your locations are too close together that they would be eligible to show in the map pack together just because of their proximity, it's probably better to just focus on one and put all your effort into one of those locations to help it do better, rather than having two locations that are too close together. Trying to get both of those to rank is going to be pretty much impossible. What we recommend business owners do is to get locations outside of their main city to expand their service area if they're looking to get more traction on Google Maps. But you of course want to own your backyard first, but if you're looking to expand, you're really going to want to look outside of your current city to do that if you're looking to expand on Google Maps. But there is always the opportunity to expand organically, really anywhere. So business owners that are looking to expand their visibility outside of their current one location, I always tell them instead of looking for another location to get a Google business profile, which is extremely expensive most of the time, try adding more service area pages to your site and optimizing those for the people that are located- Elizabeth Rule: And optimizing those for the people that are located in your service area you're not currently serving because they're not finding you on Google Maps. Organic is still a great way to get a lot of local traffic and it's pretty inexpensive. You can create tons of service area pages and optimize them, add the information people are looking for pretty cheaply compared to getting an entire lease and maintaining a location, a physical location to have a Google Business Profile listing. So this is my biggest tip for people trying to manage multiple locations on Google Maps or local search, invest in service area pages aka city pages. They are going to be one of the biggest in best investments you can do for your local site to improve that local SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much Elizabeth for that. You can definitely follow Elizabeth over on Twitter @ownyourserp. That's O-W-N Y-O-U-R S-E-R-P. Own your SERP, get it? Own your SERP because it's a local business. You got to own your SERP. Elizabeth works over with Sterling Sky, with Jay Hawkins. Sterling Sky does amazing content about local SEO, a bunch of studies and Elizabeth is constantly sharing her knowledge about local SEO on Twitter, and you definitely want to give her a follow, join in the conversation with her. She's a lot of fun. And again, check her out on Twitter @ownyourserp. A link to her profile in the show notes. Now, speaking of local SEO, one of the things that you never actually look at when you're doing local, but you should be, is the PAA box? Crystal Carter: Mm-hmm. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Why? I'm going to show you why, because it's a wealth of information. As we go ahead and have some fun with Google's People Also Ask. So when you search for, are you thinking about rather local SEO and research and tools, as you mentioned before, one of the things you're probably not thinking about are the People Also Ask box. Crystal Carter: Yeah. But you absolutely should. You absolutely completely, completely, completely, absolutely should. I've looked at the ODEON Luxe Leicester Square, for instance in London, and it's a prime example of the kinds of things that you'll get there. The thing about the PAA is that they are actually from the questions that people are asking. And what it will do is it will tell you the kinds of things that people want to know about your business. And this is something that I actually got clued up to from Lily Ray, and she was saying that it's worth looking at these things and seeing which questions you are answering on your website and which questions other people are answering on their website. And looking at the Leicester Square results I found, so for instance, they were asking how many seats does the ODEON Leicester Square have and the answer comes from Wikipedia. What's the biggest cinema in Leicester Square? And it says, oh Leicester Square ODEON and that comes from London Tourist Guide. Which screen is the best screen at the ODEON Leicester Square and that comes from insideci.co.uk. None of those are from Leicester Square ODEON. Y'all, guys. Guys, this is a huge opportunity for you. Mordy Oberstein: Super Hot Chili Pepper song talks about Leicester Square. That's totally random. No, that's totally random. Crystal Carter: My favorite thing is that in England you always get Americans who are like, "I'm going to Leicester Square." Mordy Oberstein: Nice. I had an Uncle Lester when I was a kid. My grandfather's friend, Uncle Lester. Anyway, one of the things that I like to do with this is when you were looking at a local business, if you look at the People Also Ask box, which again, those four questions, it's usually four, that Google shows that are questions that people also ask that you expand them. You get an answer with a URL to where the answer came from. Kind of like a featured snippet in there is you get to profile like what might be some problems with this business and also what are some unique things you could probably create content around. For example, I used to work in the West Village in New York City, and there was a great cafe on MacDougal Street between Bleecker and West Third, West Fourth, West Fourth called Caffe Reggio. And it's famous, it's been in a bunch of movies. I think it's in The Godfather. Yeah. For example, it says, what movie is Caffe Reggio in? What is Caffe Reggio known for? What is a history of Caffe Reggio? No one's asking what time do they serve their breakfast menu until, no one's asking how many flavors of coffee do they have at Caffe Reggio. They want to know about the movie. So you should have content about the movie on the website, which I didn't check. Maybe they do or don't. I don't know. I didn't look. I should have looked. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's absolutely worth doing it. I think it's also interesting you mentioned the problems. I've definitely had it where I've looked up at something and I've looked up the business and then it said something that was a negative that I'd never even thought of. Mordy Oberstein: I saw the same thing for Peter Luger was a famous steakhouse in Brooklyn. So the questions from the People Also Asked box are one, does Peter Luger have a Michelin Star? Two, how much do Peter Luger waiters make? We'll ignore that for a minute. Three, why did Peter Luger lose a Michelin Star? Crystal Carter: Okay, right. Mordy Oberstein: So addressing that Michelin Star fiasco, I'm assuming it's probably something- Crystal Carter: I'm sure Peter's making great food. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Peter Luger is famous. I don't know what the deal... I have no idea. I've never eaten there before, so I don't know. But it's something that you're going to have to, if you're a local SEO, it's something you're going to have to deal with because if that's in the People Also Ask box, it's probably in the reviews also. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it can sometimes be hot gossip. It's like you're going around, you're just searching for whatever it is- Mordy Oberstein: Meet up at Peter Lugers? Crystal Carter: Like you're going around and you're just searching for whatever, and then they're just like, "Why did so-and-so disappear?" And you're like, "What? I didn't even know that was a... that's a thing? I didn't even know that happened." And then suddenly you're looking at this saying for this other type of information from this business, but I think it's again, the business that we talked about, own your SERP. This is entirely a perfect example of how you should own your SERP for good, for bad, whatever. If your people are asking questions about you, you should be answering them. They shouldn't be getting that information from someone else. Mordy Oberstein: How about this one? Speaking of famous New York eatery landmarks, Tavern On The Green in Central Park. One of the questions in there, first one is, why is Tavern On The Green famous? What do people wear to Tavern On The Green? And three, is Tavern On The Green still around? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, that's a scandalous one for a business. Close down at one point and they opened up again. I think it's happened multiple times if I remember correctly. Let's mean you're going as a marketer and as an SEO, you clearly have something to deal with here because people don't even know that you're still around. So your client being SEO, SEO, SEO, SEO, maybe you need to go one step beyond SEO to like local advertising or local community stuff because people don't actually know that you're actually still around. They think you're not still around. So let them know you're still alive. Crystal Carter: Right. And also I think it can again, give you opportunities to sort of see about potential links as well. So for instance, if there's an article that's an older article that's saying that you closed and maybe you closed and reopened, or maybe you closed and you moved and someone posted a blog mistakenly maybe that said, "This business isn't here anymore. It's not there, you can't find it," and you're like, "No, we are here. We're just down the street," then it can give you an idea of maybe which communities you need to reach out to, maybe where you need to do some more link building in order to make sure that people know that you are still indeed around. Mordy Oberstein: And you know what we're going to do right now then, we're going to help the SEO news sites build their links as we get into this week's snappy news. The links to which will be in the show notes to read all the articles there. You're welcome to all the SEO publications that we're going to link to. Here's this week's snappy SEO news. Snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news. Let's start with a good SEO scandal. Who doesn't love a good SEO scandal. From Search Engine Land's Danny Goodwin, Google warns against content pruning as CNET deletes thousands of pages. So CNET said they want to prune their content by deleting old pages of content as they believe Google only awards new content. I've seen many, many sites do this, and it's really the wrong way to go more often than not. In this case, Danny Goodwin writes quoting CNET, that content deprecation "sends a signal to Google that says CNET is fresh, relevant, and worthy of being placed higher than our competitors in search results," that Danny says was according to an internal memo over at CNET. Danny goes on to write "Deleting content does not signal those three things. Publishing relevant, trustworthy, helpful, quality content for your audience on a technically sound website is what makes you worthy of greater organic visibility." Danny, I could not agree more. As I've said, I've seen sites delete content that wasn't getting a lot of traffic as they thought it would help Google see what pages should actually rank. More often than not, in my honest opinion, you are removing pages that help position your site as an authority. Just because a page per se doesn't get traffic or doesn't rank doesn't mean that it's not part of that authority equation that helps the other pages that do rank rank. So read the whole article. There's a lot of little juicy little tidbits in there. It's a great little case study about SEO and I think is for most instances an SEO myth. Okay, a little bit of sad news for you from Roger Montti over at Search Engine Journal, he writes, "Google downgrades visibility of HowTo and FAQ rich results." So the FAQ feature took FAQ structured data markup and produced a set of expandable cards that was essentially your FAQ on your actual webpage on this Google Results page, on the SERP itself. It really made your results take up a lot more space on the results page and the HowTo carousel is very similar in that it was a set of visual cards that appeared on your result or within your result as a carousel that walked you through how to do something. So say how to sew a button, you get a little set of- Mordy Oberstein: How to do something. So say, how to sew a button. You get a little set of cards that visually show you how to sew a button with a couple of words on each card. So, that's basically gone well, I guess. I really like those. I really like the FAQ feature in particular. I felt that if your site was smart about it, it's a great way to compete with some of the larger powerhouse sites that maybe weren't paying attention to the FAQ feature. You could add markup for your FAQ, get a much bigger result as maybe one of your big competitors who wasn't really paying attention. But I guess, oh well, it's gone. If your site had them, they probably don't have them anymore, and it can really cause an impact on traffic from Google. So, keep an eye on your data to see if anything changed. The FAQ feature will still be there in select cases. Google has said, "Going forward, FAQ from FAQ page structured data, rich results will only be shown for well-known authoritative government and health websites. For all other sites, this rich result will no longer be shown. Regularly, sites may automatically be considered for this treatment depending on rather their eligibility." So this is basically talking your Harvard Health, Mayo Clinics, Web MDs of the world. Again, I thought it was a great feature, I'm sad to see it go. There's speculation that maybe it's because SCOs were kind of abusing it as putting FAQ markup and everything, I don't know. Anyway, last but not least, from search engine land, but not from Barry Schwartz, but rather about Barry Schwartz, this one coming from SEO legend JR Oakes. It's called Tracking 20 Years of Search: Key takeaways and findings from an analysis of SE Roundtable's historical Google Analytics data from 2003 to 2023. So, you all know at this point, Barry Schwartz covers the SEO news. We featured him on basically every show. He has been covering the news, as you can see here for 20 years. He's written over 30,000 articles. Anything and everything that's happened in SEO has been covered on seroundtable.com, which makes it really interesting, a really interesting place to study and see how SEO has evolved over time, which is what JR did. JR had access from Barry to search into Roundtable's Google Analytics data, and he used it to pull and create some really cool insights that will help you get a really nice history, as I mentioned, of SEO. As again, Barry has literally been the one creating the narrative around SEO by covering everything in SEO. So for example, you can read the article, you can see things around the popularity of various search engines based on how often Barry covered them over the years, which Google updates got the industry talking, the relevancy of certain aspects of SEO over time. For example, more recently, you see there's a little bit less about mobile SEO than in the past. I cannot more highly recommend you read this article. I will link to it in the show notes, check it out. It's a great ode to Barry, but it's also a great way for you to get a really nice understanding of how SEO has sort of evolved over time. And I'll just take the opportunity again to say I always try to thank Barry for his 20 years of service, 2003 to 2023, at least from the Google Analytics data here, for covering the SEO industry as well as he does, and as consistently he does. As JR says in the article, Barry is like a robot. He just covers everything all the time. So thank you Barry, and that is this week's snappy news. Always so snappy, always so newsy, and you're welcome for the links. Crystal Carter: You're welcome. There you go. Mordy Oberstein: That's all we're going to say. Now, speaking of that, I have no actual natural connection to this, but a follow up week, you thought there was going to be because I'm always so good at it, but I have nothing. I am out. Nada. No smart pivot. Crystal Carter: No smart pivot, just- Mordy Oberstein: No smart pivot. Crystal Carter: ... Just a straight pivot. Mordy Oberstein: I do have a smart SEO for you. There's a pivot. And I do have a smart SEO for you. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Which you should be following on Twitter, and/or whatever social media platform he's on, such as Threads, is now the new hot one. He's there also. He is local SEO legend Greg Gifford. Crystal Carter: Greg to the Gifford. The Gifford, the amazing Greg Gifford. Mordy Oberstein: The Giffster. Crystal Carter: He is the absolutely... He is absolutely a local SEO legend, and such a nice guy and such a fond of knowledge. Mordy Oberstein: Super nice guy. Crystal Carter: And he's full of energy and full of warmth and so kind, and you see him on lots of things. He's done the Semrush Introduction to SEO course as well. So, he's the guy with the glasses and the beard that you've seen on lots of things. And he seems really warm and friendly, and then you meet him in person and he's really warm and friendly. Mordy Oberstein: He's really warm and friendly, and he's got an amazing knowledge of pop culture. It's like- Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Savant level knowledge of pop culture. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. He's so bubbly and friendly, but if you ask him specifically about SEO stuff, he goes straight into nerd mode. Mordy Oberstein: And it's just like, oh, epic decks. He's always a pop culture thing for all of his decks. He speaks all over the place. By the way, he works for some great people over at SearchLab, that's Mark Belan's Company out of Chicago. Greg puts on some great content local search Tuesdays, where he is giving you tips about local SEO, so we'll link to that in the show notes as well. He's an absolute legend, an absolute great follow. So please, give a follow over to Greg. Learn something about local SEO as you follow @Greg Gifford over on Twitter. And that's it. I don't have another pivots. I'm pivot-less today. Crystal Carter: Pivot near me. Mordy Oberstein: Pivot near me? Oh, I see. Perhaps I should next time scale all of my pivots so that I have a whole series to pick from. Crystal Carter: Yeah, pivot Chicago, pivot New York, pivot Los Angeles, pivot... Mordy Oberstein: Why did I pivot as a Michelin star? Because I didn't have any, that's why. Crystal Carter: Because it it moved to Montana? I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: I would love to move to Montana. Crystal Carter: Have you heard about the TV show Yellowstone? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's over. Crystal Carter: I know, you've been telling me about Yellowstone for months. Mordy Oberstein: Over. Kevin Costner's not coming back. It's over. It's a sore point for me. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Are you looking for Yellowstone? You're not going to find it, but are you looking for the Serves Up podcast? If you're going to miss us, don't worry. We're back next week with new episodes as we dive into the role quality plays, and the people also ask Box. Look forward to wherever you can consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning over at, you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. 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