Zoe Ashbridge is an SEO strategist and co-founder of Forank, a boutique search engine marketing (SEM) agency that helps B2B companies turn Google and AI search visibility into qualified leads. Zoe Ashbridge SEO strategist and co-founder of Forank Zoe Ashbridge is an SEO strategist and co-founder of Forank , a boutique search engine marketing (SEM) agency that helps B2B companies turn Google and AI search visibility into qualified leads through data-driven SEM strategies. Her work spans search engine optimization (SEO), including technical and on-page, content strategy, and generative engine optimization (GEO). Her work always has a clear focus on driving qualified leads and measurable business outcomes. Zoe takes take a data-driven approach to marketing, aligning search performance with real commercial goals across both traditional and evolving AI search platforms. Her campaigns have delivered proven impact, including generating marketing-qualified leads directly from search. Zoe’s insights have been featured in Search Engine Land, HubSpot, Moz, Backlinko, MarTech, GoDaddy, Screaming Frog, and more. Articles & Resources 31 Mar 2026 An SEO guide for service businesses Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Sophie Brannon is an SEO specialist with 7 years of agency experience. She's led strategy, implementation, and communication for local campaigns through to multi-language international campaigns. She's also an industry speaker and led the Web Almanac 2022 SEO chapter. Sophie Brannon SEO Specialist Sophie Brannon is an SEO specialist with 7 years of agency experience. She's led strategy, implementation, and communication for local campaigns through to multi-language international campaigns. She's also an industry speaker and led the Web Almanac 2022 SEO chapter. Articles & Resources 13 Feb 2024 eCommerce link building: Strategies for your homepage, category & product pages, and blog posts 19 Sept 2023 8 keyword metrics to track and measure your SEO performance 30 Mar 2023 How to create easy-to-understand SEO reports 22 Dec 2022 SEO reporting for SMBs: How to get started Resources Sophie Brannon Looker Studio SEO report template Communicate SEO results and get stakeholder buy-in for future strategies with this customizable report. 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

Should PPC landing pages be indexed for organic search? Should organic search have separate landing pages from PPC? Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein explore how to create landing pages that work for Google. With LPs being a powerful tool for PPC, join Anu Adegbola, Founder of PPC Live UK and Paid Search AD at Marin Software, as she shares her thoughts on landing pages for paid search. It’s all things SEO and landing pages with this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Back Moving your landing pages beyond PPC Should PPC landing pages be indexed for organic search? Should organic search have separate landing pages from PPC? Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein explore how to create landing pages that work for Google. With LPs being a powerful tool for PPC, join Anu Adegbola, Founder of PPC Live UK and Paid Search AD at Marin Software, as she shares her thoughts on landing pages for paid search. It’s all things SEO and landing pages with this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 25 | February 15, 2023 | 34 MIN 00:00 / 33:49 This week’s guests Anu Adegbola Anu is a Paid Media Account Director at Marin Software, Founder of PPC Live UK, and the PPCChat Roundup Podcast Host. She is passionate about - PPC, the PPC community, Automation, Microsoft Excel, sharing evolving PPC best practices, and empowering women. Fun facts - she survives on coffee, has a cat, rides a Vespa, and loves singing and travelling. 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 a groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix. I'm joined by the fabulous, incredible, the amazing, the illustrious, world-famous, internet famous, world internet famous head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thanks very much, Mordy. I saw how that dropped really, really quickly. You're like world, I mean like internet, I mean kind of like a few. Mordy Oberstein: I don't want to go too far. Crystal Carter: Somebody knows who is this person. Mordy Oberstein: Internet famous. No, no. You know what? Crystal Carter: My guacamole's world famous. Mordy Oberstein: Is it? Because I've never heard of it before. Crystal Carter: What? The people in the UK and people in America both equally enjoying guacamole. That means it's world-famous technically speaking. Mordy Oberstein: We had this conversation because I don't understand, what does that mean? You mash an avocado better than other people mash an avocado. Crystal Carter: Nah, nah, nah. There are intricacies. There's a delicate balance in order to get a fine guacamole and it involves many things. But the pièce de résistance is the cilantro ratio to the guacamole. Mordy Oberstein: Cilantro was like... I used to hate cilantro. Crystal Carter: Oh, are you one of those soap people? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it tastes like soap. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Some people think it tastes like soap. They're incorrect. Wrong. Cilantro, it's like next room of the Gods. It's delicious. It's amazing. They call it Coriander in England. Mordy Oberstein: I'm okay with it now. So before you jump all over me, I'm okay with it now. Crystal Carter: It's fine. More for me. I don't mind. Mordy Oberstein: Because there's a real cilantro shortage. So now that I'm not eating it, you can have it. Crystal Carter: Obviously. Mordy Oberstein: Obviously. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can create a Google Ads campaign right from the Wix dashboard. To me, creating and managing your ad campaigns easier because it's Wix, it's more than just SEO. I wouldn't know, by the way, because I don't do PPC. I do not like PPC. Crystal Carter: I love PPC, actually. Mordy Oberstein: I used to do PPC and ever since Google made it infinitely more complicated, I'm out. I can't handle it. It's too many things to keep up with. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of things to keep up with. And I haven't dabbled in PPC in a while, but the foundations tend to be fairly foundational, I guess you would say. I think there's been a lot of talk about AI and stuff that AI has been very present in PPC for a while now. And I think it's a really good opportunity to just like, it's in the belly of the beast, you were actively engaging with the AI and seeing how it engages with your content. It's a really, really good way to understand how all that stuff affects your site. So I find PPC is super interesting. Mordy Oberstein: It's interesting, just a lot to keep up with. Why would this. . . PPC by the way, it's because today we're talking about landing pages. What does that have to do with PPC? You'll see, because we're talking about don't let your landing page, you'll see right now, actually. The suspense is killing you. Don't let your PPC efforts kill your SEO dreams and your landing pages along with them. Hot take right there. Crystal and I are going to explore ways to allow both your landing pages to thrive unpaid assets and for SEO, things like why you might need to separate landing pages from an SEO and a PPC purpose, what an landing page needs from an SEO point of view that PPC just can't provide. And how to think about landing pages more holistically for search success. As to not ignore PPC, Anu Adegbola by the share How to create killer landing pages for PPC. We'll also pick apart some landing pages that are rocking the rankings. And of course, we have some snappy news for you and who you should be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Bring out your CTAs. Bring out your CTAs because episode number 25 of the SERP's Up podcast is here to convert you and your outlook on landing pages. So I have a confession to make. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: As a content person, I hate landing pages. Crystal Carter: I didn't guess by the title that you selected for this particular podcast. I couldn't guess that. Mordy Oberstein: It's bringing together two things that I really don't enjoy, PPC and landing pages. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay, okay. So please explain. Mordy Oberstein: And cilantro. Crystal Carter: I want a landing page about cilantro. Mordy Oberstein: If landing pages were an herb, it would be cilantro. Crystal Carter: Some people think they taste like soap. Is that what you're saying? Some people- Mordy Oberstein: Basically. And I'm saying that because I'm not an acquisition person, I don't like a acquisition content. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm biased like that. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I know it has a purpose and I know people do enjoy it, but I like to feel free. And I like to feel free to buy whatever I want and I don't like you and your landing page pressuring me to buy something. So I don't like landing pages for that reason because I feel I have enough pressure in life. I don't need your landing page. I think crafting a solid landing page is hard. It's probably one of the hardest things to do. You're trying to showcase your product and your service and it's really hard to get that content right. And that's without ever mentioning the three dreaded letters, PPC. Because for the second week in a row, you're going to have to hold me back. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: We often think of landing pages where you're showcasing your product or your servers and trying to get people to actually buy them, those landing, pages as an Uber acquisition asset with the CTA here and a CTA there, there a CTA, here is CTA. I can keep going but I won't. The problem with that though, and with landing page and my honest opinion is that when you think of a landing page as part of a PPC or a paid campaign, so you're running search ads, you're thinking of the landing page as a way to get people to buy, buy, buy, buy. I'll buy that for a dollar. So you need a page that helps them do that. So you create what we now think of as a landing page, but I'm going to call that out as an ad page and it's all about buying now. But that's not to be confused in my personal opinion, with an actual landing page because the page that people use when they're literally coming to the site solely to buy something is very different from the page that you want people to use to learn more about who you are and the fact that they can trust you so that they can buy the thing from you. So there's landing pages for ads and then there's landing pages for everything else. And today, I want to talk about separating those two things out. Thoughts, Crystal. Crystal Carter: I hear what you're saying. I get it. I've definitely been on some of those landing pages that are clearly there to drive you towards buying. And I've also been on the other side where I've been working with clients and I've been working on the SEO and maybe they had a separate PPC team that was like, "We need to change this page and make it more like this and make it more like that." And from an SEO point of view, and particularly when you crafted the page and you spent a lot of time looking at the page from a content point of view and from where the CTAs are and that sort of thing, it can be kind of tricky when someone comes in with a different intent and wants to apply that to something that you are trying to manage from a search perspective. Because what we see in statistics statistically very often is PPC tends to have, or PPC landing pages tend to have a shorter dwell time. So time on page tends to be much shorter than SEO because the intent is different. And also it's often a cold lead. So if you have a search query, sometimes people will come to you from search because the algorithm will know that maybe they've visited the site before or maybe they're near you or something like that. So there's more likely to be some kind of intent around the search result that they get. But also with a PPC thing, sometimes you're just throwing yourself in front of people keywords that they wouldn't necessarily normally find you on. So they're going to have a shorter attention span and they're going to give you shorter, they're going to have different intent from search. So I can see the challenge there for you because I can see you welling up here, Mordy. I can see the challenge there for you, particularly if you crafted the content because sometimes it can feel a bit like out of left field or something. You're trying to warm these people up and try to build trust and all this sort of stuff and this other person's just going quiet. Mordy Oberstein: It's way too fast. Whoa, whoa, whoa, it's the first date. When you get those pages from search, they seem awkward and out of place, almost like that weird kid in kindergarten. And it doesn't work for me, on multiple levels. And I think you hit it in the nail in the head. It's an intent thing. There's two different intents and we're trying to use very often because we often think of landing pages in this way. We're trying to use a PPC page for one intent for another intent and it just doesn't work. And you have things, for example, I remember doing a webinar one time and it was a surgeon journal and someone asked about, it was about landing pages. And someone said, "Should there be navigation in the landing page?" And I said yes. And they send you the comments at the end of the webinar, like here's all the questions people ask and the comments and someone wrote in the comments like, "Moron, you don't have navigation on landing pages," because you are a PPC person and you're killing the landing page with the PPC. But if I go from organic search, yes, from a PPC point of view, you want them to buy the product, you don't want them to go anywhere else on the website. The only link should be to buy something. Crystal Carter: Just to interject there, I'm so sorry. On that particular thing of not having navigation on the bottom of the page, that ain't always true. I have worked in YMYL verticals and had PPC folks come in and say that, give that rhetoric. And particularly for YMYL. So the clients I was working with were medical, commercial medicine, totally fantastic wonderful legitimate businesses. But the PPC team was saying, "Oh, we need to get rid of all of the navigation on the bottom." Well, you know what's in all the navigation on the bottom? Mordy Oberstein: Links. Crystal Carter: Well links, but also all your NAP stuff, all that stuff that helps Google to verify all of your EAT, which is your expertise, authority, and trust, link to your about page and your awards and your credentials and all of that sort of stuff. And from a PPC point of view be like, yeah, that takes up a lot of space on the page. But guess what? Within PPC, if you don't have that on a page that is a regulated sector, like something like medicine, let's say you're selling diabetes tests or something like that, if you don't have all that stuff on your PPC page, you can't even serve your ads. They will flag your ads and they will say, "No, you cannot serve them," and they will stop your ads. And you'll be going about your business thinking your ads are running and they're not because you haven't managed your page correctly. So it's a bit more nuanced than that and people need to think correctly about it to make sure that they're hitting all of the PPC things because you benefit. So counter to you, the benefit of PPC is that it can give you a lot of good steering. So with PPC for regulated industries, they have lists of things that you have to do. Whereas with Google, they'll be like, "Yeah, EAT, yeah, it would be good content." But with PPC they'll be like, "You need to be a member of this organization. You need to have this, you need to have that, you need to have that." And that can be useful to help bridge content. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not against the PPC page. You're confusing me. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I want the PPC page for PPC and I want the search page for search because when I go from a search query to a landing page and there's no navigation, I'm trying to understand who the hell you are. Now what? You know what? I go back to the SERP and I say, "Forget you, I'm off to the next website." So you do need to navigate. You want to make it look like, you want to shade it out a little bit so it's not so... Whatever, fine. My point is why not just create a PPC page, no index that thing, serve that to paid users and do a real landing page or a different landing page for search. Crystal Carter: So there's many, many benefits to taking that approach and I think that sometimes brand managers don't realize that they can do that. You can do that. Mordy Oberstein: It's why we're having this podcast, we can tell you do that. Crystal Carter: Do that. And there's massive benefits to that. So let's say you're doing a PPC campaign and you're selling, I don't know, ice cream in Florida, right? And you got ice cream Fort Lauderdale, ice cream Jacksonville, ice cream Miami, all of these different places. You can do a PPC landing page for each and every single one of those locations that says, "Hello people in Fort Lauderdale, do you like raspberry ripple? Because we got some ice cream for you." And you can do all of that sort of stuff. And let's say the people in Key West like key lime ice cream. Who knows? Mordy Oberstein: Is that a thing? Is there key lime ice cream? Crystal Carter: Probably. Mordy Oberstein: That's delicious. It would sound delicious, I would love that. I just haven't read that. Key lime with graham cracker topping. Crystal Carter: Ooh. Mordy Oberstein: Like the actual pie. Crystal Carter: I feel like that would be like we've invented, but somebody you please send us pictures of your key lime ice cream. Mordy Oberstein: Or just send us pie. I love pie. Crystal Carter: Pie is also good. Mordy Oberstein: I love pie. Pie is a money dessert. Crystal Carter: I like sweet and also savory pies. I'm a big fan of, in England you have a lot- Mordy Oberstein: I like sweet and savory together, like pineapple on pizza. Crystal Carter: No, no, it's not. No that's not today's episode. Mordy Oberstein: We digress. Crystal Carter: The point I'm saying is you can really get really granular with your PPC landing pages and if you do that, which is a good strategy and can absolutely maximize your like ROI or ROAS on your PPC, if you do that, that's really, really good. But if you don't index those pages and you just have them available on search, that eats up your crawl budget and it also makes the quality of your content look really, really low because maybe the difference is only a couple of words or the difference is only a phone number or something to that effect. And that's not great for Google. So absolutely, they should be separate. However, what I have seen and what I do see is there's a couple of brands. Later as a brand that I follow a lot at, it's a social media management tool. Looking at their stats on Semrush, they use their landing page, their main landing page for a lot of their PPC. And what they've done is they've got above the fold, has a big old CTA and has a nice well optimized copy that's fairly, it's not super, super pushy or whatever in absence. But it's got above the fold is very much transactional focus. And then below the fold, they get into the other thing. So that helps you satisfy the quick burst of information that people want from a PPC experience. But then also further down the thing, they've got lots of good quality digging into it, a bit more, chunkier information to satisfy search and to satisfy user intent. Mordy Oberstein: I'm all in on that because from an organic point of view, I think one of the ways you want to look at your landing pages, it's the last opportunity because they're not, the intent might not be to buy or the intent might be a little bit wider or from when you're coming from search, you do want to understand who you're buying from a lot more than you're just buying from PPC. The landing page is theoretically your last opportunity to instill trust with that user. And if it's just a bunch of CTAs and a big hero image, you have no opportunity to instill that trust. That trusting goes of course, into the EAT as you mentioned before. So it's all one thing. Crystal Carter: It's all one song, as Wordy ever says. Mordy Oberstein: I do. I like to say that. Whole story on that. Anyway, because I do appreciate the value of the PPC landing page, I am not a PPC hater, I just, again on my jam, I thought it'd be great to get some advice about how to create a killer no indexed landing page PPC. So here's Anu Adegbola to talk to you about that. Anu Adegbola: Hello, my name is Anu and my answer to how do you create the perfect PPC landing page for paid search, is like my biggest tip would be what is the message you want to get across and what do you then want the visitor to do. With paid search, we are usually dealing with people who are at the point of there's a certain intent. They have searched for something so they're looking for something. They kind of know in their back of their mind what they want to do. They're hoping to do something at that point of search. So when they search for using a keyword which you've hopefully researched to know that has decent volume for the searches to your page or what you actually have a product or information about, you're hoping that you then have that thing. You put that message on the landing page that it's clear that they have found what they are looking for. Think U2. Are you the person they have found what they're looking for? And then the thing that you don't want them to do, do you want them to purchase, do you want them to enter a form. It has to really be right next to, I'd say right next to because we're still trying to look at information at above the fold. You don't want them to scroll to get to the point of them doing the thing that you want them to do. Human beings this, day and age, we have such a low attention span. We don't see the thing that allows us to purchase or the thing that allows us to enter our details within the first five to 10 seconds because we've entered a landing page where it's highly likely that we'll bounce off. So what's really important, especially with paid search and quality score, is that that keyword that the person is bidding on really has to have high relevancy or really actually directly match the message of the ad copy, or the advert. And that directly has to match the content that is going to be on the landing page. So what's really important for paid search is that it's really clear that the person has found what they're looking for. The button or link that is then going to get them to do what you want them to do is clearly visible because that then leads to what we really want for paid search. It's not just about traffic, but it's actually about the action when the person gets on the landing page. So will they buy an item? Will they enter their details and give their details as a lead? Will they read or download that document that you want them to download? So yeah, that's what I'd say is the great way of creating a perfect landing page for PPC. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Anu. Love the U2 reference, by the way. Crystal Carter: And I think she's absolutely right that there should be an emphasis on making sure that people can do things, people can find the button, see the thing, buy the thing that they want, register for that event, whatever it is that they're trying to achieve. She also talked about short attention spans and stuff and you need to be able to convey your message really, really quickly. So yeah, I think she's got some great tips there and is incredibly well qualified because she hosts the PPC Live UK event. It's like a bimonthly in London. She also is a podcaster on PPC chat and has been working in PPC for many, many years. So she knows what she's on about and I think that that's some great advice for PPC landing pages. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why it makes sense to follow Anu on Twitter, @TheMarketingAnu, A-N-U, over on Twitter. So I thought since we're talking about landing pages, and landing pages from the organic search point of view, I thought it'd be really interesting and it would make logical sense to go to the actual SERP, see what's there in terms of landing pages and take away some lessons from landing pages that are killing it in the rankings. So you could take away organic lessons about landing pages. So here, we're going top shelf with from the top of the SERP. So this week we're looking at the keyword, mobile COVID test. Because I was actually working on a website and they have a website that's very much a landing page for PPC and it's not doing well in search. I'm like okay, let's take a look and see what's going on organically there. So let me just leverage that for the podcast, two birds with one stone, repurposing. It's about being efficient. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: About being efficient sometimes. You didn't need to know all of this. Yeah, I told you anyway. Crystal Carter: It fine. That's what we're here for. Mordy Oberstein: Mobile COVID test. And the patient I found that was ranking well this is ranking well by the way, out of market so it's not tied to a particular location. I know for a fact if you started looking at particular locations it would be different. So don't get hung up on what you see ranking. This is what I saw ranking universally or worldly, globally. That's the word I'm looking for, globally. Crystal Carter: Worldly. Mordy Oberstein: Worldly, yes. I speak English well. Worldly. And they have a landing page where it starts off with mobile COVID-19 tests and treatment. What I like about the page is that as opposed, because it's as you mentioned before, Crystal, it's a health page. It's YMYL, your money, your life. They don't dive into CTA, CTA, CTA, CTA, they start off with information, but it's information is a nice way to do it. It's information about the service they offer, how much does it cost, when are they open? Do they take insurance? How soon do you get results? So it's information but it's commercial information. So it kind of leads to the conversion, but it's not conversion esque immediately. Crystal Carter: Right. And it's the kind of stuff that people would look for and it's the kind of stuff... And what's also interesting on that particular one is that for this page, they've got it in bullet points, which a lot of people don't realize that Google loves bullet points particularly for the SERP. So it's the kind of thing that someone would say, "Can I get a rapid COVID test," or something like bullet points make you more eligible for featured snippets that also sometimes pull them out as rich snippets, elements underneath the SERP results. So that is an optimization that you might not see as immediately useful for a landing page, but it is something that actually is. They've got reviews on this page as well, which is another example of trust, is another demonstration of trust. So that's really important. And then they've also got lots of information about why you might think you need the test and think things like that. And it's a pretty solid landing page. Mordy Oberstein: It's pretty solid. Personally, I think they could have gotten a little bit harder with the CTAs. They totally could. I am not against making money, you should make money. And on this page, I would've added more CTAs. But they do a good job. First, they have two FAQs. One's a general FAQ about the services and getting the testing. For example, I need workplace testing at my company. There's a whole FAQ, how we're equipped to provide that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then they have one about frequently asked questions about COVID-19. So again, not tied to their service. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And below that, as you mentioned, they have a whole section about if you think you have COVID-19, when should you or shouldn't you be calling us? Which is really good information. And again, it ties into using them, but it's solid information. By the way, I've seen this a million times over. Google likes on landing pages. Google likes having informational content, not just the acquisitional marketing schlock because Google understands that you as a user, you want to have a context for using this service or not using this service or buying this product or not buying this product, which you need informational content for. So it's a good page, but they probably could have added more CTA, which ironic because I'm the one advocating don't go so acquisitional, but I feel they could have gotten more acquisitional. See, I'm a balanced person. Crystal Carter: What I think is also interesting if I can throw in a completely different landing page that I think is really interesting is DQ, Dairy Queen, which I remember getting Blizzards back... You know when they put the chocolate, they dip it in the chocolate and then it's got the little outside chocolate like crispy. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah, the crispy shell. Crystal Carter: Yeah, love that. Anyway- So they've got some interesting location landing pages, which is something that we have the amazing Amanda Jordan talking about on our webinar series a few months back. She talked about that. And they've done it in a way that, as far as I can tell, seems quite programmatic. And what they've got is pretty much it's a lot of the core information that you need. They haven't gone into a lot of informational content in the way that Mordy enjoys, but it's the kind of content that I really appreciate because it's very quick. So if you look up like Dairy Queen Atlanta, so I've got one that is 10 North Avenue and then I've got another one that's for Empire Street in Atlanta. And these are two location pages that look fairly similar, but they've got a lot of programmatic elements that make some difference. So first of all, they've got all of the different details. So all of their opening hours, all of the amenities. I know which one has a high chair, which one serves cakes, which one does gift cards, which one has drive through that sort of thing, maps and different favorites that are present at that. The other thing that's really great about this page is that all of that stuff is apparent in the schema markup. If you dig into the schema markup, they've got all of that stuff in their fast food restaurant schema. So they've got the geo coordinates, they've got their amenities, they have their drive through. So there's like location, feature, specification, highchair available, value true. They've got that all written in there with images of them as well. And they are someone who has these location pages for hundreds of locations across the US and they have taken the time to make sure that they're formatted in a way that allows you to get the specificities of each location and the backend is very technical, but as you're visiting it as a user, it's really, really useful and really accessible. So I think that they're two different styles of landing page, which I think is interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Two different types of niches, two different types of audiences, two different types of information that people do or don't need and depth of information people do or don't need. So it makes total sense to me. Crystal Carter: Right. And also the audience thing is a really big point because if somebody's looking at Dairy Queen or whatever, they're probably on their mobile so they're going to want quick information. Mordy Oberstein: Get that craving, you're in the car. Crystal Carter: Right? You're like, "I really want a Blizzards right now." Mordy Oberstein: Right now. Crystal Carter: Where is it? Mordy Oberstein: You don't even search for Blizzards near me, you search for Blizzards right now. Crystal Carter: I need chocolate ice cream. And so they've got icons, they've got quick pictures, whatever. And so it's something that's going to load really quickly. It's something that's going to give them lots of information really quickly and it's going to touch on a lot of the SERP features so that they're showing in the search really easily as well. So I think that the audience thing is really important, whereas if somebody is worried about whether or not they need to take a COVID test, they need a little bit of support. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a totally different beast. Totally different beast. So that's from the top of the SERP. Crystal Carter: There we go. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Here's from what's at the top of my list of things that's going on in the SEO world because now we have some Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. More AI news, you ask? Yes indeed. You have fished your wish. You've got what you've asked for. I'm back with more news about AI and search for what feels like the 80th millionth week in a row. If you're sick of AI news, so sorry, but we have a ton of it this week. First off, from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land New with Google multisearch, Google Maps, and more previews of Bard. Google held a live event to showcase its new AI system Bard, which like ChatGPT, spins up AI, produce answers to queries. The truth is Google spent most of the time discussing other products, like Google Lens. I don't think the event went the way Google would've liked with some of the examples that use in the AI showcase being slightly inaccurate. But despite what you may have heard, it's important to realize that this is all just the very, very beginning and getting caught up in the current news cycle doesn't mean anything as to where Google will be with this long term, which I do think they'll be in a more advanced place with this in the long term. I think it's kind of obvious, at least it is to me. Anyway, Google did ever release a new piece of documentation around AI content that is, quote, about rewarding high quality content however it is produced." I'll link to the full write up to the documentation in the show notes. But in a nutshell, as long as the content's great, Google doesn't care. On the flip side, and as per Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal, Microsoft announces ChatGPT capabilities coming to Bing. It looks really interesting to me as it layers the answers with citations and it's already been spotted with a few ads in the mix. I'll link to that also in the show notes. Anyway, reports say up to 1 million people have signed up to take this new Bing ChatGPT AI functionality for a test run by joining the wait list. It's been a major boost for Bing, with Search Engine Land's Barry Schwartz reporting on this quoting Yusuf Mehdi corporate vice president consumer marketing office at Microsoft who said, "This is the largest jump in relevance in two decades." This coming after Bing applied the AI model to the search engine. So really interesting stuff. A ton, absolute ton happened last week in the AI world for search engines. Check out all the links in the show notes. It's absolutely insane what's happening right now. I personally can't remember a time in search that has been this absolutely crazy. I always warn or caveat this all with a piece of advice, this is all progressing very, very quickly. What's there now, what things are now is going to play out very differently in the future. So be patient with it all and realize we're looking at one very small sliver of time and this is not going away. This is here for the long haul. So what things look like now and what things look like let's say in six months from now, maybe very, very different. And with that, that is this week's Snappy News. Glorious news. News, news, glorious news. I always think of news every time I say the word news, by the way. Great movie Crystal Carter: Christian Bale's in that movie. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Nuts. He's been around forever and he won't go away. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. He was in like Thor, the recent Thor as well. Mordy Oberstein: There’s a movie on Netflix I watched with him. He's like a cop or detective back in the 1800s. It's good. Crystal Carter: Okay. All right. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it was a very interesting movie. Anyway, from what you should be watching to who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness, this week we have RicketyRoo’s own, you already mentioned her, Amanda Jordan. Crystal Carter: Amanda Jordan. Mordy Oberstein: So two mentions for Amanda on the same episode for the price of one. Crystal Carter: That's because Amanda Jordan's awesome and she came on and she talked about location landing pages and y'all should watch the, we have on the Wix SEO hub, we have the whole video of the webinar. And Amanda presents so well and she talks about location landing pages and she gives you all of the details on how to make a fantastic location landing page and shares her insights. And every time I listen to Amanda, I'm always blown away by her depth of knowledge and how much she loves SEO. She's brilliant. Mordy Oberstein: She's brilliant. Though, the way you frame this... So you're saying she's presentable. Is that really a compliment? I'm just kidding. Crystal Carter: Amanda's great. Mordy Oberstein: Amanda's great. Follow her on Twitter over, @AmandaTJordan on Twitter. That's AmandaTJordan, like Michael Jordan, but AmandaTJordan on Twitter. We'll link to her profile in the show notes. And that does it for us. Crystal Carter: That's it. We have landed. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, we've landed. Nice. I should have used a landing thing in the intro. I can't believe I- Crystal Carter: We stuck the landing. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Nice. That's money right there. Crystal Carter: Whenever I think of sticking the landing, I always think of Kerri Strug in the Olympics. Mordy Oberstein: I was thinking the same thing. I always think the same thing. Crystal Carter: I remember being a little kid and being like, "Is she going to do it?" And she ran as fast as she could. Mordy Oberstein: That's an epic moment in the history of sports. Crystal Carter: I literally was holding my breath the whole time. I don't think people understood. It was like, either she sticks and we get the gold medal or we don't. And I was like, "Come on." Mordy Oberstein: You burn the place down like it's Philadelphia. Because that's what they do in Philly, when they win, even when they lose. When they win, they burn the place down. It's a totally different podcast. Crystal Carter: I don't know what you're talking about now. Mordy Oberstein: Our head of social media does. Little shout out to Drew. Anyway, thank you for joining the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into, is the chase for head terms doomed to fail? These titles are so dramatic. Who writes these things? You kidding me here? Crystal's gone so high a register, you can't even hear her right now. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry. I'm like Mariah Carey. Only birds can hear me. Mordy Oberstein: Look for wherever you can consume podcasts or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars, like Amanda Jordan's, on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Anu Adegbola Amanda Jordan Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub PPC Live UK How to optimize local landing pages News: New with Google multisearch, Google Maps, and more previews of Bard Google Search's guidance about AI-generated content Microsoft Announces ChatGPT Capabilities Coming To Bing Ads In The New Bing Chat Interface Over one million people signed up to try the new AI-powered Bing Microsoft: Bing saw the largest relevancy jump in search in two decades Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Anu Adegbola Amanda Jordan Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub PPC Live UK How to optimize local landing pages News: New with Google multisearch, Google Maps, and more previews of Bard Google Search's guidance about AI-generated content Microsoft Announces ChatGPT Capabilities Coming To Bing Ads In The New Bing Chat Interface Over one million people signed up to try the new AI-powered Bing Microsoft: Bing saw the largest relevancy jump in search in two decades 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 a groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix. I'm joined by the fabulous, incredible, the amazing, the illustrious, world-famous, internet famous, world internet famous head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thanks very much, Mordy. I saw how that dropped really, really quickly. You're like world, I mean like internet, I mean kind of like a few. Mordy Oberstein: I don't want to go too far. Crystal Carter: Somebody knows who is this person. Mordy Oberstein: Internet famous. No, no. You know what? Crystal Carter: My guacamole's world famous. Mordy Oberstein: Is it? Because I've never heard of it before. Crystal Carter: What? The people in the UK and people in America both equally enjoying guacamole. That means it's world-famous technically speaking. Mordy Oberstein: We had this conversation because I don't understand, what does that mean? You mash an avocado better than other people mash an avocado. Crystal Carter: Nah, nah, nah. There are intricacies. There's a delicate balance in order to get a fine guacamole and it involves many things. But the pièce de résistance is the cilantro ratio to the guacamole. Mordy Oberstein: Cilantro was like... I used to hate cilantro. Crystal Carter: Oh, are you one of those soap people? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it tastes like soap. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Some people think it tastes like soap. They're incorrect. Wrong. Cilantro, it's like next room of the Gods. It's delicious. It's amazing. They call it Coriander in England. Mordy Oberstein: I'm okay with it now. So before you jump all over me, I'm okay with it now. Crystal Carter: It's fine. More for me. I don't mind. Mordy Oberstein: Because there's a real cilantro shortage. So now that I'm not eating it, you can have it. Crystal Carter: Obviously. Mordy Oberstein: Obviously. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can create a Google Ads campaign right from the Wix dashboard. To me, creating and managing your ad campaigns easier because it's Wix, it's more than just SEO. I wouldn't know, by the way, because I don't do PPC. I do not like PPC. Crystal Carter: I love PPC, actually. Mordy Oberstein: I used to do PPC and ever since Google made it infinitely more complicated, I'm out. I can't handle it. It's too many things to keep up with. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of things to keep up with. And I haven't dabbled in PPC in a while, but the foundations tend to be fairly foundational, I guess you would say. I think there's been a lot of talk about AI and stuff that AI has been very present in PPC for a while now. And I think it's a really good opportunity to just like, it's in the belly of the beast, you were actively engaging with the AI and seeing how it engages with your content. It's a really, really good way to understand how all that stuff affects your site. So I find PPC is super interesting. Mordy Oberstein: It's interesting, just a lot to keep up with. Why would this. . . PPC by the way, it's because today we're talking about landing pages. What does that have to do with PPC? You'll see, because we're talking about don't let your landing page, you'll see right now, actually. The suspense is killing you. Don't let your PPC efforts kill your SEO dreams and your landing pages along with them. Hot take right there. Crystal and I are going to explore ways to allow both your landing pages to thrive unpaid assets and for SEO, things like why you might need to separate landing pages from an SEO and a PPC purpose, what an landing page needs from an SEO point of view that PPC just can't provide. And how to think about landing pages more holistically for search success. As to not ignore PPC, Anu Adegbola by the share How to create killer landing pages for PPC. We'll also pick apart some landing pages that are rocking the rankings. And of course, we have some snappy news for you and who you should be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Bring out your CTAs. Bring out your CTAs because episode number 25 of the SERP's Up podcast is here to convert you and your outlook on landing pages. So I have a confession to make. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: As a content person, I hate landing pages. Crystal Carter: I didn't guess by the title that you selected for this particular podcast. I couldn't guess that. Mordy Oberstein: It's bringing together two things that I really don't enjoy, PPC and landing pages. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay, okay. So please explain. Mordy Oberstein: And cilantro. Crystal Carter: I want a landing page about cilantro. Mordy Oberstein: If landing pages were an herb, it would be cilantro. Crystal Carter: Some people think they taste like soap. Is that what you're saying? Some people- Mordy Oberstein: Basically. And I'm saying that because I'm not an acquisition person, I don't like a acquisition content. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm biased like that. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I know it has a purpose and I know people do enjoy it, but I like to feel free. And I like to feel free to buy whatever I want and I don't like you and your landing page pressuring me to buy something. So I don't like landing pages for that reason because I feel I have enough pressure in life. I don't need your landing page. I think crafting a solid landing page is hard. It's probably one of the hardest things to do. You're trying to showcase your product and your service and it's really hard to get that content right. And that's without ever mentioning the three dreaded letters, PPC. Because for the second week in a row, you're going to have to hold me back. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: We often think of landing pages where you're showcasing your product or your servers and trying to get people to actually buy them, those landing, pages as an Uber acquisition asset with the CTA here and a CTA there, there a CTA, here is CTA. I can keep going but I won't. The problem with that though, and with landing page and my honest opinion is that when you think of a landing page as part of a PPC or a paid campaign, so you're running search ads, you're thinking of the landing page as a way to get people to buy, buy, buy, buy. I'll buy that for a dollar. So you need a page that helps them do that. So you create what we now think of as a landing page, but I'm going to call that out as an ad page and it's all about buying now. But that's not to be confused in my personal opinion, with an actual landing page because the page that people use when they're literally coming to the site solely to buy something is very different from the page that you want people to use to learn more about who you are and the fact that they can trust you so that they can buy the thing from you. So there's landing pages for ads and then there's landing pages for everything else. And today, I want to talk about separating those two things out. Thoughts, Crystal. Crystal Carter: I hear what you're saying. I get it. I've definitely been on some of those landing pages that are clearly there to drive you towards buying. And I've also been on the other side where I've been working with clients and I've been working on the SEO and maybe they had a separate PPC team that was like, "We need to change this page and make it more like this and make it more like that." And from an SEO point of view, and particularly when you crafted the page and you spent a lot of time looking at the page from a content point of view and from where the CTAs are and that sort of thing, it can be kind of tricky when someone comes in with a different intent and wants to apply that to something that you are trying to manage from a search perspective. Because what we see in statistics statistically very often is PPC tends to have, or PPC landing pages tend to have a shorter dwell time. So time on page tends to be much shorter than SEO because the intent is different. And also it's often a cold lead. So if you have a search query, sometimes people will come to you from search because the algorithm will know that maybe they've visited the site before or maybe they're near you or something like that. So there's more likely to be some kind of intent around the search result that they get. But also with a PPC thing, sometimes you're just throwing yourself in front of people keywords that they wouldn't necessarily normally find you on. So they're going to have a shorter attention span and they're going to give you shorter, they're going to have different intent from search. So I can see the challenge there for you because I can see you welling up here, Mordy. I can see the challenge there for you, particularly if you crafted the content because sometimes it can feel a bit like out of left field or something. You're trying to warm these people up and try to build trust and all this sort of stuff and this other person's just going quiet. Mordy Oberstein: It's way too fast. Whoa, whoa, whoa, it's the first date. When you get those pages from search, they seem awkward and out of place, almost like that weird kid in kindergarten. And it doesn't work for me, on multiple levels. And I think you hit it in the nail in the head. It's an intent thing. There's two different intents and we're trying to use very often because we often think of landing pages in this way. We're trying to use a PPC page for one intent for another intent and it just doesn't work. And you have things, for example, I remember doing a webinar one time and it was a surgeon journal and someone asked about, it was about landing pages. And someone said, "Should there be navigation in the landing page?" And I said yes. And they send you the comments at the end of the webinar, like here's all the questions people ask and the comments and someone wrote in the comments like, "Moron, you don't have navigation on landing pages," because you are a PPC person and you're killing the landing page with the PPC. But if I go from organic search, yes, from a PPC point of view, you want them to buy the product, you don't want them to go anywhere else on the website. The only link should be to buy something. Crystal Carter: Just to interject there, I'm so sorry. On that particular thing of not having navigation on the bottom of the page, that ain't always true. I have worked in YMYL verticals and had PPC folks come in and say that, give that rhetoric. And particularly for YMYL. So the clients I was working with were medical, commercial medicine, totally fantastic wonderful legitimate businesses. But the PPC team was saying, "Oh, we need to get rid of all of the navigation on the bottom." Well, you know what's in all the navigation on the bottom? Mordy Oberstein: Links. Crystal Carter: Well links, but also all your NAP stuff, all that stuff that helps Google to verify all of your EAT, which is your expertise, authority, and trust, link to your about page and your awards and your credentials and all of that sort of stuff. And from a PPC point of view be like, yeah, that takes up a lot of space on the page. But guess what? Within PPC, if you don't have that on a page that is a regulated sector, like something like medicine, let's say you're selling diabetes tests or something like that, if you don't have all that stuff on your PPC page, you can't even serve your ads. They will flag your ads and they will say, "No, you cannot serve them," and they will stop your ads. And you'll be going about your business thinking your ads are running and they're not because you haven't managed your page correctly. So it's a bit more nuanced than that and people need to think correctly about it to make sure that they're hitting all of the PPC things because you benefit. So counter to you, the benefit of PPC is that it can give you a lot of good steering. So with PPC for regulated industries, they have lists of things that you have to do. Whereas with Google, they'll be like, "Yeah, EAT, yeah, it would be good content." But with PPC they'll be like, "You need to be a member of this organization. You need to have this, you need to have that, you need to have that." And that can be useful to help bridge content. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not against the PPC page. You're confusing me. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I want the PPC page for PPC and I want the search page for search because when I go from a search query to a landing page and there's no navigation, I'm trying to understand who the hell you are. Now what? You know what? I go back to the SERP and I say, "Forget you, I'm off to the next website." So you do need to navigate. You want to make it look like, you want to shade it out a little bit so it's not so... Whatever, fine. My point is why not just create a PPC page, no index that thing, serve that to paid users and do a real landing page or a different landing page for search. Crystal Carter: So there's many, many benefits to taking that approach and I think that sometimes brand managers don't realize that they can do that. You can do that. Mordy Oberstein: It's why we're having this podcast, we can tell you do that. Crystal Carter: Do that. And there's massive benefits to that. So let's say you're doing a PPC campaign and you're selling, I don't know, ice cream in Florida, right? And you got ice cream Fort Lauderdale, ice cream Jacksonville, ice cream Miami, all of these different places. You can do a PPC landing page for each and every single one of those locations that says, "Hello people in Fort Lauderdale, do you like raspberry ripple? Because we got some ice cream for you." And you can do all of that sort of stuff. And let's say the people in Key West like key lime ice cream. Who knows? Mordy Oberstein: Is that a thing? Is there key lime ice cream? Crystal Carter: Probably. Mordy Oberstein: That's delicious. It would sound delicious, I would love that. I just haven't read that. Key lime with graham cracker topping. Crystal Carter: Ooh. Mordy Oberstein: Like the actual pie. Crystal Carter: I feel like that would be like we've invented, but somebody you please send us pictures of your key lime ice cream. Mordy Oberstein: Or just send us pie. I love pie. Crystal Carter: Pie is also good. Mordy Oberstein: I love pie. Pie is a money dessert. Crystal Carter: I like sweet and also savory pies. I'm a big fan of, in England you have a lot- Mordy Oberstein: I like sweet and savory together, like pineapple on pizza. Crystal Carter: No, no, it's not. No that's not today's episode. Mordy Oberstein: We digress. Crystal Carter: The point I'm saying is you can really get really granular with your PPC landing pages and if you do that, which is a good strategy and can absolutely maximize your like ROI or ROAS on your PPC, if you do that, that's really, really good. But if you don't index those pages and you just have them available on search, that eats up your crawl budget and it also makes the quality of your content look really, really low because maybe the difference is only a couple of words or the difference is only a phone number or something to that effect. And that's not great for Google. So absolutely, they should be separate. However, what I have seen and what I do see is there's a couple of brands. Later as a brand that I follow a lot at, it's a social media management tool. Looking at their stats on Semrush, they use their landing page, their main landing page for a lot of their PPC. And what they've done is they've got above the fold, has a big old CTA and has a nice well optimized copy that's fairly, it's not super, super pushy or whatever in absence. But it's got above the fold is very much transactional focus. And then below the fold, they get into the other thing. So that helps you satisfy the quick burst of information that people want from a PPC experience. But then also further down the thing, they've got lots of good quality digging into it, a bit more, chunkier information to satisfy search and to satisfy user intent. Mordy Oberstein: I'm all in on that because from an organic point of view, I think one of the ways you want to look at your landing pages, it's the last opportunity because they're not, the intent might not be to buy or the intent might be a little bit wider or from when you're coming from search, you do want to understand who you're buying from a lot more than you're just buying from PPC. The landing page is theoretically your last opportunity to instill trust with that user. And if it's just a bunch of CTAs and a big hero image, you have no opportunity to instill that trust. That trusting goes of course, into the EAT as you mentioned before. So it's all one thing. Crystal Carter: It's all one song, as Wordy ever says. Mordy Oberstein: I do. I like to say that. Whole story on that. Anyway, because I do appreciate the value of the PPC landing page, I am not a PPC hater, I just, again on my jam, I thought it'd be great to get some advice about how to create a killer no indexed landing page PPC. So here's Anu Adegbola to talk to you about that. Anu Adegbola: Hello, my name is Anu and my answer to how do you create the perfect PPC landing page for paid search, is like my biggest tip would be what is the message you want to get across and what do you then want the visitor to do. With paid search, we are usually dealing with people who are at the point of there's a certain intent. They have searched for something so they're looking for something. They kind of know in their back of their mind what they want to do. They're hoping to do something at that point of search. So when they search for using a keyword which you've hopefully researched to know that has decent volume for the searches to your page or what you actually have a product or information about, you're hoping that you then have that thing. You put that message on the landing page that it's clear that they have found what they are looking for. Think U2. Are you the person they have found what they're looking for? And then the thing that you don't want them to do, do you want them to purchase, do you want them to enter a form. It has to really be right next to, I'd say right next to because we're still trying to look at information at above the fold. You don't want them to scroll to get to the point of them doing the thing that you want them to do. Human beings this, day and age, we have such a low attention span. We don't see the thing that allows us to purchase or the thing that allows us to enter our details within the first five to 10 seconds because we've entered a landing page where it's highly likely that we'll bounce off. So what's really important, especially with paid search and quality score, is that that keyword that the person is bidding on really has to have high relevancy or really actually directly match the message of the ad copy, or the advert. And that directly has to match the content that is going to be on the landing page. So what's really important for paid search is that it's really clear that the person has found what they're looking for. The button or link that is then going to get them to do what you want them to do is clearly visible because that then leads to what we really want for paid search. It's not just about traffic, but it's actually about the action when the person gets on the landing page. So will they buy an item? Will they enter their details and give their details as a lead? Will they read or download that document that you want them to download? So yeah, that's what I'd say is the great way of creating a perfect landing page for PPC. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Anu. Love the U2 reference, by the way. Crystal Carter: And I think she's absolutely right that there should be an emphasis on making sure that people can do things, people can find the button, see the thing, buy the thing that they want, register for that event, whatever it is that they're trying to achieve. She also talked about short attention spans and stuff and you need to be able to convey your message really, really quickly. So yeah, I think she's got some great tips there and is incredibly well qualified because she hosts the PPC Live UK event. It's like a bimonthly in London. She also is a podcaster on PPC chat and has been working in PPC for many, many years. So she knows what she's on about and I think that that's some great advice for PPC landing pages. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why it makes sense to follow Anu on Twitter, @TheMarketingAnu, A-N-U, over on Twitter. So I thought since we're talking about landing pages, and landing pages from the organic search point of view, I thought it'd be really interesting and it would make logical sense to go to the actual SERP, see what's there in terms of landing pages and take away some lessons from landing pages that are killing it in the rankings. So you could take away organic lessons about landing pages. So here, we're going top shelf with from the top of the SERP. So this week we're looking at the keyword, mobile COVID test. Because I was actually working on a website and they have a website that's very much a landing page for PPC and it's not doing well in search. I'm like okay, let's take a look and see what's going on organically there. So let me just leverage that for the podcast, two birds with one stone, repurposing. It's about being efficient. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: About being efficient sometimes. You didn't need to know all of this. Yeah, I told you anyway. Crystal Carter: It fine. That's what we're here for. Mordy Oberstein: Mobile COVID test. And the patient I found that was ranking well this is ranking well by the way, out of market so it's not tied to a particular location. I know for a fact if you started looking at particular locations it would be different. So don't get hung up on what you see ranking. This is what I saw ranking universally or worldly, globally. That's the word I'm looking for, globally. Crystal Carter: Worldly. Mordy Oberstein: Worldly, yes. I speak English well. Worldly. And they have a landing page where it starts off with mobile COVID-19 tests and treatment. What I like about the page is that as opposed, because it's as you mentioned before, Crystal, it's a health page. It's YMYL, your money, your life. They don't dive into CTA, CTA, CTA, CTA, they start off with information, but it's information is a nice way to do it. It's information about the service they offer, how much does it cost, when are they open? Do they take insurance? How soon do you get results? So it's information but it's commercial information. So it kind of leads to the conversion, but it's not conversion esque immediately. Crystal Carter: Right. And it's the kind of stuff that people would look for and it's the kind of stuff... And what's also interesting on that particular one is that for this page, they've got it in bullet points, which a lot of people don't realize that Google loves bullet points particularly for the SERP. So it's the kind of thing that someone would say, "Can I get a rapid COVID test," or something like bullet points make you more eligible for featured snippets that also sometimes pull them out as rich snippets, elements underneath the SERP results. So that is an optimization that you might not see as immediately useful for a landing page, but it is something that actually is. They've got reviews on this page as well, which is another example of trust, is another demonstration of trust. So that's really important. And then they've also got lots of information about why you might think you need the test and think things like that. And it's a pretty solid landing page. Mordy Oberstein: It's pretty solid. Personally, I think they could have gotten a little bit harder with the CTAs. They totally could. I am not against making money, you should make money. And on this page, I would've added more CTAs. But they do a good job. First, they have two FAQs. One's a general FAQ about the services and getting the testing. For example, I need workplace testing at my company. There's a whole FAQ, how we're equipped to provide that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then they have one about frequently asked questions about COVID-19. So again, not tied to their service. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And below that, as you mentioned, they have a whole section about if you think you have COVID-19, when should you or shouldn't you be calling us? Which is really good information. And again, it ties into using them, but it's solid information. By the way, I've seen this a million times over. Google likes on landing pages. Google likes having informational content, not just the acquisitional marketing schlock because Google understands that you as a user, you want to have a context for using this service or not using this service or buying this product or not buying this product, which you need informational content for. So it's a good page, but they probably could have added more CTA, which ironic because I'm the one advocating don't go so acquisitional, but I feel they could have gotten more acquisitional. See, I'm a balanced person. Crystal Carter: What I think is also interesting if I can throw in a completely different landing page that I think is really interesting is DQ, Dairy Queen, which I remember getting Blizzards back... You know when they put the chocolate, they dip it in the chocolate and then it's got the little outside chocolate like crispy. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah, the crispy shell. Crystal Carter: Yeah, love that. Anyway- So they've got some interesting location landing pages, which is something that we have the amazing Amanda Jordan talking about on our webinar series a few months back. She talked about that. And they've done it in a way that, as far as I can tell, seems quite programmatic. And what they've got is pretty much it's a lot of the core information that you need. They haven't gone into a lot of informational content in the way that Mordy enjoys, but it's the kind of content that I really appreciate because it's very quick. So if you look up like Dairy Queen Atlanta, so I've got one that is 10 North Avenue and then I've got another one that's for Empire Street in Atlanta. And these are two location pages that look fairly similar, but they've got a lot of programmatic elements that make some difference. So first of all, they've got all of the different details. So all of their opening hours, all of the amenities. I know which one has a high chair, which one serves cakes, which one does gift cards, which one has drive through that sort of thing, maps and different favorites that are present at that. The other thing that's really great about this page is that all of that stuff is apparent in the schema markup. If you dig into the schema markup, they've got all of that stuff in their fast food restaurant schema. So they've got the geo coordinates, they've got their amenities, they have their drive through. So there's like location, feature, specification, highchair available, value true. They've got that all written in there with images of them as well. And they are someone who has these location pages for hundreds of locations across the US and they have taken the time to make sure that they're formatted in a way that allows you to get the specificities of each location and the backend is very technical, but as you're visiting it as a user, it's really, really useful and really accessible. So I think that they're two different styles of landing page, which I think is interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Two different types of niches, two different types of audiences, two different types of information that people do or don't need and depth of information people do or don't need. So it makes total sense to me. Crystal Carter: Right. And also the audience thing is a really big point because if somebody's looking at Dairy Queen or whatever, they're probably on their mobile so they're going to want quick information. Mordy Oberstein: Get that craving, you're in the car. Crystal Carter: Right? You're like, "I really want a Blizzards right now." Mordy Oberstein: Right now. Crystal Carter: Where is it? Mordy Oberstein: You don't even search for Blizzards near me, you search for Blizzards right now. Crystal Carter: I need chocolate ice cream. And so they've got icons, they've got quick pictures, whatever. And so it's something that's going to load really quickly. It's something that's going to give them lots of information really quickly and it's going to touch on a lot of the SERP features so that they're showing in the search really easily as well. So I think that the audience thing is really important, whereas if somebody is worried about whether or not they need to take a COVID test, they need a little bit of support. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a totally different beast. Totally different beast. So that's from the top of the SERP. Crystal Carter: There we go. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Here's from what's at the top of my list of things that's going on in the SEO world because now we have some Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. More AI news, you ask? Yes indeed. You have fished your wish. You've got what you've asked for. I'm back with more news about AI and search for what feels like the 80th millionth week in a row. If you're sick of AI news, so sorry, but we have a ton of it this week. First off, from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land New with Google multisearch, Google Maps, and more previews of Bard. Google held a live event to showcase its new AI system Bard, which like ChatGPT, spins up AI, produce answers to queries. The truth is Google spent most of the time discussing other products, like Google Lens. I don't think the event went the way Google would've liked with some of the examples that use in the AI showcase being slightly inaccurate. But despite what you may have heard, it's important to realize that this is all just the very, very beginning and getting caught up in the current news cycle doesn't mean anything as to where Google will be with this long term, which I do think they'll be in a more advanced place with this in the long term. I think it's kind of obvious, at least it is to me. Anyway, Google did ever release a new piece of documentation around AI content that is, quote, about rewarding high quality content however it is produced." I'll link to the full write up to the documentation in the show notes. But in a nutshell, as long as the content's great, Google doesn't care. On the flip side, and as per Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal, Microsoft announces ChatGPT capabilities coming to Bing. It looks really interesting to me as it layers the answers with citations and it's already been spotted with a few ads in the mix. I'll link to that also in the show notes. Anyway, reports say up to 1 million people have signed up to take this new Bing ChatGPT AI functionality for a test run by joining the wait list. It's been a major boost for Bing, with Search Engine Land's Barry Schwartz reporting on this quoting Yusuf Mehdi corporate vice president consumer marketing office at Microsoft who said, "This is the largest jump in relevance in two decades." This coming after Bing applied the AI model to the search engine. So really interesting stuff. A ton, absolute ton happened last week in the AI world for search engines. Check out all the links in the show notes. It's absolutely insane what's happening right now. I personally can't remember a time in search that has been this absolutely crazy. I always warn or caveat this all with a piece of advice, this is all progressing very, very quickly. What's there now, what things are now is going to play out very differently in the future. So be patient with it all and realize we're looking at one very small sliver of time and this is not going away. This is here for the long haul. So what things look like now and what things look like let's say in six months from now, maybe very, very different. And with that, that is this week's Snappy News. Glorious news. News, news, glorious news. I always think of news every time I say the word news, by the way. Great movie Crystal Carter: Christian Bale's in that movie. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Nuts. He's been around forever and he won't go away. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. He was in like Thor, the recent Thor as well. Mordy Oberstein: There’s a movie on Netflix I watched with him. He's like a cop or detective back in the 1800s. It's good. Crystal Carter: Okay. All right. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it was a very interesting movie. Anyway, from what you should be watching to who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness, this week we have RicketyRoo’s own, you already mentioned her, Amanda Jordan. Crystal Carter: Amanda Jordan. Mordy Oberstein: So two mentions for Amanda on the same episode for the price of one. Crystal Carter: That's because Amanda Jordan's awesome and she came on and she talked about location landing pages and y'all should watch the, we have on the Wix SEO hub, we have the whole video of the webinar. And Amanda presents so well and she talks about location landing pages and she gives you all of the details on how to make a fantastic location landing page and shares her insights. And every time I listen to Amanda, I'm always blown away by her depth of knowledge and how much she loves SEO. She's brilliant. Mordy Oberstein: She's brilliant. Though, the way you frame this... So you're saying she's presentable. Is that really a compliment? I'm just kidding. Crystal Carter: Amanda's great. Mordy Oberstein: Amanda's great. Follow her on Twitter over, @AmandaTJordan on Twitter. That's AmandaTJordan, like Michael Jordan, but AmandaTJordan on Twitter. We'll link to her profile in the show notes. And that does it for us. Crystal Carter: That's it. We have landed. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, we've landed. Nice. I should have used a landing thing in the intro. I can't believe I- Crystal Carter: We stuck the landing. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Nice. That's money right there. Crystal Carter: Whenever I think of sticking the landing, I always think of Kerri Strug in the Olympics. Mordy Oberstein: I was thinking the same thing. I always think the same thing. Crystal Carter: I remember being a little kid and being like, "Is she going to do it?" And she ran as fast as she could. Mordy Oberstein: That's an epic moment in the history of sports. Crystal Carter: I literally was holding my breath the whole time. I don't think people understood. It was like, either she sticks and we get the gold medal or we don't. And I was like, "Come on." Mordy Oberstein: You burn the place down like it's Philadelphia. Because that's what they do in Philly, when they win, even when they lose. When they win, they burn the place down. It's a totally different podcast. Crystal Carter: I don't know what you're talking about now. Mordy Oberstein: Our head of social media does. Little shout out to Drew. Anyway, thank you for joining the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into, is the chase for head terms doomed to fail? These titles are so dramatic. Who writes these things? You kidding me here? Crystal's gone so high a register, you can't even hear her right now. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry. I'm like Mariah Carey. Only birds can hear me. Mordy Oberstein: Look for wherever you can consume podcasts or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars, like Amanda Jordan's, on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and 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

Chima Mmeje is a content marketer and strategist at Moz, where she positions the company as the authoritative 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 marketers of color. Chima Mmeje Senior Content Marketing Manager at Moz Chima Mmeje is a content marketer and strategist at Moz, where she positions the company as the authoritative 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 marketers of color. Articles & Resources 6 Feb 2025 Build a personal brand that grows your thought leadership 20 Jan 2022 What is a meta description and how do you use it for SEO? 17 Jan 2022 Header tags: What they are and how to use them for SEO Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Where is the SEO industry headed in 2024? What advancements should we expect in AI this year? How will SGE impact search traffic moving forward? Wix’s Mordy Oberstien and Crystal Carter kick off the year by forecasting trends and developments for SEO in 2024. Get a head start on the year by listening to Parth Suba, Rohan Ayyar, Kenichi Suzuki, Chima Mmeje, and Celeste Gonzalez, all share their SEO predictions for 2024. You’ve popped the champagne, now it’s time for your website to pop up on the SERP! Don’t look back, as we are surging into the new year strong with 2024’s first SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back SEO Trends for 2024 Where is the SEO industry headed in 2024? What advancements should we expect in AI this year? How will SGE impact search traffic moving forward? Wix’s Mordy Oberstien and Crystal Carter kick off the year by forecasting trends and developments for SEO in 2024. Get a head start on the year by listening to Parth Suba, Rohan Ayyar, Kenichi Suzuki, Chima Mmeje, and Celeste Gonzalez, all share their SEO predictions for 2024. You’ve popped the champagne, now it’s time for your website to pop up on the SERP! Don’t look back, as we are surging into the new year strong with 2024’s first SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 68 | January 3, 2024 | 52 MIN 00:00 / 52:01 This week’s guests Parth Suba Parth Suba is an SEO specialist with close to a decade of experience known for scaling organic traffic for brands and achieving a milestone of 1 million ARR for a SaaS company. An avid chess enthusiast and a recognized speaker at Brighton SEO, he actively contributes to the SEO community through platforms like Semrush India show and SEOTalk. Rohan Ayyar Rohan Ayyar has over a decade of experience in digital marketing, both in-house at enterprise level and for agency clients. He now oversees advanced SEO and content marketing campaigns at 99stairs, an agency he co-founded in 2019. Rohan has wowed audiences at BrightonSEO and major SEO conferences, and also written thought leadership pieces on the intersection of business and tech for Adweek, Fortune, Business Insider, Fast Company, The Next Web, Entrepreneur and other online media. He loves chasing the Google algorithm for the same reason that dogs chase cars: predatory instincts. Follow him @searchrook on X for real-time insights and knowledge bombs. Kenichi Suzuki Kenichi Suzuki is a highly experienced SEO and a Google Product Expert, with a strong connection to the Google Search Relations team. He runs the most popular SEO blog in Japan, where he lives and works. Many SEOs trust his knowledge and advice. He also works as a Search Advocate at Faber Company Inc. His main role is to teach Faber’s clients about SEO. 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. Celeste Gonzalez Celeste Gonzalez is an SEO Specialist at RicketyRoo. She began her journey with SEO by doing what she loves best: learning. She continues to learn in public and share her experiences—good and bad—with the community through Twitter and #SEOBreakdown. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights on what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix Center. I'm joined by she who can see through the ether that is the future. She has her own crystal ball. She is Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. Hello people who are listening on various different podcasts, channels, and things. Also shout-out to everybody who tagged us on their Spotify wrap thing. It's like, "Wow, it's amazing." I'm going into the past. I'm looking in the past. But in the future, in the future, if you keep listening, we'll be on your Spotify wrap in the future. That's my prediction. Mordy Oberstein: Can I tell you, so I don't use Spotify for music so much, which is weird, right? I default to YouTube because I want to be able... My wife has a premium account for Spotify. I'm like, "Why am I paying for this twice? She has one, but I don't have her phone. I'll just use YouTube." I use Google Podcasts for my podcast. I'm like that weird dude who uses Google Podcasts. So the amount of hours I spend on Spotify is very limited. So my unwrap was so bizarre. My number one band was The Doors, which I like The Doors. I'm a big Jim Morrison fan. Crystal Carter: That's strange. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I am strange. So it works out great, but it's only because I got into a kick for like a week or two and was really listening to them, and that was the reason why my unwrap had The Doors. Crystal Carter: People are strange, when they're strange listening to podcasts or listening to The Doors on Spotify. There we go. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Let's break on through here to the other side. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also get a replay of all of our SEO product development in 2023 with sneak peeks at 2024. So for that, head over to wix.com/learn/webinars and look for our session covering our SEO product drops in 2023. As this week, we look ahead to 2024. And our SEO prediction drops for 2024. Will 2024 be the year of voice search? Will SEO die in 2024? Will SGE be the end of all traffic in 2024? No, no, and no. But you will hear some intriguing insights into where SEO is headed for myself. Crystal Carter, yes, you'll get that. You will also hear from SEO voices such as Chima Mmeje, Parth Suba, Celeste Gonzalez, Kenichi Suzuki and Rohan Ayyar. Yes, you will. Will they be sharing their outlook on SEO in 2024? Yes, they will. Also, big changes are coming to the algorithm in 2024. Yes. How do we know that? You have to wait and see. Was that clickbait? Yeah. Yes, that was clickbait. Will there be some snappy news today? Yes. There'll be some snappy news. We'll go through a follow of the week where you could follow more social media awesomeness and social media for SEO. Yes. We will do that also. I can't stop this format, by the way. I'm like, I'm stuck in a rut. Get me out of this. Say something. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, okay. Breathe. So pull out those magic eight balls or set those tarot cards or grab that witchy board. I don't don't know how to pronounce that or whatever, because we're not all lucky enough to have our own crystal ball. As episode number 68 of the SERP's Up podcast does what every other SEO blog, podcast, and newsletter has probably done already at this point, I'm just saying predict the future of SEO in 2024. How original. Crystal Carter: I think it's one of those things though that we all try, but we're all thinking about it. We're all trying to plan ahead and trying to think about what's going to be the new trend and what's going to be happening in all of those different spaces. But the thing that I find most interesting is that generally speaking, if you're going to predict the future, you also have to look at the past and you also have to look at what's happening now. You cannot know where you're going. Mordy Oberstein: It's so philosophical. Crystal Carter: You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been. Mordy Oberstein: That's why I'm completely lost. Crystal Carter: So I think that it's important to look at the trends that are happening now or have happened in the last year, and to see how those might evolve in the next year. When people ask me about what's going to be the trend for next year, that's what I always look at. Mordy Oberstein: I like the predictions. I don't like calling them predictions. I like looking at SEO kind of like directionally where... It's like an election. You know who's going to win. Where all the momentum is at? That's my very scientific way of like, "Yeah, I think that's what's going to happen." But there are certain directions, certain momentum, certain, mm! Where's the inertia going? And I like looking at SEO from that point of view. So stopping at the end of the year looking at 2024, it's just a good moment in time to focus on those kinds of things. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of times, particularly if you're looking at an SEO, you can see things like... I'll give you an inside scoop into how I do this whenever people ask me is I always look at the things that Google announced. Google will tell you which things they announced and they'll tell you which things they're working on and they'll tell you which things that they're going there. But you also look at the things that people are talking about. So for instance, one of the things that I've noticed is I think that we had in the last year, and we've seen a lot of things around AI and stuff, I think that we've got through the first fire sale, the first gold rush as it were of AI stuff. And I think that in the next year we're going to stop seeing parlor tricks and start seeing actual sophisticated, interesting iterations of that in the next while. I think that's my prediction in the next very short while. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to stop you right there and call the police because you stole my prediction. Crystal Carter: To be fair, to be fair, we're both working at Wix and Wix is doing this as well. We've been working in Wix as a team, has been working in AI since 2016. We had the ADI, Artificial Design Intelligence tool come out, and in the last year we've spent a lot more time opening up AI accessibility across our products in a more sophisticated way, and for users to access as well in a more sophisticated. And in a more like this is AI sort of way. Because that's the other thing. A lot of things were AI and nobody said they were AI. So for instance, we had- Mordy Oberstein: Well, really none of it's AI. It's all large language models and machine learning, but whatever. But yes, yes, I understand your point. Crystal Carter: People are just calling it magic now. They're like, "Oh, it's just magic. Check out our AI magic." And it's like things don't happen by magic. Mordy Oberstein: No, no. We do. Everything happens by magic. Crystal Carter: It's not magic. Mordy Oberstein: You're ruining my entire outlook, my whole world hinged on the reality is magic. Crystal Carter: I predict I'm going to steal all of Mordy's predictions. That's what I predict. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. You see this, by the way, what's happened in Bing, right? Bing went all in on their AI chat experience on the SERP, and for better or for worse, or unfortunately, they didn't see any increase in market share because of that. People didn't go to Bing and start using Bing as a search engine because they added the AI to it, which is ironic because when Bing did that, Google went, "Oh, no, Bing is going to beat us. That cannot happen." They went code red, red alert. Everyone go crazy, AI chat and search. But in the end, it didn't really do anything for Bing, and now Google went all in on it. And I think what's going to happen is it's also going to cool down for Google at the same time. So SGE which went from this big old box is already a much smaller, less noticeable thing on the SERP, and I think the whole thing is going to kind of cool off. It will be there. It will be a part of the experience on the SERP, but it will be not the dominant experience on the SERP. I think Google's going to get back to where it was before all the AI madness, which is improving the algorithm, implementing things like MUM, which is a whole separate conversation into the algorithm to try to refine the parsing of the results and offer different opportunities for you to explore different subtopics in a way better way, which by the way, SGE might be a part of that. I think it would be a part of that. I think it naturally lends itself to that. And Google does use MUM as part of that they've said, but I think it's going to be one small step for users and one giant leap for SEOs to realize that the web is fundamentally changed and Google's going to get back to dealing with the web fundamentally changing and I think SGE doesn't have a lot to do with that necessarily. Crystal Carter: I think one of the things that's been tricky about generative search, both on Bing, on Bard and also on Google, is that there's a delay. There's a delay that doesn't happen with featured snippets, which are also powered by machine learning, which are also powered by AI, which also used those technologies. What was I looking up? If I was like looking up how to lose that last five pounds, I've been going to the gym… Mordy Oberstein: When you find out, tell me. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So I was looking at how to lose the last five pounds, and there's featured snippets for that. Right? So there's featured snippets that show up instantaneously. I don't have to wait for something to go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then to reenter my question and for them not to understand my question and all of that sort of stuff, whereas I just get the featured snippets straight away. So I think that that instant answer is what people want. And I think that what we might see in terms of the evolution of SGE is that, again, it gets more sophisticated and more integrated. So it might be that it shows up on the side. At the moment, for instance, we have disambiguation boxes that are things to know or how this works or common issues. It might be that you generate some content on the side there or maybe it might work like people also ask where it's like a dropdown that gives you more of a summary. But we have a lot of instant answers that you can get from the SERP. And a lot of times, because they're not even always pulling through the meta description, they're very often pulling through an extract from the text in the description. A lot of times you can scan the SERP to get an idea of whether or not the answer is out there for the thing that you need. So a lot of times I find that it's quicker to go to the SERP than to the SGE at the moment. Mordy Oberstein: Personally, I think it'll be a first step if anything. And I think fundamentally, you're never going to get away from the philosophical, existential, psychological need that people want to touch and connect with a person. My example that I'll use is imagine I wrote a piece of content and AI wrote a piece of content. It's the exact same thing. And I said to you, which would rather... It's the exact same thing. Would you rather read the AI generated content or would you rather read the exact same thing than I wrote it myself? I think most people, and I'm speculating would say, "I'd rather read the one that you wrote because I feel more connected to a person than I do a machine. I identify with the person." I don't identify with the machine and I don't think SGE or whatever it's going to be or whatever it is, is going to get rid of that fundamental need that people have to connect. And it's very hard to connect with the SGE. People are going to want to touch the source of the material. However, we have a ton to get to because we have one, two, three, four, five guests today. We have five guests today. We're predicting their future of SEO, and a lot of them is going to focus on AI. So why don't we kick it off first and foremost with Parth Suba who runs #SEOTalk on Twitter, who's a fabulous SEO, and let's take his take on the future of SEO in 2024. Here's Parth. Parth Suba : Hello, everyone. This is Parth Suba, an SEO specialist with a passion for scaling organic traffic and a strong track record in the digital marketing community. I do SEO when I'm awake while I play chess in the night. So all of my strategies, which I play on the chessboard also helps me in my SEO career. So as we look towards 2024, the SEO landscape continues to evolve at an incredible pace. The area which I think we'll see a huge rise is AI and SEO tools powered by artificial intelligence will provide more sophisticated data analysis, helping us to understand user intent and behavior in unprecedented ways. This will allow for more targeted and effective SEO strategies. Furthermore, I believe we'll see a shift towards more sustainable and ethical SEO practices, which I refer to as branded SEO practices. As users become more conscious of their digital footprint, brands that prioritize eco-friendly and socially responsible SEO tactics will stand out. Lastly, I expect local SEO to become even more critical as the world recovers from the pandemic. Local businesses will be looking to strengthen their online presence to attract nearby customers. This means more opportunities for localized content and geo-targeted strategies. So to conclude, the future of SEO in 2024 will be marked by advances in technology, a greater focus on user experience and the need for more ethical practices. As SEO specialists, we must stay ahead of these trends to ensure our strategies remain effective and relevant. Thank you, Wix for having me on the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Parth, for that. You can follow Parth over on X or Twitter whatever X @parthsuba77. That's P-A-R-T-H-S-U-B-A 77. We'll link to his profile in the show notes. I started with that on purpose, by the way. That wasn't an accident. I knew we're going to get into AI with the predictions, but I wanted to focus on the data analysis part of AI and what that means for SEO, and I think it's a great point. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think he's absolutely right. I think that we should see more of that coming forward. And in fact, you mentioned our 2024 Wix predictions, and one of the things that they're planning to do is give more AI ideation in the analytics and in the SEO data that we're having our tools. I find that AI is incredibly useful for organizing, sorting, and saving you time with cleaning up data. So I think that using that more in the next little while would be super useful. Mordy Oberstein: I would love to see more content written about how to use AI technology to do those more efficient SEO task kind of thing than about creating content. But I don't predict that's going to... Mordy Oberstein: ... Tasks kind of thing, than about creating content. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I don't predict that's going to happen, by the way. Crystal Carter: I don't predict that. Additionally, one of the other things that he mentioned was local, and I agree Google is leaning more and more into local all the time, and I think that people really underestimate the importance of Google Business Profile, the importance of the local segmentation in terms of search, and I think that it doesn't just affect bricks and mortar businesses. I think we should also be thinking about that in terms of where people are searching and how that affects your discoverability and things like that. So, I also think that local will continue to be a driving force in SEO. Mordy Oberstein: So if you want more predictions around SEO in 2024 around AI, we have one of our... I think I'll go on a limb and say our personal favorite people in the whole SEO world, Kenichi Suzuki, SEO blogger, Google product expert, search advocate. Crystal Carter: And Avril Lavigne fan. Mordy Oberstein: Is he really? I love Avril Lavigne, that’s so nostalgic- Crystal Carter: He came in an Avril Lavigne tour shirt. He saw her in Tokyo- Mordy Oberstein: That's awesome. Crystal Carter: He's super nice. His whole team is super nice. Mordy Oberstein: I'm with you. Crystal Carter: Is that an Avril Lavigne quote? Mordy Oberstein: It's not. Crystal Carter: I don't know that one. I know Sk8er Boi. See you later, boy. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great song. I like that. Anyway, here's Kenichi about AI, SGE, and a doubling down of some good old E-E-A-T. Kenichi Suzuki: Predicting SEO in 2024 is tough since Google keeps evolving quickly. However, bringing AI into search will likely be critical. Specifically such generative experience or SGE could completely change how people use search engines. Rather than wanting search results, users may prefer SGE to directly answer their questions. This could drastically reduce such traffic as people get used to SGE's instant answers. Google is also supposedly developing Gemini a next-gen AI search. While Gemini's details are unclear, its impact on search could be bigger than SGE's. I think the best strategy is to focus on creating helpful, high quality content, and improving E-E-A-T. Google will reward those efforts. Building brand awareness is also wise. If you rank number one for your brand terms, innovations like SGE or Gemini can't divert that traffic. My view is that useful content and solid E-E-A-T are what matter most. If we provide that, Google's system will continue to send searches our way. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Kenichi. I really appreciate you. You could follow Kenichi over on X at S-U-Z-U-K-I-K, link in the show notes. Loving the fact you talk about E-E-A-T and the doubling down of E-E-A-T. I think that one of the things that the whole AI conversation does is kind of bring those kind of larger branding quality content consumption preferences into refocus. If you asked me personally, I would say the biggest thing that the whole AI innovation thing has done from an SEO and content point of view is not the impact of more AI content or a content ranking, or not ranking that's been written by AI or the conversation within the SEO industry that AI has stimulated. Crystal Carter: If everyone is using AI, if everyone has the ability to use AI to create content, if everyone has the ability to create some content, the thing that makes a difference is the brand and the trust behind the brand, the trust behind the people who are writing or even curating the content for instance. So, if you are known to be person of quality, if you are known to be a brand with quality content, then even if you are creating with AI, maybe people will trust you to make sure that whatever you're creating is of substance and is checked and is verified and is all of that sort of stuff. So absolutely, those brand points are really, really important, and also you talked about people wanting to be able to touch and feel the content or have an interaction with the content. If people trust you and people connect with you, then they know that if they get stuck on something that they can come back to you. Nobody wants to be stuck in a... Like I had a customer service thing and I was talking to a chatbot and I needed something that the chatbot couldn't help me with, and they were like, "That's all, goodbye." And I was like, "No, I need a human. I need a human." Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: So, there needs to be a human at the other end of the content. And if they trust you, your brand, then they know that that's the case. Mordy Oberstein: I have a ton to say about this, which I will in next week's episode around why SEO should watch content trends carefully, a little plug for that. Well, before we mentioned local SEO and AI, that's why Celeste Gonzalez over from one of our favorite folks in the SEO industry, the RicketyRoo folks, RicketyRoo. Shout out to Blake, to Melissa, to Kim. Crystal Carter: Amanda. Mordy Oberstein: It's a lot of great SEO folks and beyond over the RicketyRoo SEO agency, check them out. Anyway, here's Celeste Gonzalez about SGE and local SEO. Take it away, Celeste. Celeste Gonzalez : Google's search generative experience is going to change up part of local SEO. So since SGE can act like a chat box, we will see longer and more specific queries. This is especially important for local businesses. So, when I search for something like best chocolate chip cookies in LA, I get some Google Business Profiles, a map, and links to directories like Yelp for best cookies in LA, and SGE allows me to prompt further and input a follow-up query like best cookies in LA for delivery. And again, I'll get more GBPs, Yelp, other directories, and a chance to follow up another time. While SGE is still experimental, it takes up a lot of real estate in SERPs and I think this is going to impact the local pack and change at least how it exists today. So, it could even eliminate it from SERPs for certain queries with local intent, SGE is already showing GBPs to users. It doesn't make the most sense to have an equally large SERP feature like the local pack taking up more space. So, we might see it show up way smaller than before or with completely new features to help distinguish it. Barry Schwartz had shared a newer local pack design where it's now featuring menus with photos and reviews. So, we're already seeing new things going on with the local pack, and I think with SGE rolling out, we'll see more changes in the future. Overall, it looks like Google Business Profile optimization and Barnacle SEO are going to be more important and local. We're going to have to now focus on brand visibility a lot more. So just this past year, businesses are now allowed to control their social media links on their GBPs and you can input your TikTok link, LinkedIn link, Twitter, all of that. So, this shows that a brand social media presence carries some weight and there has to be a certain degree of importance to it. At the very least, this is going to help Google connect the dots and understand who that brand is. So, establishing and enhancing a brand's reputation will continue to play a significant role in 2024, and I think part of that will be maintaining an active presence on social media. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, there's so much to jump into. Thank you so much, Celeste, for that. You can follow Celeste over at CelestexLili, that's C-E-L-E-S-T-E-X-L-I-L-I, of course link in the show notes. First off, I just want to say something, this is the year of brand. This is the year of brand. You heard it here first. Also- Crystal Carter: It's Mordy's favorite thing. Mordy Oberstein: I love brand marketing. I'm so happy, like the convergence. There's so many conversation about brand marketing in SEO. I'm here for it, it's where I live. By the way, I've always said this, for the last, I don't know, two minutes, but no, I've said this in the past, name me another box on the SERP that didn't always present organic links, but was very influential for your business. It'd be the local pack. Sometimes they do show link, but not always, depending on the query and the type of business and whatever it is, or if there is a link to the business to begin with. Some businesses are just on Facebook, which is weird. Anyway, local for SGE to me makes the most sense. Where do you want to have the conversation? What are some great pizza places in New York City? And it lists three places and they say, "Well wait, wait, wait, which offers gluten-free pizza?" And then it lists more places. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, but which one also has, I don't know, the best french fries? And then you can keep refining and refining that way, so I love SGE for local. Crystal Carter: I think that SGE for local, I think it's for some of those niche queries because what I've been in SGE's and LLM-based search works, well, it's for a long query. If you're like, "I need to find a place where somebody who's gluten-free and somebody who only eats french fries," sometimes you have people who are like, "I only eat nuggets. That's all I eat." You're like, "Okay, all right." Mordy Oberstein: They're my kids. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly, so sometimes that happens. You're like, "I need to find a place where we can do this and this and this and this and that and this and this. Does that exist in the Bronx? And they'll be like, "Yes, no." So, that I think is important. I think it's important to think about those. I think the other thing she mentioned about multi-channel, about social and stuff like that, I think that's really important. What we've seen in a lot of experiments with the SGE over the course of the year since it's been around is that people are able to see that it's able to respond pretty quickly to social updates, for instance. So, it might be that Google hasn't necessarily crawled the site in a week, but they maybe have seen the post on Facebook or on Twitter or whatever that says, "Yay, we just started selling gluten-free pizza," et cetera. So, I think that it's important to think about multiple channels. So, omnichannel and making sure that you're on all channels is really, really important, and you can use multiple tools to help you do that, automations and NSG and things... Sorry, and ChatGPT, et cetera as well, but I agree with her on the omnichannel and on the local, and thinking about SGE as well. Mordy Oberstein: Let's have a look at the implications of AI in the SEO world on budgets and monetary decisions. Crystal Carter: Talk about money. Mordy Oberstein: On the one hand, the most unsexy thing in the world to talk about, but also the most important thing to talk about. For real Mordy Oberstein: Here's senior content marketing manager over at Moz, Chima Mmeje, on her predictions for SEO in 2024 as it relates to budgets and AI and everything. Take it away, Chima. Chima Mmeje: I think it's going to require a lot of creativity and innovation on the part of marketers because already we're seeing decision makers asking for us to explain why we are spending money. And the only way to justify this course is to show results and tie it to the bottom line. I think we're also going to see increased AI adoption to close budget gaps and here's why. I think that as we're seeing more job cuts, as AI becomes more personalized, it's going to be used to close the inefficiency gap resulting from fewer people working on more projects. So, what can marketing teams do? Identify areas of your marketing that will benefit most from AI, like automating routine tasks, predictive analytics, and enhancing customer insights. Integrate AI with content creation. I've been an advocate for this from day one. We can use AI to write content. You just have to make sure that AI is not replacing human expertise. And you should have a training budget to teach your teams, not just writers, your entire marketing team, how to use AI to do their job more efficiently. And then finally, I think we're going to see more hyper-personalization as content becomes more saturated. So, that means that we are going to be seeing highly personalized content that are targeted towards even more niche audiences as a way to stand out in a crowded marketplace. So, what you can do is that you can use AI again to analyze data, identify unique customer preferences, and then create content targeted towards solving those niche problems. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, there's a lot to chew on there. Thank you so much, Chima. You can follow Chima over at C-H-I-M-A-M-M-E-J-E over on X. link of course in the show notes. I love the stuff that she's doing over at Moz. Of course, check that out. Of course, the FCDC, she runs that as well, so please check that out as well. Link in the show notes. I think that AI budgets is like sports teams. I'm going to do a sports analogy. I think marketing and SEO in general are very much like sports team and their budgets, especially teams or in sports where you have a salary cap. You only have X amount of money you're allowed to spend each year, and if you don't manage that budget well, you can absolutely ruin your franchise for years to come. It happens all the time. If you don't set your budget up right and you're in a position now where you have real problems with your budget and the production that you want to do when you're going to try to use AI as a way of solving your budget crisis, I think that I'm going to go out... It's a hot take. I think that is a potential win for your competitors who don't have that problem. Follow me here. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm getting a look like, "You're out of your mind, Mordy." If I manage my budget well and I don't have to rely on AI, I can use AI as I see fit from a quality point of view, and I don't have to use AI to supplement budgetary problems, then I can ensure that I'm efficient and I'm also producing quality at the same time. If I have to use the AI to fill budget gaps, I'm going to inevitably end up in a situation where, yes, I'll be more efficient, but I might- Mordy Oberstein: ... end up in a situation where yes, I'll be more efficient, but no, I might not have the control over the quality that I really want to have at the end of the day. Hot take. Crystal Carter: Okay. So, to counter your sports analogy, the thing about a sports team is that you can't get a robot to kick a ball on your sports team. You couldn't say, "Oh, I'll just have a robot kick all the balls into the hole," or whatever. The hole? Into the net. Mordy Oberstein: Sure. Crystal Carter: Sports hole. So, there's that. But I agree with you that it shouldn't be AI or not. It shouldn't be that you don't have a choice but to use AI. It should be that you manage your budget well, so that the AI supports what you're doing, rather than is the only thing that you have to rely on. And I agree with Chima that people should be thinking about how they're integrating it into their marketing mix and into their marketing workflows, and how they can save time. Because I think that that is the thing I've heard people say recently, is you won't be replaced by AI, you'll be replaced by a marketer using AI. And we had this in our conversation with Kim Garst. People who are super organized already are really well placed. People who have their budgets sorted already are really well placed to apply this technology because they already have their selves together. They're already organized. Just like when you're doing any kind of automation, if you are already organized and you know your workflow back to front, then it's easy to figure out which things you can automate and which things you can use to help you get scalability and things like that. Mordy Oberstein: So, one more for you. One last SEO prediction for 2024 for you, and it's going to go beyond AI. I saved the non-AI for last. That's just me. Anyway, here's Rohan Ayyer, who is fabulous SEO, speaks at conferences all over the world, so here's Rohan on his SEO take for the first half of 2024, and it's got nothing to do with AI. Take it away, Rohan. Rohan Ayyar: So, my SEO prediction is going to be a bit of a dampener for you all. 2023 was all about AI. ChatGPT hit the SEO scene late in 2022. The impact took even Google by surprise, if I may say so. It forced them to hustle and make hasty changes to, A, the SERPS for which they introduced SGE, and B, the algorithm for which they ran quite a few iterations of ETSU and core updates. In fact, Google has had six updates in the last four months that they've officially announced. That's a first in itself. Other than that, they clarified what are ranking systems and signals and updates, and they also updated the search raters quality guidelines recently after almost a year. So, my take is that SEOs will be, or need to be, in more of a reactive mode for at least the first half of 2024, if not more. We need to closely monitor the changes in the SERPs, how search results are displayed, and what new features and bells and whistles are introduced, and so on. Well, we do track this already, but we have to do more of that and find ways of increasing visibility more than focusing on getting ranked itself. It appears to me, Google themselves are not clear on the way forward, as in how to best format the search results for their users. So, SEOs will have to wait until the dust settles. For once, you need to be chasing the Google results, if not the Google algorithm. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Rohan. You can follow Rohan over on Twitter at Searchrook. That's S-E-A-R-C-H-R-O-O-K. We'll link to that in the show notes. I told you, we're saving the non-AI for last. That's an interesting take of waiting to see what the heck happened, because so much is changing, which that is definitely true. There's a lot that's going on. We'll get to that in just a few minutes. Google's announce about notes and community stuff and forums and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. So, it kind of makes sense to see, take a step back and pay attention to what's happening. Wait for the dust to settle just a bit. I hear that. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I feel like it's a really honest answer. I feel like it's a really honest answer that we are going to have to be a little bit more reactive. Because you changed your Twitter handle to Buckleup, and I think that that's... And that's quoting Danny Sullivan, or whatever. We're working in a really dynamic time in search. There's a lot of big changes that... SEOs are seeing more big changes than we've seen in years, and I think that we are going to have to be very nimble, plan to replan, and plan to be able to respond to some of those changes. I think Rohan's absolutely on the money with that. Mordy Oberstein: Nice job, Rohan. Pick up yourself. Also, pick up all of our contributors who contributed with their predictions to our show this week. Make sure you follow all of them, as I mentioned, on social media. Now, you mentioned Buckleup, you mentioned Danny Sullivan, so let's buckle up. Because at Brighton SEO, I wasn't there. I left already. But at Brighton SEO, Crystal was there. She's pointing to herself. She was there. She can verify. Danny brought up the idea of the algorithm and so many changes that are coming, and I think that there are going to be a ton of changes coming to the algorithm. So, let's dive in with a little segment where we take a directional look at Google that we call Going, Going, Google. Speaker 1: And it's going, going, Google. It's out of here. Mordy Oberstein: So, for the record, Danny said you don't have to buckle up, so I blame Barry. Crystal Carter: Barry wasn't there, either. Mordy Oberstein: So, it's not only Barry's fault, because people were saying Danny said to buckle up because so many changes are coming. Crystal Carter: So, the talk was really interesting, because he was talking about changes, but he was also pointing about the fact... Which also, can I just say it was a great talk. One of the other things he was saying was he was responding to that Burge article about the content goblins, which he took a bit of a hit on, and I thought he really responded to it like a boss, really, basically. And I think that Danny, really, he was very witty and very funny about it, and all of that sort of stuff. But he was really talking about it like there are changes coming, but also we are seeing stuff that Google's always done. So, he was saying, people are saying, "Oh, Google measures clicks," but we've always paid attention to user interactivity. That's always something that we've paid attention to. And he did a Q and A that was really valuable as well. So, I have a thread on my Twitter account, we can link it in there, that shows a lot of the screenshots from the session as well. But yeah, it was a great session. Mordy Oberstein: And so, what basically you're saying is, we are going... we meaning Google... are going to be making a lot of changes. But if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, you don't have to buckle up. So, I think SEO should buckle up, then. Is that salty? Crystal Carter: No, because I think there's a lot of people who rely on gimmicks and tricks and tips and things, and I think that the idea... And tips are fine, or whatever, but I think one of the things he talked about was that they'll say things like, "You should think about user experience and expertise." And we'll think very specifically. He says, what will you hear? Specific, specific, specific. "We should have links to an author page, and about page, and a thing like that." And he's like, "No. What are you doing?" Mordy Oberstein: We spoke about that with Lily for our EAT episode. Don't checklist-atize EAT. It's a concept. It's a very abstract concept, so you can't make a checklist out of it. Crystal Carter: Right. And he literally said, he has a slide that says, "Beware one-weird-trick SEO, where it says, "How to gain rankings with this one weird trick." Beware of that." And there was somebody who recently shared... They called it the SEO Heist, I think it was. Mordy Oberstein: Oh my Lord. Crystal Carter: Right. And they were like, "Look at this great thing I did." And then they immediately saw a traffic drop, and somebody else posted, "Don't embarrass Google online." Mordy Oberstein: His book posted. Like, oop, that didn't last long. Crystal Carter: Right. So, I think that those sorts of tricks... If you are somebody who's not in SEO all the time, and you're somebody who's a business owner and you're trying to grow your SEO, you hear somebody who's like, "This one weird trick will make you do the thing." It's the same as somebody who says, "You can get rich quick with this one thing." Like, guy. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You mean, if we took- Crystal Carter: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Tell me. Crystal Carter: Exactly, exactly, exactly. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The secret about SEO is that you just have to keep going and keep working at it. It's just something you have to work at. And one weird trick is not going to do the job. Sometimes there's a technical thing where you're like, "Oh, hey, if you do this, you might see a traffic boost." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But that's very different than- Crystal Carter: Right. That's something that you- Mordy Oberstein: That's a fix. Crystal Carter: Right. That's a fix that you might see a boost. That's an optimization that you might see a boost. It's not going to solve all your problems. It's not going to give you clear skin. It's not going to make you lose weight and all that sort of stuff. It's not going to do all of that stuff for you. Mordy Oberstein: Is there something that will? Crystal Carter: No. Drinking more water. I don't know what to tell you. Mordy Oberstein: It's water? Drink more water. Okay, I'll go do that. Crystal Carter: It's always the answer is drink more water. Mordy Oberstein: To borrow a sports reference, the '90s Yankees, who won four championships in five years, they had a very famous manager named Joe Torre, and he would call up the catcher, Jorge Posada, and say, "Jorge, what do we do?" He would go, "Grind it." And they won, not because they fancy hit so many home runs, but because they grinded it. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And SEO is a grind. You have to grind it. And I think what's going to happen is, more increasingly, the grind is going to get more grindier. Google's already... and they said they would... that needs talking about. I think they have a lot of things planned. I just get my SEO sense, my spider sense is tingling. They're at a point where they're going to be able to do a lot more than we think they're able to do, and I think a lot of the things like the reviews update going real time- Crystal Carter: Helpful content being constantly rolling? Mordy Oberstein: Right. All of those kind of things kind of point to Google being at the point where it's going to be able to make a leap in what it's able to do. And when they're able to make a leap, things change dramastically. Drastically and dramatically together, dramastically. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: And you've already seen this in the announcements, the things like Notes. The things like, hey, we want to put more firsthand knowledge on the SERPs, and whether or not the way that they're executing that right now is good or bad. I think Notes is a disaster, or whatever, but forget that. Look at it directionally what they're trying to do. Those are very, very drastic things, and that's going to creep into the algorithm itself at a certain point. Crystal Carter: And I think we're seeing it in how frequent the algorithms are running, and how frequently they're running over one another. That's confident. That is confidence right there. Mordy Oberstein: That's very, very, very big confidence. Crystal Carter: The fact that they're running experiments, running calibrations or whatever in tandem, at the same time, you have to be very confident in your systems in order to do that. One of the slides that he shared at Brighton said, "Our systems will keep evolving toward the goal of improving satisfaction in all sorts of ways." And that, I think, is really important to think about. People think that SEO is just about ranking, just about keywords, just about this, this, about that. It's not. And he said also during the talk, "We are following the users. Your SEO-" Mordy Oberstein: Oh my God. Crystal Carter: "Your tech SEO, your content, your images, your videos should all be adding value for users. And Google is sending traffic to your page because they think it adds value to users. They get lots of signals that say that this is valuable, because we know that users who are interested in this query like videos. We know that users who are interested in this query like images. Your page has images and videos and text, and the text makes sense." Right? Mordy Oberstein: Right, and you can't just edit image into video. It's not going to cut it. Crystal Carter: No. But the information that you've given us, and you've also given us more information to understand your text. So, you can add structured data, you can add your site maps, you can make sure that it's formatted in the right feed, that it does all of those sorts of things. But all of those things, everything you do, should be pointing towards demonstrating the value that the content is made. You're not just writing this piece of content for no reason. You're not just publishing this page for no reason. They have billions of pages, and they don't have time for useless content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. By the way, that's a bigger thing. There's some studies that came out. I think Kevin Indig and then Cyrus Shepard covered this, where they're showing the size of the index. It's not as big as you think it is, and it's going to get increasingly smaller in my opinion. By the way, you saw, I think, Barry Schwartz recently covered... by the time of this recording, I say recently covered... that they're starting to stop showing cache. Which I saw this last week myself. Some results did have it, and some didn't. To me, that's money. You're storing all these cached pages? Why? There's a lot of resources. We don't need to do this anymore. Crystal Carter: And I think also, along with that storage thing, a lot of people have been saying that a lot of the storage stuff has to do with... Index streamlining has to do with them bringing up more space for ads. I've heard a lot of people say that, in terms of machine learning and things. But I think also, I think it's important to think about, at Google IO, they showed some of their supercomputers or whatever. Those need a lot more computing power. All these algorithms, they need a lot of power in order to run and in order to be as sophisticated as they are as well. So, I think it's also important to remember that Google has a lot of legacy tools that have helped them to manage the index in the past, and now that they have more sophisticated tools, they might be clean in-house. They might not need- Mordy Oberstein: For sure. Crystal Carter: ... the same tools in the same way, because they have better tools now. Let's say you get an electric car. Maybe you don't need your old petrol car anymore. It got you from A to B to begin with. Sure, great. But maybe your electric car does better for you now, so maybe you don't need that anymore, and you don't need the gas can, either. Mordy Oberstein: No, come on. That image, like walking down the highway with the gas can. Crystal Carter: I'm not walking down any highways. I'm calling for help. Mordy Oberstein: Triple-A. Mordy Oberstein: The gas can. Crystal Carter: I'm not walking down any highways. I'm calling for help. Mordy Oberstein: Triple A. Crystal Carter: Yeah, come and get me please. Mordy Oberstein: Like no shame. I've never changed a tire in my life, and I never will. Crystal Carter: I changed a tire in front of my house. Mordy Oberstein: I don't like changing tire. I tried. Crystal Carter: No, my dad... I literally reversed and hit something or something and then the tire went flat and my dad was like, well, you got to fix that tire. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, swinging back around to your point about content, which is why, as I mentioned before, we're going to be talking about emerging content trends and SEO, I believe it's next week on this very very podcast, and it's also why I think you need to start thinking about content trends in a less generic way. For example, real quick, people say, oh, people are looking for content from people, not from brands. So you need to have a video of actual people or quotes from actual people in your content. Yeah, that's one way to look at that, but if you zoom out and abstract what that's basically telling you, is that people want more conversational content and you don't need to have a video of an influencer doing that. You could just be more conversational in your entire tone. So you need to start thinking about what those content trends actually mean conceptually, and not just the generic hangups of, well, if things are more conversational, I need an influencer now. Think about it and apply the concept. Don't just do the tactic. You know who was conceptual and doesn't do just tactics? Barry. I don't know if that's true or not. Crystal Carter: Also, can we shout out to Barry for 20 years of SEO Roundtable? Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah, that's right. So as the date of this recording, actually yesterday, it was the 20th anniversary of SEOroundtable.com, which I will not lie, the first site I go to other than like Gmail, which doesn't count as a website, when I sit down to work is SEOroundtable.com. That's not a plug. I'm not being paid to say that. That's the God's honest truth. Crystal Carter: It's also the last website that Mordy looks at before he goes to bed. He puts it on an auto thing and then it just- Mordy Oberstein: I like to have a text reader like read Barry. Crystal Carter: Just read him to sleep. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but in the voice of, I don't know, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I like hearing Barry and Arnold's voice. Is that weird? Crystal Carter: I don't know. It's just making me think about Kindergarten Cop though. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, great movie. Also, the last thing I like to see at the end of every day is the random image that Barry shares in his image of the day post. Here's a cake from Google in Ireland in 2023. Crystal Carter: Yeah. The best one though was the one of Daniel Weisberg with the shofar? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I sent that to Barry. Crystal Carter: It's like really cool. Mordy Oberstein: I found that. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I found that. Crystal Carter: Awesome. Mordy Oberstein: That was me. Crystal Carter: It's a good one. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Anyway, here's snappy news. Here's some Barry Schwartz for you. It's the snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Despite it being the holiday season, it being a little bit light on the news, we have two for you this week. First up, from surgeon and journals, Roger Monte, Google on knowing if best SEO was applied. So John Mueller of Google was doing a recorded Q and A session and somebody asked him literally question, "How to know if my SEO is perfect? Are there any tools, apps, or websites available for it?" To which John replied back, just quote again, "Sorry to disappoint, but your SEO is not perfect. In fact, no, SEO is perfect. The internet search engines and how users search is always changing, so SEO will evolve over time as well. This includes both technical elements like structured data as well as considerations around quality. Just because you can't do perfect, SEO shouldn't discourage you, though." I wanted to cover because I thought it was a good message. There's no such thing as I've optimized my site completely. That doesn't exist. It's on a continuum, on a spectrum, and you just keep plugging away and keep trying to do more and more and more and trying to improve your pages and your website overall as much as you possibly can in all sorts of ways. But there is no end to SEO. SEO is infinite. Article number two from he who is the great Barry Schwartz in the sky. As reported on search engine round table, Google New Year's Eve search algorithm update. This came obviously on December 30th, which I guess is not really New Year's Eve, Barry. That would be December 31st. Anyway, it should be updated Google's New Year's Eve Eve search algorithm update. But it is interesting, Barry is showing you the charts from the SEO weather tools like the Semrush sensor and certain metrics, this tool and AccuRanker and so forth, and what you can see, just like right before Christmas, there is a big spike in ranking fluctuations again, right before New Year's, which by the time you're hearing this, this is already after New Year's. But it is interesting to see two spikes coming across a week or so apart. It's not an official algorithm update. It might be some reversals going back to the December 2023 core update. I would imagine so. If you look at the trend graphs, you'll see that the last spike before these two holiday ranked spikes, ring volatility spikes was actually back at the end of the December 2023 core update. Of course, always check your rankings and don't freak out because things reverse, especially when they are not official Google algorithm updates. So take things in stride, be patient and look at the longer overall trends, and that is this week's snappy news. Again, thank you Barry for your service. Thank you for your service. Crystal Carter: For all 20 years of your service. Mordy Oberstein: All 20 years, and for putting up with people like me in the industry. Crystal Carter: Literally an archive. I've done stuff on featured snippets before and I literally just went through SEO roundtable and like- Mordy Oberstein: It's the encyclopedia of SEO. It's the history of SEO. Crystal Carter: It can be like, "How did feature snippets look like in 2017?" He's like right here. What did they do like this? It's right there. What do the image carousels look like? He's like, it's right there. It's amazing. Mordy Oberstein: And he knows. He has an index in... They need to put his brain in the ether. Crystal Carter: He's a good dude. Mordy Oberstein: He's a good dude. Anyway, you know who's also another good dude and who also has a lot of predictions around SEO? Garrett Sussman. Oh, sorry, I ruined it. Crystal ball Crystal, what is your crystal ball telling you, Crystal crystal ball? Crystal Carter: I think you might say Garrett Sussman. Mordy Oberstein: I'm seeing an S and long hair and a beard. Crystal Carter: I'm seeing someone who does a weekly video on SEO and is a nice person who also shares the SEO predictions, like wrong SEO predictions. Is that what he calls them? Mordy Oberstein: I'll take Garrett Sussman four hundred. It's Garrett Sussman. If you could follow Garrett over on Twitter at Garrett Sussman, that's G-A-R-R-E-T-T S-U-S-S-M-A-N. He, every year out of all, he does many, many things. He got a podcast called Rankable. He does the SEO News weekly, but every year he does this great predictions roundup, where you get some crazy predictions mixing with some actual predictions, and it's a lot of fun. Crystal Carter: So much fun. Mordy Oberstein: We'll link to it in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So thank you, Garrett. Crystal Carter: It's a good time. He's a great follow as well because he does his SEO roundup as well, his video roundup and the thread every week, and it's super useful. We find some great resources there. He also runs the podcast as well, Rankable podcast. If you're going to listen to another podcast, then I highly recommend that one. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, but not SEO Rant, or Edge of the Web? Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, okay. Crystal Carter: I'm kidding. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I do. I recommend those as well, but Rankable podcast is great, so do check that one out as well. But yeah, Garrett such, yeah, he's good people. Go check out what Garrett's doing. Mordy Oberstein: He's good people. Crystal Carter: And the team at IPL rank are fantastic as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, just a good follow, because he does tweet a lot and he does ask questions. He's really conversational, really... What's the word I'm looking for? He's really accessible. You can really talk to him on Twitter, so it's a great follow. So please do that. And also, that's it. So now you can unfasten your seatbelt. You don't have to buckle up anymore. Crystal Carter: I see in the future, silence. Mordy Oberstein: I see, in the future, lunch. We always record before lunch. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cool. They tell you not to go to the supermarket when you're hungry, but apparently it's fine to record a podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I always do that. It's the worst. I'm the worst. I'll be, "Oh, we need this." And I won't even eat it because it's not on my diet, but like, no, we need it in the house. I feel better just having it. But now my kids eat cookies for breakfast. So this morning... Okay, so my kids wake up, one of my, he wakes up real early, like 5:45, way before I'm even thinking about waking up, and he comes down, sits at my office here, watches TV. Inevitably my wife's already gone for work. I come here, I find him sitting here. I'm like, did you eat breakfast? And he's like, yeah. And he does. He eats breakfast, but today I saw a big jar of cookies and I'm like, you know what, judges, it counts. Whatever. I'm not fighting with you. You ate breakfast. Good for you. I give up. Crystal Carter: It's fine. It's done now. Get in the car. Let's go. Mordy Oberstein: It's done. Get dressed, go to school. Just keep this train wreck moving. Well, anyway, thanks for joining us on the SERPS Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into, as I said before, emerging content trends and its value for SEOs. Bum bum bum bum. Look for wherever you consumer your podcast, or on the Wix SEO learning hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. If you're looking to learn a little more about SEO, check out all of the great content and the webinars over on the Wix SEO learning hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Parth Suba Rohan Ayyar Chima Mmeje Kenichi Suzuki Celeste Gonzalez Garrett Sussman Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube RicketyRoo SEO Agency Moz Buckle Up: Google To Make Major Search Ranking Changes News: Google On Knowing If Best SEO Was Applied Google New Years Eve Search Algorithm Update Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Parth Suba Rohan Ayyar Chima Mmeje Kenichi Suzuki Celeste Gonzalez Garrett Sussman Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube RicketyRoo SEO Agency Moz Buckle Up: Google To Make Major Search Ranking Changes News: Google On Knowing If Best SEO Was Applied Google New Years Eve Search Algorithm Update Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights on what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix Center. I'm joined by she who can see through the ether that is the future. She has her own crystal ball. She is Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. Hello people who are listening on various different podcasts, channels, and things. Also shout-out to everybody who tagged us on their Spotify wrap thing. It's like, "Wow, it's amazing." I'm going into the past. I'm looking in the past. But in the future, in the future, if you keep listening, we'll be on your Spotify wrap in the future. That's my prediction. Mordy Oberstein: Can I tell you, so I don't use Spotify for music so much, which is weird, right? I default to YouTube because I want to be able... My wife has a premium account for Spotify. I'm like, "Why am I paying for this twice? She has one, but I don't have her phone. I'll just use YouTube." I use Google Podcasts for my podcast. I'm like that weird dude who uses Google Podcasts. So the amount of hours I spend on Spotify is very limited. So my unwrap was so bizarre. My number one band was The Doors, which I like The Doors. I'm a big Jim Morrison fan. Crystal Carter: That's strange. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I am strange. So it works out great, but it's only because I got into a kick for like a week or two and was really listening to them, and that was the reason why my unwrap had The Doors. Crystal Carter: People are strange, when they're strange listening to podcasts or listening to The Doors on Spotify. There we go. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Let's break on through here to the other side. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also get a replay of all of our SEO product development in 2023 with sneak peeks at 2024. So for that, head over to wix.com/learn/webinars and look for our session covering our SEO product drops in 2023. As this week, we look ahead to 2024. And our SEO prediction drops for 2024. Will 2024 be the year of voice search? Will SEO die in 2024? Will SGE be the end of all traffic in 2024? No, no, and no. But you will hear some intriguing insights into where SEO is headed for myself. Crystal Carter, yes, you'll get that. You will also hear from SEO voices such as Chima Mmeje, Parth Suba, Celeste Gonzalez, Kenichi Suzuki and Rohan Ayyar. Yes, you will. Will they be sharing their outlook on SEO in 2024? Yes, they will. Also, big changes are coming to the algorithm in 2024. Yes. How do we know that? You have to wait and see. Was that clickbait? Yeah. Yes, that was clickbait. Will there be some snappy news today? Yes. There'll be some snappy news. We'll go through a follow of the week where you could follow more social media awesomeness and social media for SEO. Yes. We will do that also. I can't stop this format, by the way. I'm like, I'm stuck in a rut. Get me out of this. Say something. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, okay. Breathe. So pull out those magic eight balls or set those tarot cards or grab that witchy board. I don't don't know how to pronounce that or whatever, because we're not all lucky enough to have our own crystal ball. As episode number 68 of the SERP's Up podcast does what every other SEO blog, podcast, and newsletter has probably done already at this point, I'm just saying predict the future of SEO in 2024. How original. Crystal Carter: I think it's one of those things though that we all try, but we're all thinking about it. We're all trying to plan ahead and trying to think about what's going to be the new trend and what's going to be happening in all of those different spaces. But the thing that I find most interesting is that generally speaking, if you're going to predict the future, you also have to look at the past and you also have to look at what's happening now. You cannot know where you're going. Mordy Oberstein: It's so philosophical. Crystal Carter: You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been. Mordy Oberstein: That's why I'm completely lost. Crystal Carter: So I think that it's important to look at the trends that are happening now or have happened in the last year, and to see how those might evolve in the next year. When people ask me about what's going to be the trend for next year, that's what I always look at. Mordy Oberstein: I like the predictions. I don't like calling them predictions. I like looking at SEO kind of like directionally where... It's like an election. You know who's going to win. Where all the momentum is at? That's my very scientific way of like, "Yeah, I think that's what's going to happen." But there are certain directions, certain momentum, certain, mm! Where's the inertia going? And I like looking at SEO from that point of view. So stopping at the end of the year looking at 2024, it's just a good moment in time to focus on those kinds of things. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of times, particularly if you're looking at an SEO, you can see things like... I'll give you an inside scoop into how I do this whenever people ask me is I always look at the things that Google announced. Google will tell you which things they announced and they'll tell you which things they're working on and they'll tell you which things that they're going there. But you also look at the things that people are talking about. So for instance, one of the things that I've noticed is I think that we had in the last year, and we've seen a lot of things around AI and stuff, I think that we've got through the first fire sale, the first gold rush as it were of AI stuff. And I think that in the next year we're going to stop seeing parlor tricks and start seeing actual sophisticated, interesting iterations of that in the next while. I think that's my prediction in the next very short while. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to stop you right there and call the police because you stole my prediction. Crystal Carter: To be fair, to be fair, we're both working at Wix and Wix is doing this as well. We've been working in Wix as a team, has been working in AI since 2016. We had the ADI, Artificial Design Intelligence tool come out, and in the last year we've spent a lot more time opening up AI accessibility across our products in a more sophisticated way, and for users to access as well in a more sophisticated. And in a more like this is AI sort of way. Because that's the other thing. A lot of things were AI and nobody said they were AI. So for instance, we had- Mordy Oberstein: Well, really none of it's AI. It's all large language models and machine learning, but whatever. But yes, yes, I understand your point. Crystal Carter: People are just calling it magic now. They're like, "Oh, it's just magic. Check out our AI magic." And it's like things don't happen by magic. Mordy Oberstein: No, no. We do. Everything happens by magic. Crystal Carter: It's not magic. Mordy Oberstein: You're ruining my entire outlook, my whole world hinged on the reality is magic. Crystal Carter: I predict I'm going to steal all of Mordy's predictions. That's what I predict. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. You see this, by the way, what's happened in Bing, right? Bing went all in on their AI chat experience on the SERP, and for better or for worse, or unfortunately, they didn't see any increase in market share because of that. People didn't go to Bing and start using Bing as a search engine because they added the AI to it, which is ironic because when Bing did that, Google went, "Oh, no, Bing is going to beat us. That cannot happen." They went code red, red alert. Everyone go crazy, AI chat and search. But in the end, it didn't really do anything for Bing, and now Google went all in on it. And I think what's going to happen is it's also going to cool down for Google at the same time. So SGE which went from this big old box is already a much smaller, less noticeable thing on the SERP, and I think the whole thing is going to kind of cool off. It will be there. It will be a part of the experience on the SERP, but it will be not the dominant experience on the SERP. I think Google's going to get back to where it was before all the AI madness, which is improving the algorithm, implementing things like MUM, which is a whole separate conversation into the algorithm to try to refine the parsing of the results and offer different opportunities for you to explore different subtopics in a way better way, which by the way, SGE might be a part of that. I think it would be a part of that. I think it naturally lends itself to that. And Google does use MUM as part of that they've said, but I think it's going to be one small step for users and one giant leap for SEOs to realize that the web is fundamentally changed and Google's going to get back to dealing with the web fundamentally changing and I think SGE doesn't have a lot to do with that necessarily. Crystal Carter: I think one of the things that's been tricky about generative search, both on Bing, on Bard and also on Google, is that there's a delay. There's a delay that doesn't happen with featured snippets, which are also powered by machine learning, which are also powered by AI, which also used those technologies. What was I looking up? If I was like looking up how to lose that last five pounds, I've been going to the gym… Mordy Oberstein: When you find out, tell me. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So I was looking at how to lose the last five pounds, and there's featured snippets for that. Right? So there's featured snippets that show up instantaneously. I don't have to wait for something to go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then to reenter my question and for them not to understand my question and all of that sort of stuff, whereas I just get the featured snippets straight away. So I think that that instant answer is what people want. And I think that what we might see in terms of the evolution of SGE is that, again, it gets more sophisticated and more integrated. So it might be that it shows up on the side. At the moment, for instance, we have disambiguation boxes that are things to know or how this works or common issues. It might be that you generate some content on the side there or maybe it might work like people also ask where it's like a dropdown that gives you more of a summary. But we have a lot of instant answers that you can get from the SERP. And a lot of times, because they're not even always pulling through the meta description, they're very often pulling through an extract from the text in the description. A lot of times you can scan the SERP to get an idea of whether or not the answer is out there for the thing that you need. So a lot of times I find that it's quicker to go to the SERP than to the SGE at the moment. Mordy Oberstein: Personally, I think it'll be a first step if anything. And I think fundamentally, you're never going to get away from the philosophical, existential, psychological need that people want to touch and connect with a person. My example that I'll use is imagine I wrote a piece of content and AI wrote a piece of content. It's the exact same thing. And I said to you, which would rather... It's the exact same thing. Would you rather read the AI generated content or would you rather read the exact same thing than I wrote it myself? I think most people, and I'm speculating would say, "I'd rather read the one that you wrote because I feel more connected to a person than I do a machine. I identify with the person." I don't identify with the machine and I don't think SGE or whatever it's going to be or whatever it is, is going to get rid of that fundamental need that people have to connect. And it's very hard to connect with the SGE. People are going to want to touch the source of the material. However, we have a ton to get to because we have one, two, three, four, five guests today. We have five guests today. We're predicting their future of SEO, and a lot of them is going to focus on AI. So why don't we kick it off first and foremost with Parth Suba who runs #SEOTalk on Twitter, who's a fabulous SEO, and let's take his take on the future of SEO in 2024. Here's Parth. Parth Suba : Hello, everyone. This is Parth Suba, an SEO specialist with a passion for scaling organic traffic and a strong track record in the digital marketing community. I do SEO when I'm awake while I play chess in the night. So all of my strategies, which I play on the chessboard also helps me in my SEO career. So as we look towards 2024, the SEO landscape continues to evolve at an incredible pace. The area which I think we'll see a huge rise is AI and SEO tools powered by artificial intelligence will provide more sophisticated data analysis, helping us to understand user intent and behavior in unprecedented ways. This will allow for more targeted and effective SEO strategies. Furthermore, I believe we'll see a shift towards more sustainable and ethical SEO practices, which I refer to as branded SEO practices. As users become more conscious of their digital footprint, brands that prioritize eco-friendly and socially responsible SEO tactics will stand out. Lastly, I expect local SEO to become even more critical as the world recovers from the pandemic. Local businesses will be looking to strengthen their online presence to attract nearby customers. This means more opportunities for localized content and geo-targeted strategies. So to conclude, the future of SEO in 2024 will be marked by advances in technology, a greater focus on user experience and the need for more ethical practices. As SEO specialists, we must stay ahead of these trends to ensure our strategies remain effective and relevant. Thank you, Wix for having me on the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Parth, for that. You can follow Parth over on X or Twitter whatever X @parthsuba77. That's P-A-R-T-H-S-U-B-A 77. We'll link to his profile in the show notes. I started with that on purpose, by the way. That wasn't an accident. I knew we're going to get into AI with the predictions, but I wanted to focus on the data analysis part of AI and what that means for SEO, and I think it's a great point. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think he's absolutely right. I think that we should see more of that coming forward. And in fact, you mentioned our 2024 Wix predictions, and one of the things that they're planning to do is give more AI ideation in the analytics and in the SEO data that we're having our tools. I find that AI is incredibly useful for organizing, sorting, and saving you time with cleaning up data. So I think that using that more in the next little while would be super useful. Mordy Oberstein: I would love to see more content written about how to use AI technology to do those more efficient SEO task kind of thing than about creating content. But I don't predict that's going to... Mordy Oberstein: ... Tasks kind of thing, than about creating content. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I don't predict that's going to happen, by the way. Crystal Carter: I don't predict that. Additionally, one of the other things that he mentioned was local, and I agree Google is leaning more and more into local all the time, and I think that people really underestimate the importance of Google Business Profile, the importance of the local segmentation in terms of search, and I think that it doesn't just affect bricks and mortar businesses. I think we should also be thinking about that in terms of where people are searching and how that affects your discoverability and things like that. So, I also think that local will continue to be a driving force in SEO. Mordy Oberstein: So if you want more predictions around SEO in 2024 around AI, we have one of our... I think I'll go on a limb and say our personal favorite people in the whole SEO world, Kenichi Suzuki, SEO blogger, Google product expert, search advocate. Crystal Carter: And Avril Lavigne fan. Mordy Oberstein: Is he really? I love Avril Lavigne, that’s so nostalgic- Crystal Carter: He came in an Avril Lavigne tour shirt. He saw her in Tokyo- Mordy Oberstein: That's awesome. Crystal Carter: He's super nice. His whole team is super nice. Mordy Oberstein: I'm with you. Crystal Carter: Is that an Avril Lavigne quote? Mordy Oberstein: It's not. Crystal Carter: I don't know that one. I know Sk8er Boi. See you later, boy. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great song. I like that. Anyway, here's Kenichi about AI, SGE, and a doubling down of some good old E-E-A-T. Kenichi Suzuki: Predicting SEO in 2024 is tough since Google keeps evolving quickly. However, bringing AI into search will likely be critical. Specifically such generative experience or SGE could completely change how people use search engines. Rather than wanting search results, users may prefer SGE to directly answer their questions. This could drastically reduce such traffic as people get used to SGE's instant answers. Google is also supposedly developing Gemini a next-gen AI search. While Gemini's details are unclear, its impact on search could be bigger than SGE's. I think the best strategy is to focus on creating helpful, high quality content, and improving E-E-A-T. Google will reward those efforts. Building brand awareness is also wise. If you rank number one for your brand terms, innovations like SGE or Gemini can't divert that traffic. My view is that useful content and solid E-E-A-T are what matter most. If we provide that, Google's system will continue to send searches our way. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Kenichi. I really appreciate you. You could follow Kenichi over on X at S-U-Z-U-K-I-K, link in the show notes. Loving the fact you talk about E-E-A-T and the doubling down of E-E-A-T. I think that one of the things that the whole AI conversation does is kind of bring those kind of larger branding quality content consumption preferences into refocus. If you asked me personally, I would say the biggest thing that the whole AI innovation thing has done from an SEO and content point of view is not the impact of more AI content or a content ranking, or not ranking that's been written by AI or the conversation within the SEO industry that AI has stimulated. Crystal Carter: If everyone is using AI, if everyone has the ability to use AI to create content, if everyone has the ability to create some content, the thing that makes a difference is the brand and the trust behind the brand, the trust behind the people who are writing or even curating the content for instance. So, if you are known to be person of quality, if you are known to be a brand with quality content, then even if you are creating with AI, maybe people will trust you to make sure that whatever you're creating is of substance and is checked and is verified and is all of that sort of stuff. So absolutely, those brand points are really, really important, and also you talked about people wanting to be able to touch and feel the content or have an interaction with the content. If people trust you and people connect with you, then they know that if they get stuck on something that they can come back to you. Nobody wants to be stuck in a... Like I had a customer service thing and I was talking to a chatbot and I needed something that the chatbot couldn't help me with, and they were like, "That's all, goodbye." And I was like, "No, I need a human. I need a human." Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: So, there needs to be a human at the other end of the content. And if they trust you, your brand, then they know that that's the case. Mordy Oberstein: I have a ton to say about this, which I will in next week's episode around why SEO should watch content trends carefully, a little plug for that. Well, before we mentioned local SEO and AI, that's why Celeste Gonzalez over from one of our favorite folks in the SEO industry, the RicketyRoo folks, RicketyRoo. Shout out to Blake, to Melissa, to Kim. Crystal Carter: Amanda. Mordy Oberstein: It's a lot of great SEO folks and beyond over the RicketyRoo SEO agency, check them out. Anyway, here's Celeste Gonzalez about SGE and local SEO. Take it away, Celeste. Celeste Gonzalez : Google's search generative experience is going to change up part of local SEO. So since SGE can act like a chat box, we will see longer and more specific queries. This is especially important for local businesses. So, when I search for something like best chocolate chip cookies in LA, I get some Google Business Profiles, a map, and links to directories like Yelp for best cookies in LA, and SGE allows me to prompt further and input a follow-up query like best cookies in LA for delivery. And again, I'll get more GBPs, Yelp, other directories, and a chance to follow up another time. While SGE is still experimental, it takes up a lot of real estate in SERPs and I think this is going to impact the local pack and change at least how it exists today. So, it could even eliminate it from SERPs for certain queries with local intent, SGE is already showing GBPs to users. It doesn't make the most sense to have an equally large SERP feature like the local pack taking up more space. So, we might see it show up way smaller than before or with completely new features to help distinguish it. Barry Schwartz had shared a newer local pack design where it's now featuring menus with photos and reviews. So, we're already seeing new things going on with the local pack, and I think with SGE rolling out, we'll see more changes in the future. Overall, it looks like Google Business Profile optimization and Barnacle SEO are going to be more important and local. We're going to have to now focus on brand visibility a lot more. So just this past year, businesses are now allowed to control their social media links on their GBPs and you can input your TikTok link, LinkedIn link, Twitter, all of that. So, this shows that a brand social media presence carries some weight and there has to be a certain degree of importance to it. At the very least, this is going to help Google connect the dots and understand who that brand is. So, establishing and enhancing a brand's reputation will continue to play a significant role in 2024, and I think part of that will be maintaining an active presence on social media. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, there's so much to jump into. Thank you so much, Celeste, for that. You can follow Celeste over at CelestexLili, that's C-E-L-E-S-T-E-X-L-I-L-I, of course link in the show notes. First off, I just want to say something, this is the year of brand. This is the year of brand. You heard it here first. Also- Crystal Carter: It's Mordy's favorite thing. Mordy Oberstein: I love brand marketing. I'm so happy, like the convergence. There's so many conversation about brand marketing in SEO. I'm here for it, it's where I live. By the way, I've always said this, for the last, I don't know, two minutes, but no, I've said this in the past, name me another box on the SERP that didn't always present organic links, but was very influential for your business. It'd be the local pack. Sometimes they do show link, but not always, depending on the query and the type of business and whatever it is, or if there is a link to the business to begin with. Some businesses are just on Facebook, which is weird. Anyway, local for SGE to me makes the most sense. Where do you want to have the conversation? What are some great pizza places in New York City? And it lists three places and they say, "Well wait, wait, wait, which offers gluten-free pizza?" And then it lists more places. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, but which one also has, I don't know, the best french fries? And then you can keep refining and refining that way, so I love SGE for local. Crystal Carter: I think that SGE for local, I think it's for some of those niche queries because what I've been in SGE's and LLM-based search works, well, it's for a long query. If you're like, "I need to find a place where somebody who's gluten-free and somebody who only eats french fries," sometimes you have people who are like, "I only eat nuggets. That's all I eat." You're like, "Okay, all right." Mordy Oberstein: They're my kids. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly, so sometimes that happens. You're like, "I need to find a place where we can do this and this and this and this and that and this and this. Does that exist in the Bronx? And they'll be like, "Yes, no." So, that I think is important. I think it's important to think about those. I think the other thing she mentioned about multi-channel, about social and stuff like that, I think that's really important. What we've seen in a lot of experiments with the SGE over the course of the year since it's been around is that people are able to see that it's able to respond pretty quickly to social updates, for instance. So, it might be that Google hasn't necessarily crawled the site in a week, but they maybe have seen the post on Facebook or on Twitter or whatever that says, "Yay, we just started selling gluten-free pizza," et cetera. So, I think that it's important to think about multiple channels. So, omnichannel and making sure that you're on all channels is really, really important, and you can use multiple tools to help you do that, automations and NSG and things... Sorry, and ChatGPT, et cetera as well, but I agree with her on the omnichannel and on the local, and thinking about SGE as well. Mordy Oberstein: Let's have a look at the implications of AI in the SEO world on budgets and monetary decisions. Crystal Carter: Talk about money. Mordy Oberstein: On the one hand, the most unsexy thing in the world to talk about, but also the most important thing to talk about. For real Mordy Oberstein: Here's senior content marketing manager over at Moz, Chima Mmeje, on her predictions for SEO in 2024 as it relates to budgets and AI and everything. Take it away, Chima. Chima Mmeje: I think it's going to require a lot of creativity and innovation on the part of marketers because already we're seeing decision makers asking for us to explain why we are spending money. And the only way to justify this course is to show results and tie it to the bottom line. I think we're also going to see increased AI adoption to close budget gaps and here's why. I think that as we're seeing more job cuts, as AI becomes more personalized, it's going to be used to close the inefficiency gap resulting from fewer people working on more projects. So, what can marketing teams do? Identify areas of your marketing that will benefit most from AI, like automating routine tasks, predictive analytics, and enhancing customer insights. Integrate AI with content creation. I've been an advocate for this from day one. We can use AI to write content. You just have to make sure that AI is not replacing human expertise. And you should have a training budget to teach your teams, not just writers, your entire marketing team, how to use AI to do their job more efficiently. And then finally, I think we're going to see more hyper-personalization as content becomes more saturated. So, that means that we are going to be seeing highly personalized content that are targeted towards even more niche audiences as a way to stand out in a crowded marketplace. So, what you can do is that you can use AI again to analyze data, identify unique customer preferences, and then create content targeted towards solving those niche problems. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, there's a lot to chew on there. Thank you so much, Chima. You can follow Chima over at C-H-I-M-A-M-M-E-J-E over on X. link of course in the show notes. I love the stuff that she's doing over at Moz. Of course, check that out. Of course, the FCDC, she runs that as well, so please check that out as well. Link in the show notes. I think that AI budgets is like sports teams. I'm going to do a sports analogy. I think marketing and SEO in general are very much like sports team and their budgets, especially teams or in sports where you have a salary cap. You only have X amount of money you're allowed to spend each year, and if you don't manage that budget well, you can absolutely ruin your franchise for years to come. It happens all the time. If you don't set your budget up right and you're in a position now where you have real problems with your budget and the production that you want to do when you're going to try to use AI as a way of solving your budget crisis, I think that I'm going to go out... It's a hot take. I think that is a potential win for your competitors who don't have that problem. Follow me here. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm getting a look like, "You're out of your mind, Mordy." If I manage my budget well and I don't have to rely on AI, I can use AI as I see fit from a quality point of view, and I don't have to use AI to supplement budgetary problems, then I can ensure that I'm efficient and I'm also producing quality at the same time. If I have to use the AI to fill budget gaps, I'm going to inevitably end up in a situation where, yes, I'll be more efficient, but I might- Mordy Oberstein: ... end up in a situation where yes, I'll be more efficient, but no, I might not have the control over the quality that I really want to have at the end of the day. Hot take. Crystal Carter: Okay. So, to counter your sports analogy, the thing about a sports team is that you can't get a robot to kick a ball on your sports team. You couldn't say, "Oh, I'll just have a robot kick all the balls into the hole," or whatever. The hole? Into the net. Mordy Oberstein: Sure. Crystal Carter: Sports hole. So, there's that. But I agree with you that it shouldn't be AI or not. It shouldn't be that you don't have a choice but to use AI. It should be that you manage your budget well, so that the AI supports what you're doing, rather than is the only thing that you have to rely on. And I agree with Chima that people should be thinking about how they're integrating it into their marketing mix and into their marketing workflows, and how they can save time. Because I think that that is the thing I've heard people say recently, is you won't be replaced by AI, you'll be replaced by a marketer using AI. And we had this in our conversation with Kim Garst. People who are super organized already are really well placed. People who have their budgets sorted already are really well placed to apply this technology because they already have their selves together. They're already organized. Just like when you're doing any kind of automation, if you are already organized and you know your workflow back to front, then it's easy to figure out which things you can automate and which things you can use to help you get scalability and things like that. Mordy Oberstein: So, one more for you. One last SEO prediction for 2024 for you, and it's going to go beyond AI. I saved the non-AI for last. That's just me. Anyway, here's Rohan Ayyer, who is fabulous SEO, speaks at conferences all over the world, so here's Rohan on his SEO take for the first half of 2024, and it's got nothing to do with AI. Take it away, Rohan. Rohan Ayyar: So, my SEO prediction is going to be a bit of a dampener for you all. 2023 was all about AI. ChatGPT hit the SEO scene late in 2022. The impact took even Google by surprise, if I may say so. It forced them to hustle and make hasty changes to, A, the SERPS for which they introduced SGE, and B, the algorithm for which they ran quite a few iterations of ETSU and core updates. In fact, Google has had six updates in the last four months that they've officially announced. That's a first in itself. Other than that, they clarified what are ranking systems and signals and updates, and they also updated the search raters quality guidelines recently after almost a year. So, my take is that SEOs will be, or need to be, in more of a reactive mode for at least the first half of 2024, if not more. We need to closely monitor the changes in the SERPs, how search results are displayed, and what new features and bells and whistles are introduced, and so on. Well, we do track this already, but we have to do more of that and find ways of increasing visibility more than focusing on getting ranked itself. It appears to me, Google themselves are not clear on the way forward, as in how to best format the search results for their users. So, SEOs will have to wait until the dust settles. For once, you need to be chasing the Google results, if not the Google algorithm. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Rohan. You can follow Rohan over on Twitter at Searchrook. That's S-E-A-R-C-H-R-O-O-K. We'll link to that in the show notes. I told you, we're saving the non-AI for last. That's an interesting take of waiting to see what the heck happened, because so much is changing, which that is definitely true. There's a lot that's going on. We'll get to that in just a few minutes. Google's announce about notes and community stuff and forums and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. So, it kind of makes sense to see, take a step back and pay attention to what's happening. Wait for the dust to settle just a bit. I hear that. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I feel like it's a really honest answer. I feel like it's a really honest answer that we are going to have to be a little bit more reactive. Because you changed your Twitter handle to Buckleup, and I think that that's... And that's quoting Danny Sullivan, or whatever. We're working in a really dynamic time in search. There's a lot of big changes that... SEOs are seeing more big changes than we've seen in years, and I think that we are going to have to be very nimble, plan to replan, and plan to be able to respond to some of those changes. I think Rohan's absolutely on the money with that. Mordy Oberstein: Nice job, Rohan. Pick up yourself. Also, pick up all of our contributors who contributed with their predictions to our show this week. Make sure you follow all of them, as I mentioned, on social media. Now, you mentioned Buckleup, you mentioned Danny Sullivan, so let's buckle up. Because at Brighton SEO, I wasn't there. I left already. But at Brighton SEO, Crystal was there. She's pointing to herself. She was there. She can verify. Danny brought up the idea of the algorithm and so many changes that are coming, and I think that there are going to be a ton of changes coming to the algorithm. So, let's dive in with a little segment where we take a directional look at Google that we call Going, Going, Google. Speaker 1: And it's going, going, Google. It's out of here. Mordy Oberstein: So, for the record, Danny said you don't have to buckle up, so I blame Barry. Crystal Carter: Barry wasn't there, either. Mordy Oberstein: So, it's not only Barry's fault, because people were saying Danny said to buckle up because so many changes are coming. Crystal Carter: So, the talk was really interesting, because he was talking about changes, but he was also pointing about the fact... Which also, can I just say it was a great talk. One of the other things he was saying was he was responding to that Burge article about the content goblins, which he took a bit of a hit on, and I thought he really responded to it like a boss, really, basically. And I think that Danny, really, he was very witty and very funny about it, and all of that sort of stuff. But he was really talking about it like there are changes coming, but also we are seeing stuff that Google's always done. So, he was saying, people are saying, "Oh, Google measures clicks," but we've always paid attention to user interactivity. That's always something that we've paid attention to. And he did a Q and A that was really valuable as well. So, I have a thread on my Twitter account, we can link it in there, that shows a lot of the screenshots from the session as well. But yeah, it was a great session. Mordy Oberstein: And so, what basically you're saying is, we are going... we meaning Google... are going to be making a lot of changes. But if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, you don't have to buckle up. So, I think SEO should buckle up, then. Is that salty? Crystal Carter: No, because I think there's a lot of people who rely on gimmicks and tricks and tips and things, and I think that the idea... And tips are fine, or whatever, but I think one of the things he talked about was that they'll say things like, "You should think about user experience and expertise." And we'll think very specifically. He says, what will you hear? Specific, specific, specific. "We should have links to an author page, and about page, and a thing like that." And he's like, "No. What are you doing?" Mordy Oberstein: We spoke about that with Lily for our EAT episode. Don't checklist-atize EAT. It's a concept. It's a very abstract concept, so you can't make a checklist out of it. Crystal Carter: Right. And he literally said, he has a slide that says, "Beware one-weird-trick SEO, where it says, "How to gain rankings with this one weird trick." Beware of that." And there was somebody who recently shared... They called it the SEO Heist, I think it was. Mordy Oberstein: Oh my Lord. Crystal Carter: Right. And they were like, "Look at this great thing I did." And then they immediately saw a traffic drop, and somebody else posted, "Don't embarrass Google online." Mordy Oberstein: His book posted. Like, oop, that didn't last long. Crystal Carter: Right. So, I think that those sorts of tricks... If you are somebody who's not in SEO all the time, and you're somebody who's a business owner and you're trying to grow your SEO, you hear somebody who's like, "This one weird trick will make you do the thing." It's the same as somebody who says, "You can get rich quick with this one thing." Like, guy. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You mean, if we took- Crystal Carter: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Tell me. Crystal Carter: Exactly, exactly, exactly. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The secret about SEO is that you just have to keep going and keep working at it. It's just something you have to work at. And one weird trick is not going to do the job. Sometimes there's a technical thing where you're like, "Oh, hey, if you do this, you might see a traffic boost." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But that's very different than- Crystal Carter: Right. That's something that you- Mordy Oberstein: That's a fix. Crystal Carter: Right. That's a fix that you might see a boost. That's an optimization that you might see a boost. It's not going to solve all your problems. It's not going to give you clear skin. It's not going to make you lose weight and all that sort of stuff. It's not going to do all of that stuff for you. Mordy Oberstein: Is there something that will? Crystal Carter: No. Drinking more water. I don't know what to tell you. Mordy Oberstein: It's water? Drink more water. Okay, I'll go do that. Crystal Carter: It's always the answer is drink more water. Mordy Oberstein: To borrow a sports reference, the '90s Yankees, who won four championships in five years, they had a very famous manager named Joe Torre, and he would call up the catcher, Jorge Posada, and say, "Jorge, what do we do?" He would go, "Grind it." And they won, not because they fancy hit so many home runs, but because they grinded it. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And SEO is a grind. You have to grind it. And I think what's going to happen is, more increasingly, the grind is going to get more grindier. Google's already... and they said they would... that needs talking about. I think they have a lot of things planned. I just get my SEO sense, my spider sense is tingling. They're at a point where they're going to be able to do a lot more than we think they're able to do, and I think a lot of the things like the reviews update going real time- Crystal Carter: Helpful content being constantly rolling? Mordy Oberstein: Right. All of those kind of things kind of point to Google being at the point where it's going to be able to make a leap in what it's able to do. And when they're able to make a leap, things change dramastically. Drastically and dramatically together, dramastically. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: And you've already seen this in the announcements, the things like Notes. The things like, hey, we want to put more firsthand knowledge on the SERPs, and whether or not the way that they're executing that right now is good or bad. I think Notes is a disaster, or whatever, but forget that. Look at it directionally what they're trying to do. Those are very, very drastic things, and that's going to creep into the algorithm itself at a certain point. Crystal Carter: And I think we're seeing it in how frequent the algorithms are running, and how frequently they're running over one another. That's confident. That is confidence right there. Mordy Oberstein: That's very, very, very big confidence. Crystal Carter: The fact that they're running experiments, running calibrations or whatever in tandem, at the same time, you have to be very confident in your systems in order to do that. One of the slides that he shared at Brighton said, "Our systems will keep evolving toward the goal of improving satisfaction in all sorts of ways." And that, I think, is really important to think about. People think that SEO is just about ranking, just about keywords, just about this, this, about that. It's not. And he said also during the talk, "We are following the users. Your SEO-" Mordy Oberstein: Oh my God. Crystal Carter: "Your tech SEO, your content, your images, your videos should all be adding value for users. And Google is sending traffic to your page because they think it adds value to users. They get lots of signals that say that this is valuable, because we know that users who are interested in this query like videos. We know that users who are interested in this query like images. Your page has images and videos and text, and the text makes sense." Right? Mordy Oberstein: Right, and you can't just edit image into video. It's not going to cut it. Crystal Carter: No. But the information that you've given us, and you've also given us more information to understand your text. So, you can add structured data, you can add your site maps, you can make sure that it's formatted in the right feed, that it does all of those sorts of things. But all of those things, everything you do, should be pointing towards demonstrating the value that the content is made. You're not just writing this piece of content for no reason. You're not just publishing this page for no reason. They have billions of pages, and they don't have time for useless content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. By the way, that's a bigger thing. There's some studies that came out. I think Kevin Indig and then Cyrus Shepard covered this, where they're showing the size of the index. It's not as big as you think it is, and it's going to get increasingly smaller in my opinion. By the way, you saw, I think, Barry Schwartz recently covered... by the time of this recording, I say recently covered... that they're starting to stop showing cache. Which I saw this last week myself. Some results did have it, and some didn't. To me, that's money. You're storing all these cached pages? Why? There's a lot of resources. We don't need to do this anymore. Crystal Carter: And I think also, along with that storage thing, a lot of people have been saying that a lot of the storage stuff has to do with... Index streamlining has to do with them bringing up more space for ads. I've heard a lot of people say that, in terms of machine learning and things. But I think also, I think it's important to think about, at Google IO, they showed some of their supercomputers or whatever. Those need a lot more computing power. All these algorithms, they need a lot of power in order to run and in order to be as sophisticated as they are as well. So, I think it's also important to remember that Google has a lot of legacy tools that have helped them to manage the index in the past, and now that they have more sophisticated tools, they might be clean in-house. They might not need- Mordy Oberstein: For sure. Crystal Carter: ... the same tools in the same way, because they have better tools now. Let's say you get an electric car. Maybe you don't need your old petrol car anymore. It got you from A to B to begin with. Sure, great. But maybe your electric car does better for you now, so maybe you don't need that anymore, and you don't need the gas can, either. Mordy Oberstein: No, come on. That image, like walking down the highway with the gas can. Crystal Carter: I'm not walking down any highways. I'm calling for help. Mordy Oberstein: Triple-A. Mordy Oberstein: The gas can. Crystal Carter: I'm not walking down any highways. I'm calling for help. Mordy Oberstein: Triple A. Crystal Carter: Yeah, come and get me please. Mordy Oberstein: Like no shame. I've never changed a tire in my life, and I never will. Crystal Carter: I changed a tire in front of my house. Mordy Oberstein: I don't like changing tire. I tried. Crystal Carter: No, my dad... I literally reversed and hit something or something and then the tire went flat and my dad was like, well, you got to fix that tire. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, swinging back around to your point about content, which is why, as I mentioned before, we're going to be talking about emerging content trends and SEO, I believe it's next week on this very very podcast, and it's also why I think you need to start thinking about content trends in a less generic way. For example, real quick, people say, oh, people are looking for content from people, not from brands. So you need to have a video of actual people or quotes from actual people in your content. Yeah, that's one way to look at that, but if you zoom out and abstract what that's basically telling you, is that people want more conversational content and you don't need to have a video of an influencer doing that. You could just be more conversational in your entire tone. So you need to start thinking about what those content trends actually mean conceptually, and not just the generic hangups of, well, if things are more conversational, I need an influencer now. Think about it and apply the concept. Don't just do the tactic. You know who was conceptual and doesn't do just tactics? Barry. I don't know if that's true or not. Crystal Carter: Also, can we shout out to Barry for 20 years of SEO Roundtable? Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah, that's right. So as the date of this recording, actually yesterday, it was the 20th anniversary of SEOroundtable.com, which I will not lie, the first site I go to other than like Gmail, which doesn't count as a website, when I sit down to work is SEOroundtable.com. That's not a plug. I'm not being paid to say that. That's the God's honest truth. Crystal Carter: It's also the last website that Mordy looks at before he goes to bed. He puts it on an auto thing and then it just- Mordy Oberstein: I like to have a text reader like read Barry. Crystal Carter: Just read him to sleep. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but in the voice of, I don't know, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I like hearing Barry and Arnold's voice. Is that weird? Crystal Carter: I don't know. It's just making me think about Kindergarten Cop though. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, great movie. Also, the last thing I like to see at the end of every day is the random image that Barry shares in his image of the day post. Here's a cake from Google in Ireland in 2023. Crystal Carter: Yeah. The best one though was the one of Daniel Weisberg with the shofar? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I sent that to Barry. Crystal Carter: It's like really cool. Mordy Oberstein: I found that. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I found that. Crystal Carter: Awesome. Mordy Oberstein: That was me. Crystal Carter: It's a good one. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Anyway, here's snappy news. Here's some Barry Schwartz for you. It's the snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Despite it being the holiday season, it being a little bit light on the news, we have two for you this week. First up, from surgeon and journals, Roger Monte, Google on knowing if best SEO was applied. So John Mueller of Google was doing a recorded Q and A session and somebody asked him literally question, "How to know if my SEO is perfect? Are there any tools, apps, or websites available for it?" To which John replied back, just quote again, "Sorry to disappoint, but your SEO is not perfect. In fact, no, SEO is perfect. The internet search engines and how users search is always changing, so SEO will evolve over time as well. This includes both technical elements like structured data as well as considerations around quality. Just because you can't do perfect, SEO shouldn't discourage you, though." I wanted to cover because I thought it was a good message. There's no such thing as I've optimized my site completely. That doesn't exist. It's on a continuum, on a spectrum, and you just keep plugging away and keep trying to do more and more and more and trying to improve your pages and your website overall as much as you possibly can in all sorts of ways. But there is no end to SEO. SEO is infinite. Article number two from he who is the great Barry Schwartz in the sky. As reported on search engine round table, Google New Year's Eve search algorithm update. This came obviously on December 30th, which I guess is not really New Year's Eve, Barry. That would be December 31st. Anyway, it should be updated Google's New Year's Eve Eve search algorithm update. But it is interesting, Barry is showing you the charts from the SEO weather tools like the Semrush sensor and certain metrics, this tool and AccuRanker and so forth, and what you can see, just like right before Christmas, there is a big spike in ranking fluctuations again, right before New Year's, which by the time you're hearing this, this is already after New Year's. But it is interesting to see two spikes coming across a week or so apart. It's not an official algorithm update. It might be some reversals going back to the December 2023 core update. I would imagine so. If you look at the trend graphs, you'll see that the last spike before these two holiday ranked spikes, ring volatility spikes was actually back at the end of the December 2023 core update. Of course, always check your rankings and don't freak out because things reverse, especially when they are not official Google algorithm updates. So take things in stride, be patient and look at the longer overall trends, and that is this week's snappy news. Again, thank you Barry for your service. Thank you for your service. Crystal Carter: For all 20 years of your service. Mordy Oberstein: All 20 years, and for putting up with people like me in the industry. Crystal Carter: Literally an archive. I've done stuff on featured snippets before and I literally just went through SEO roundtable and like- Mordy Oberstein: It's the encyclopedia of SEO. It's the history of SEO. Crystal Carter: It can be like, "How did feature snippets look like in 2017?" He's like right here. What did they do like this? It's right there. What do the image carousels look like? He's like, it's right there. It's amazing. Mordy Oberstein: And he knows. He has an index in... They need to put his brain in the ether. Crystal Carter: He's a good dude. Mordy Oberstein: He's a good dude. Anyway, you know who's also another good dude and who also has a lot of predictions around SEO? Garrett Sussman. Oh, sorry, I ruined it. Crystal ball Crystal, what is your crystal ball telling you, Crystal crystal ball? Crystal Carter: I think you might say Garrett Sussman. Mordy Oberstein: I'm seeing an S and long hair and a beard. Crystal Carter: I'm seeing someone who does a weekly video on SEO and is a nice person who also shares the SEO predictions, like wrong SEO predictions. Is that what he calls them? Mordy Oberstein: I'll take Garrett Sussman four hundred. It's Garrett Sussman. If you could follow Garrett over on Twitter at Garrett Sussman, that's G-A-R-R-E-T-T S-U-S-S-M-A-N. He, every year out of all, he does many, many things. He got a podcast called Rankable. He does the SEO News weekly, but every year he does this great predictions roundup, where you get some crazy predictions mixing with some actual predictions, and it's a lot of fun. Crystal Carter: So much fun. Mordy Oberstein: We'll link to it in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So thank you, Garrett. Crystal Carter: It's a good time. He's a great follow as well because he does his SEO roundup as well, his video roundup and the thread every week, and it's super useful. We find some great resources there. He also runs the podcast as well, Rankable podcast. If you're going to listen to another podcast, then I highly recommend that one. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, but not SEO Rant, or Edge of the Web? Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, okay. Crystal Carter: I'm kidding. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I do. I recommend those as well, but Rankable podcast is great, so do check that one out as well. But yeah, Garrett such, yeah, he's good people. Go check out what Garrett's doing. Mordy Oberstein: He's good people. Crystal Carter: And the team at IPL rank are fantastic as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, just a good follow, because he does tweet a lot and he does ask questions. He's really conversational, really... What's the word I'm looking for? He's really accessible. You can really talk to him on Twitter, so it's a great follow. So please do that. And also, that's it. So now you can unfasten your seatbelt. You don't have to buckle up anymore. Crystal Carter: I see in the future, silence. Mordy Oberstein: I see, in the future, lunch. We always record before lunch. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cool. They tell you not to go to the supermarket when you're hungry, but apparently it's fine to record a podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I always do that. It's the worst. I'm the worst. I'll be, "Oh, we need this." And I won't even eat it because it's not on my diet, but like, no, we need it in the house. I feel better just having it. But now my kids eat cookies for breakfast. So this morning... Okay, so my kids wake up, one of my, he wakes up real early, like 5:45, way before I'm even thinking about waking up, and he comes down, sits at my office here, watches TV. Inevitably my wife's already gone for work. I come here, I find him sitting here. I'm like, did you eat breakfast? And he's like, yeah. And he does. He eats breakfast, but today I saw a big jar of cookies and I'm like, you know what, judges, it counts. Whatever. I'm not fighting with you. You ate breakfast. Good for you. I give up. Crystal Carter: It's fine. It's done now. Get in the car. Let's go. Mordy Oberstein: It's done. Get dressed, go to school. Just keep this train wreck moving. Well, anyway, thanks for joining us on the SERPS Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into, as I said before, emerging content trends and its value for SEOs. Bum bum bum bum. Look for wherever you consumer your podcast, or on the Wix SEO learning hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. If you're looking to learn a little more about SEO, check out all of the great content and the webinars over on the Wix SEO learning hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace 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

Amanda Milligan is a digital PR and inbound marketing expert with more than a decade of experience in content, growth, and brand. Her knowledge has been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, TechCrunch, and more, as well as conferences like SMX, MozCon, SearchLove, and Pubcon. Amanda Milligan Head of Marketing, Stacker Amanda Milligan is a digital PR and inbound marketing expert with more than a decade of experience in content, growth, and brand. Her knowledge has been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, TechCrunch, and more, as well as conferences like SMX, MozCon, SearchLove, and Pubcon. Articles & Resources 16 Mar 2023 How to earn brand authority at any budget Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Back GA4 event cheat sheet Use this cheat sheet to gain a full understanding of GA4’s automatically collected and recommended events, helping you navigate event tracking and improve report accuracy in GA4. Get resource Full name* Agency name Business email* I want to receive news and updates from the Wix SEO team. * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix’s Privacy Policy . Get resource Use this resource to: Understand GA4’s event tracking model Improve report accuracy by identifying shared parameters across events Maximize GA4’s reporting capabilities efficiently Jill Quick Analytics Consultant and Trainer, The Coloring In Department LinkedIn Facebook X Instagram As an analytics consultant and trainer at the Coloring in Department , Jill Quick specializes in measurement, GA4, analytics, data visualization, and BigQuery. Renowned for her expertise, Jill regularly speaks at international conferences, establishing herself as a thought leader in the analytics field. More about this topic Read this post on how to get started with Google Analytics 4 from the Wix SEO Hub blog for more information. Share this resource Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Agency scales faster by streamlining SEO workflows “When sites stay running smoothly it saves our agency time and money. Building on Wix has allowed us to streamline our SEO workflows, and gain more design flexibility in the process. It’s the ultimate win-win.” 10000 Big number 178% Growth 7X Wow The C-suite at Creative Trnd was looking for a better way to grow their clients–and their agency. When they started building on Wix, it became clear that one powerful platform could help them do both. The business Creative Trnd is a full-service digital marketing agency based in Quebec, Canada. With a team of 35, they offer everything from web development to influencer marketing. SEO is a major focus for the agency, with SEO clients accounting for 70% of their recurring revenue. In 2021 they doubled their revenue by acquiring another agency, and they have big plans for more acquisitions down the line. The SEO challenge Whatever way you slice it, time is money for an agency. Creative Trnd were acutely aware of this fact, as the web creation platforms they were using were taking up far too much dev time. Given the agency’s goal to keep scaling apace, this loss of momentum just didn’t cut it. “ The complexity of working in WordPress was driving my designers crazy,” says Rob May, the agency's VP of Search and Digital Marketing. “When our design team would mock something up, our dev team had to build it and without fail, there were always complications with whatever code they were using inside the platform, or the theme they were using as a base would conflict with everything else.” It wasn’t just the agency's designers who were unhappy with these web creation solutions either. Some of their SEO clients were at their wits’ end because of the limitations these platforms presented for their eCommerce businesses. “ We actually have a client who’s not been happy with one of the popular eCommerce platforms for years. He has an international store and never had a multilingual set up. He has to have three versions of his store: one for Canada in English, one for Canada in French, and another for the US. This means he has to pay three subscriptions for hosting, for templates, for apps, credit card processing, and everything else. On the platform he was using, there’s no way to bring it all together under one domain and allow for a multilingual setup.” From an SEO perspective, situations like these posed a logistical nightmare for the agency. Especially when one of the client’s three sites overtook the others in terms of search visibility; all the traffic started going to the client’s Canadian site, but because of more restrictions on the platform, the site could only handle transactions in Canadian currency. Every minute this problem persisted, the client was basically turning down American dollars. The solution Having successfully scaled and sold several agencies throughout his career, Rob was able to recognize that, in order to overcome these challenges, his team needed to work on a more resilient platform that offered his team more flexible design options. “ Wix is the one solution we found that was able to do everything we wanted with one flat fee,” he confirms. “ After learning about all the infrastructure advancements and the massive amount of investment Wix put into its SEO capabilities, I understood this was the platform that we needed to scale our agency. It’s a much cleaner solution which makes it way more time and cost effective than other CMSs.” And he was right—the intuitiveness of the Wix platform meant they no longer had to involve engineers in site builds, which ironically freed them up for more demanding technical tasks associated with other breakage-prone platforms. “We've actually taken a huge portion of the workload off our dev team because our designers can work within the Wix platform and pretty much do whatever they want without breaking anything,” he describes. “Plus, the search and content team can get pages laid out exactly the way they want from a UI perspective. That’s been a hugely positive step forward for us.” On the client front, Wix now allows them to build websites that support 180 languages under one domain—meaning no more awkward conversations about why clients’ pages are competing with each other in search. The Wix Multilingual feature gives Rob’s team the option of translating site pages manually or automatically, and most crucially of all, it gives them the flexibility to customize each language’s individual SEO settings. They can also now add a currency converter to their sites with the Wix drag and drop editor, giving visitors the peace of mind they need to make a purchase. The results Without the need for developer input on Wix site builds, the Creative Trnd team have been able to optimize their workflows in a way that benefits their clients’ pockets and their agency’s bottom line. They’re now making highly strategic decisions when it comes to the placement of their in-house resources, with the result that projects are getting completed in smaller timeframes and budgets. Added to that, Wix’s resilient infrastructure means the agency no longer has to spend time on site fixes, meaning they can allocate client retainers towards the SEO tasks that promise the most ROI. “Wix is going to be the foundation of how we grow our clients going forward,” Rob states. “We want to build for our clients on Wix and we want to do their SEO and marketing on Wix. Our business development team is doing a great job of showcasing what we’ve achieved and it’s going down really well with clients.” Another bonus for the agency is that messy client hand-overs have become a thing of the past. “Clients are way happier with the back-end of things and the management of their sites,” Rob says. “Wix is a far more intuitive system for them to learn. Since we started using it over a year ago, I haven’t seen a single WordPress or Shopify proposal go out. Everything is on Wix.” Discover how advanced SEO features on Wix give you the ability to work smarter and faster for your clients and explore our SEO Learning Hub for the latest insights from industry experts. Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Alan has been involved in search for over 30 years, and eCommerce for over 10 at eBay and Magento. As part of the Google Search Relations team, Alan focused on educating merchants to get the most out of Google Search with documentation and videos. Alan Kent Technology Leader and Advisor Alan has been involved in search for over 30 years, and eCommerce for over 10 at eBay and Magento. As part of the Google Search Relations team, Alan focused on educating merchants to get the most out of Google Search with documentation and videos. Articles & Resources 10 May 2023 How to measure eCommerce improvements for users 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

Wait, you should NOT take on every SEO client possible? Yep. Find out when does it and when does it not make sense to take on an SEO client. How do you determine if a client is the right fit for your services? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter take a look into how to decide which SEO clients to take on. CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, joins us to help you navigate varying approaches to taking on larger versus smaller clients. Plus, Foxwell Digital founder Andrew Foxwell discusses how qualifying leads will change in the future Dive into some of the common red flags to look out for when on the hunt for new SEO clients. Gear up for episode 73 and discover which clients you should and shouldn’t be taking on this week on the SERP’s up SEO Podcast! Back What SEO clients should you take on? Wait, you should NOT take on every SEO client possible? Yep. Find out when does it and when does it not make sense to take on an SEO client. How do you determine if a client is the right fit for your services? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter take a look into how to decide which SEO clients to take on. CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, joins us to help you navigate varying approaches to taking on larger versus smaller clients. Plus, Foxwell Digital founder Andrew Foxwell discusses how qualifying leads will change in the future Dive into some of the common red flags to look out for when on the hunt for new SEO clients. Gear up for episode 73 and discover which clients you should and shouldn’t be taking on this week on the SERP’s up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 73 | February 7, 2024 | 37 MIN 00:00 / 36:43 This week’s guests Sydni Craig-Hart Sydni Craig-Hart is CEO and Co-Founder of Smart Simple Marketing—the multi-award-winning, go-to firm that the biggest brands in Silicon Valley, the global tech world, and beyond turn to when they want to increase market share and drive engagement with diverse small businesses. Sydni is a 4th generation entrepreneur who has spent 17+ years working with over 11,000 small and diverse-owned businesses in 79 industries. Her goal since day one has been to help small business owners attract more clients and increase their revenue. The focus of her work involves working with innovative entrepreneurs to help create and execute a simple marketing strategy that supports a profitable, sustainable business. Be sure to connect with Sydni and ask about a copy of Smart Simple Marketing’s critical insights case study. Andrew Foxwell Andrew Foxwell is the co-founder of Foxwell Digital, a social media advisory firm focused on honesty and transparency through its membership offerings, online courses, account management, and consulting services. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha and mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast where we're putting together some groovy to insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of our SEO brand here at Wix Central. The amazon, the fabulous, the incredible, the unequivocal Head of Risk and Communications here at Wix. The one, the only Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: It is me. Hello, internet people. Welcome to our podcast on the internet. Mordy Oberstein: It's on the internet? That's so cool. Crystal Carter: Yes. It's coming through fiber optic things. Mordy Oberstein: It's in the computer? Crystal Carter: Yes, we are in the computer or the phone or possibly the... Mordy Oberstein: Tablet? Crystal Carter: Do people listen to podcasts in their... I mean, a Tesla is essentially a tablet on wheels basically, so if you're listening to us in your Tesla, give us a little boop, boop. Thanks. But yeah, welcome. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome. Welcome back to us. This is our first recording after the holiday season. Crystal Carter: This is the first one of 2024, the first recording of 2024. If you were listening to this in whatever month it comes out... Mordy Oberstein: Right. Who knows? Crystal Carter: Yeah. You'll know that we plan ahead in advance. We like to get ahead of ourselves. Mordy Oberstein: You got to plan. You got to produce it, you got to get guest clip. It's a lot that goes into it. Crystal Carter: Magic doesn't happen by itself. Mordy Oberstein: No. Even though if it could, that'd be amazing. Anyway, this SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Search Light, over at Wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also access a wide variety of SEO resources such as templates, checklists, and one-pagers that you can implement SEO the right way. Share them with designers, devs, et cetera, so that you can ensure you hand your clients the most well optimized site possible. Because this week, we're talking about SEO and clients and which SEO clients you should and shouldn't take. When it does and doesn't make sense to take on an SEO client, spoiler alert, if you're listening and you are that client, here's what your SEO agency is probably thinking about you. We're diving into how to best assess client fit, red flags to watch for, when should outsider considerations factor in to taking on a client and when they shouldn't. Also, big client, small client, does it matter? The CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, talks how to qualify all sorts of potential clients. We'll also hear from Foxwell Digital's founder, Andrew Foxwell, about how qualifying leads is set to change going forward. Plus, we have the snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So the next time a client says, "Take on me, take me on, I'll be gone in a day or two," you might say goodbye right now as episode number 73 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you have an aha moment about which clients to take on and which will be stumbling away. I went 80s. Crystal Carter: You did. You did. Mordy Oberstein: I love Aha. My kids like Aha. They have one song, to be honest with you. So when I say they like Aha, they like that one song. Crystal Carter: Right. I mean, I think that that song is also, so there's the high note on it and there's also the video. The video is very good. Mordy Oberstein: The high note is very high. Crystal Carter: The high note, it's very... Mordy Oberstein: It's very, very high. But by the way, if a client ever came over to me and started singing Take On Me as a way to get me, I would just 100%, "Fine. I'll add you to my queue because that's incredible." Anyway, we're talking about which clients should you take, should you not take, and I think it's a very tricky topic because this is sort of like gut instinct. Take everyone. Especially when you're getting started, you want to make sure that you're... Maybe you're not as well established as you'd like to be yet because you've just gotten started. So, yeah, take whoever. Crystal Carter: Right. People think that but it doesn't work that way. Mordy Oberstein: It doesn't work that way and I believe very, very quickly you'll realize that's not the approach. Crystal Carter: No, no. I think that people will often find this, they'll learn this the hard way. Unfortunately, sometimes clients don't pay, sometimes people ask you for blood from a stone, but without giving you appropriate things, sometimes people can give you a lot of stress over it. Don't get me wrong, there are wonderful, fantastic, incredible client relationships and things. But sometimes SEO's, agency folks will sometimes discuss red flags sometimes that come up when choosing which clients. So just looking around my network for instance, Anthony Barone, who is the managing director of Studio Hawk, we had him on the podcast previously. He posted recently about an issue with a client and one of the red flags that he saw was they had two stars out of 200 reviews on Google, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That's a great way to qualify that leave there. Crystal Carter: Right. They had 3.2 on Trustpilot, and this was one of the mistakes that he said, he didn't look at them, at the reputation of them before signing with the company. Sometimes that can be things from reviews or sometimes it can be from around the agency network. Have they worked with other agency owners that you know? Or have they worked with other freelancers that you know? Have they worked with a lot of freelancers or a lot of agencies within a shorter period of time? Because that can sometimes be a sign that the client isn't necessarily ready to have an agency or an account manager from an external party. That's something that can be really tricky. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it's not always like, oh, they're a bad client. To me, it's a lot of, they're not the right client for us or for me. I think a lot of it comes down to, I look at it almost as if it's a job application where you're trying to hire somebody. When you're taking on a client, you're in a way hiring somebody in a backwards way. You want to make sure that they align with what you're trying to achieve for yourself. There's many kinds of clients with many types of websites doing many different things. Is that what you do? It sounds like a silly fundamental, like obviously you need to ask that, but a lot of times we don't. I made that mistake a gazillion times. I have very limited bandwidth. I like to say yes. I like to help people and I like to say, "Yes, I will help you with your website." But a lot of times, this really isn't for me, it's not what I like to focus on. It's not what I specialize in, it's not what I'm interested in, it's not what I really excel at because I don't have the bandwidth in general. Why would I take this on? That was silly. So, really just fundamentally making sure what the client is, who they are, what they do, what their business is, and what they need in terms of SEO aligns to what you do. It's such a fundamental thing but it's such a big payoff. Or not payoff. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, precisely. No, precisely. If they're asking for the moon on a stick and you don't have that, then just don't get involved. Don't get involved. Mordy Oberstein: That's such a red flag. I will tell you a little trick that I do. You're having a conversation with the prospective client. You're going back and forth in emails. Don't reply a day or two and see what happens. Are they in your inbox again chirping, "Hey, just to follow up on our conversation," a day afterwards? That's a red flag to me. Crystal Carter: That's a red flag for you? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because that's a client I feel like who's going to be... Some days I get to my emails in the morning, sometimes I get to my emails in the evening, sometimes I don't get to my emails that day. 24-hour turnaround time is normal. I think that's a normal turnaround time. If they're in your inbox in a 24-hour period asking for a follow-up right away, so that's a red flag. Because once we get started with the work and you feel more entitled because now you're actually paying me, we've agreed on the account, whatever, this is not going to end well for me. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Here's another one that someone else was discussing. So, shout out to Aaron Redman Hawkins, who also works for another agency. He was saying that he was asking questions. The pitch was a big pitch, right? A six-figure pitch, but he was asking for questions and they got upset about the questions that he was asking. They were asking him like, "What's with all the probing questions?" they said. He says, "I was attempting to get a solid understanding of what the actual numbers were so I would have an accurate baseline to work from," and they didn't want to answer his questions. Mordy Oberstein: That's a red flag. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: It's an immediate red flag. Crystal Carter: He's like, "I need to know what I'm working with before I get involved," And that's something that's a red flag entirely, if people aren't able to answer your question. Either they don't know the answers, which is problematic because that means they don't know their business and therefore won't be able to recognize the value that you're giving to them, or they're hiding something which is worrisome. So, that's something to think about as well. That's pretty much the same with most relationships. If people don't want to answer questions or something, what's going on there? Mordy Oberstein: Right, it's like a relationship. You're getting involved in a relationship and in this case, and what makes it difficult is you want that other person to change. That's a very complicated, thinking about your personal life if, if men did that. But that's really what you're asking, because you're going to come in and you're going to make hopefully recommendations. Otherwise, what are you doing? If the other party is not receptive to changing, that's a problem and that's something you kind of need to figure out. I'll say, I used to do a lot of hiring for an old, old, old job I used to have. I don't know, it's like 20 years. I'm old at this point. I'm talking about my job I had 15 years ago. I used to interview a lot of people and I knew within five minutes whether or not this person was a good fit. Now, we can talk about their qualifications and were they qualified or not? I had a sense in five minutes this person is going to be difficult to work with or easy to work with. And if you're taking on a client, and if you are a prospective client listening to this podcast, be mindful that, yes, it might be hard to take the advice of the SEO, but it's in your best interest. If you're going to be difficult or not receptive to that change, that's a red flag to the agency, to the consultant, because they need your buy-in. You're a team and if you don't come off as being willing to make changes and being receptive to changes, it's not going to end well for anybody. Crystal Carter: Right, right. I think it's really important for people to realize that collaborative element, because you'll get better results when you work together. You'll get better results when you're collaborative, and I think that that's really important. Just shout out to Amelia Fowler, who is also a fantastic SEO, fantastic person. One of her red flags is people asking for guaranteed results. Yeah. Yeah. She's saying, "Nobody, no single agency or freelancer can guarantee results. They can benchmark, they can illustrate potential, they can do math and estimate, they can give you similar results from campaigns in the industry, but can you guarantee results? No." I've had people come to me and they're like, "Oh, we'll pay you after you get these results for us." Mordy Oberstein: Right. No. No. Crystal Carter: I'm like, "No. I'm not in charge of your sales funnel." We can get you traffic, we can get you increased rankings, we can do that sort of stuff. But what happens after the lead comes in is up to you and that's how you close the sale. I can't be held accountable for that. Mordy Oberstein: That. Not even that. I just tweeted about this the other day. When I say the other day, the other day of recordings. You got to go way back in the amount of nonsense I tweet out to find this tweet. But you're coming in as an SEO, and let's say you're working on A, B, and C. You're just getting started. A, B, and C. Up comes an algorithm update and because of X, Y, and Z, which you haven't even gotten to, may not even be your scope of work, the website now gets slaughtered in the rankings. If you're going to be getting paid based on rankings and organic traffic and whatever, there's so much that's not even in your scope of work, especially initially. Or that's in your control or in your hands or that you've even gotten to yet. You're just going to end up in an impossible situation for yourself, because the work that you were brought on to do, you did. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: It's not my fault that I didn't know or didn't get to yet, or wasn't even asked me about, or wasn't a part of the scope of work that you bought links 10 years ago from PBNs and Google finally realized, and now you're slaughtered in the rankings. Crystal Carter: Right. I think this is also one of the reasons why people should expect to be in SEO for a good amount of time. A lot of SEOs will say, "Give me six months. Give six months to do a good job." We could do some quick wins stuff in the first couple of months, and it's always good practice to do the quick wins quickly and things. If you see quick wins to do, sure, do them quickly and you can see. Move the needle a little bit and you can that show the value of your work fairly early on. But to get real results, to get real value, you should expect to see some of that coming through after a few months. A lot of SEOs will do that and it's good practice. If you get an SEO that tells you that, that's because it's good practice. I think that it can sometimes be a red flag if somebody wants something to happen straight away, particularly with SEO. Because there's so many moving parts, there's so many algorithms things. Like you're saying, SERP features, lots of different stuff can happen. So, if somebody's expecting you to be able to turn on the SEO tomorrow and for them to get buckets of sales and all that sort of stuff, that can be really, really tricky. So, I think that's something to be wary of. Mordy Oberstein: It speaks to bad expectations. The expectations are just completely unrealistic, unaligned, otherworldly. Crystal Carter: Right. Anu Adegbola, the founder of PPC Live, she's talked about that for PPC. That people looking for PPC results straight away and things like that can be a little bit of a tricky thing, particularly with regards to sales. I think that it can be something that can be tricky depending on what type of product it is and all of that sort of stuff. You can get great results from PPC of course, but people should be realistic about the timeline, should be realistic about their expectations around that. Especially with PPC with budget sometimes. I found that when I've worked on PPC, people are like, "Oh, I want to see all this sort of stuff," and I'm like, "Yo, your budget's too small to see that return. It's just too small." Mordy Oberstein: I want to spend $1 and get a million back. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I'm sorry, it's just not going to happen. I also want to shout out to Nick Leroy. Nick Leroy has a great video within the Wix. I think it's a Wix partners website. Mordy Oberstein: Partners, yeah. Crystal Carter: And so, there's a great YouTube video where he talks about qualifying clients and qualifying and that sort of stuff. He also has a great one about folks who are getting SEO and the red flags you should be thinking about if you're getting an SEO team involved. We also have an article in the SEO Hub about this as well, about how to find an SEO agency. But one of the things Nick Leroy talked about was who's fulfilling the SEO? So, one of the things that can be tricky sometimes is that sometimes SEOs will say, "Oh, I can do all this SEO," but you don't necessarily know who's actually going to implement it or who's actually going to do that work. So, it's worth having that discussion and understanding who's involved with that. Also, he talks about not being able to get references for them. Are they able to tell you who their previous clients are? Do they have good accolades, good reputation and good reputation with evidence? Also, one of the things that he points out is a high employee turnover. That's also a good one as well because it is true. If you're seeing agencies where people are constantly circulating through, that's not a great sign of cohesion in the business at the moment. Great agencies will have folks working there for years and that are contributing to it and helping the agency to build in terms of skills and also in terms of abilities. So, that's something to definitely think about as well. Mordy Oberstein: Fundamentally, you need to, both parties need to evaluate the relationship, boundaries need to be created, boundaries need to be respected by both parties. You don't want to be asking your SEO agency a gazillion questions a gazillion times a day. They shouldn't be sending you a million different things. Piecemeal, piecemeal, piecemeal, piecemeal. Boundaries, respect, expectations, alignment, all that needs to be considered if you're going to take a client on and if you're going to take an agency on or a consultant on. To help us qualify or better qualify taking on big clients and how they might differ from taking on smaller clients. We have the CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, to help us help you take on the right clients. Sydni Craig-Hart: One of the biggest differences between qualifying big clients versus small clients is that big clients often have more stakeholders involved in the decision-making process than small clients. For example, the person that you are speaking to, who is super excited to have met you, is really interested in your product or service and thinks you're so cool, may not actually be the final decision maker and may not be controlling the budget that will be needed to actually invest in what it is that you're offering. So it's really, really important that when you're having these conversations that you are digging in and understanding who are all of the people involved in making this decision? Who needs to sit at the table? Who needs to be involved in the conversation and what's their perspective? What's their role? What is their impact in this particular project or initiative? Because if you don't involve those folks in the conversation, you might find yourself in a situation where the person that you're speaking to is then left with the task of trying to sell you to the person who is actually making the decision. And in no circumstance is that individual going to be able to sell you as well as you will be able to sell yourself. Now, when you're selling to smaller clients, you don't really have this issue. Usually, the person you're speaking to is the decision maker. They are crystal clear on what they need, what their expectations are, what their budget is, and they can say yes or no pretty quickly to what it is that you are offering without jumping through any hoops or having to go through procurement or legal or what have you. They can just say yes and sign the contract and you can be on your way. But with larger clients, there's usually a lot of other departments and steps that are involved. It's just really, really critical that you're digging in and asking a lot of questions, still respectfully of the person that you are speaking to because you want to honor their role and their contribution to this process, but you really need to understand what their position is and are they the final decision maker. And find out is there someone else whose opinion you would value or is there someone else who's going to weigh in on this decision? Is there someone else's viewpoint that we need to consider? Who is finally going to make the decision about whether this is initiative you're going to move forward with? When you ask those kinds of questions, you understand are there more people that you need to be inviting to these conversations as you and this individual are discussing whether or not this is an opportunity that you're going to pursue. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much for that Sydni. Crystal, kind of your point there about bigger organizations have different people you don't know who you're working with and who's going to do what and what's going to happen on the client side also. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, I think you have some really great points there, particularly with larger clients. I think that what she talks about not expecting that the person that you're talking to is the last person that's going to see the document or your presentation or whatever. I think that is such an important tip and it's such an important part of leveling up. I had a great conversation with Sydni about how she went from working with smaller clients to working with people like Facebook and other folks like that and stuff. I think that understanding that if you're making a pitch deck for instance, it should include enough information for anyone in the organization to understand so that the person you're speaking to, for instance, can pass it on to the CEO, the CMO, the whoever, operations, whoever it is, and that they can understand it. That your website is accessible for all of that sort of stuff and has enough information on it to make sure that you look legit. That you look like you know what you're doing and that you're ready for the job. She's got some great insights on that and, yeah, I think it's a great advice. Mordy Oberstein: Now, we could talk about grabbing leads forever, and we can talk about grabbing lots and lots of leads and qualifying, taking as many as you possibly can, but it's one thing to take all the leads and qualify them. It's something else to understand how to qualify them the best way. To help us with this and to make sure that you're spending your precious time getting as much value out of qualifying leads as much as possible, we decided to go a little bit deep into the weeds in terms of qualifying leads with Foxwell Digital's founder, Andrew Foxwell. So, here's a look at how will qualifying leads change in the future. We actually asked Andrew that very question, how will qualifying leads change in the future? Here's what Andrew Foxwell had to say about how qualifying leads will change in the future. Take it away, Andrew. Andrew Foxwell: First of all, I guess I think qualifying leads isn't going to change at all. It's going to be totally, exactly the same forever. Obviously, I'm making that up. Qualifying leads as an agency, how is this going to change over time? I think that it's going to change over time by, number one, having probably more AI being part of the game. Right? Having more automation being part of the game, and people not being sure whether something is automated or real is likely going to be true I think as leads get qualified over time. I also think that going through and looking at the lead itself, and if you're really looking to qualify a lead, looking through and doing more research on that particular person is going to be more available. That's something that I think people have been doing a little bit more of. But if you're really qualifying lead, there's so much social media out there and where people are talking and presenting themselves. It's going to source all that together and allow you to see a more full picture of what's taking place with that person in their life and why they're submitting their information along to bring them through being an MQL as it stands. I think that would be a part of it, is knowing more about the person. I think the other thing that's probably going to change as it relates to qualifying leads over time in the future is really looking at that whole person. I think that if you really want to do lead qualification properly, you can do all this automation and fancy stuff, but in order to win, you need to make sure that you're understanding the stages that the person has gone through. You're understanding what they've clicked on in all your properties, what they've read and why. And you're going to want to bring to them a conversation with vulnerability of, "Hey, we noticed you were looking here and that might be a thing you're struggling with. Here's something that we think could help." Leading with that empathetic, less salesy tactic, but knowing that you are the person that can help solve their problem. You're a person that potentially can help solve the problem. So, I think those are probably the ways that things are going to change. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much for that, Andrew. Make sure we check out Andrew on social media. We'll link to his profile in the show notes. Of course, Sydni as well. Meant to mention that before. I love, by the way, he went from AI to, yeah, use automation, but where you're really going to win is actually digging deep. I meant to bring this up earlier of going and looking at the social media accounts and really understanding who that person is. Such a great point. Forget just taking on the client and qualifying them, but understanding what the best way to work with them might be. What kind of personality they are and maybe where have some common ground so you can work better with them once you do qualify the lead, get them on board and now actually have to work with them for the long term. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it's really important to know your clients. To actually know your clients. I used to spend a lot of time doing a lot of the what seems like nothing. The small talk stuff before the meeting starts where you say, "Oh, what'd you do this weekend?" and things like. All of that intel is really, really useful. Like, "Oh, well, you got any plans for the weekend or something?" "Oh yeah, I'm taking the kids." Note they have children. Right? "Oh, and I'm going to here and, oh, I just got back from this concert." Okay, they're a music person. There's things that are really, really useful for this. For one, for instance if they have kids, then you know that wherever you live, there's going to be school vacation time. Right? So chances are during school vacation, they're going to be less available or at least slightly less focused maybe than they will be during the other times. So, you should plan your stuff accordingly. Right? If they've got a particular interest with music or sports or something or other or things like that, that's really useful for the kinds of metaphors and things that you can use to help them to understand what you're talking about. Mordy Oberstein: Touchdown. Touchdown. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly. You can use things like that. Mordy Oberstein: A home run, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Right, just to make things more relatable to them and to build more trust with them. It's really, really useful. So, yeah. I think he discussed how things kind of change but they kind of stay the same. You still have to interact with people. Mordy Oberstein: People are people. That hasn't changed fundamentally ever. I don't know. I'm not a psychologist. Crystal Carter: Automation will help or whatever, but eventually you've got to get your hands dirty. You've got to get involved. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you got to really get to know them. Take them for a picnic. I don't know. Go for a long walk together or something. Crystal Carter: Break some bread. Have a drink. Whatever you need to do. Mordy Oberstein: Go on vacation together. Something that's not... Crystal Carter: We're not going on vacation together. Mordy Oberstein: I was like, when were you going to catch? I'm like, go for a picnic, go for a long walk. Crystal Carter: Look, who's clients are these? Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: My favorite clients. I take them on a picnic. We play softball. I will say that if you're qualifying based on social media, be careful or be cautious because who people are on social media, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, are not who they are in real life to a certain extent. Or it's like a caricature of that person. Like I'm very sarcastic on social media. I am sarcastic in general but I'm not that sarcastic. Crystal Carter: I mean, what? Mordy Oberstein: Well, all right. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: I might be a bad example. I might be a very bad example. Crystal Carter: But I think that there's definitely tools you can get. For instance, one tactic I've seen is that people will take LinkedIn posts, for instance, and they'll analyze them for tone of voice and style and things like that. You can also figure out that this person is not somebody that likes a very, very long email, for instance. If lots of their posts are fairly concise and things like that, of course cover the details and things, but maybe put them in bullet points. Maybe put them in a little list. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's a great tip right there. Crystal Carter: Things like that. If somebody's writing longer ones, then they're probably somebody who likes to have more detail, more nuance, more et cetera in the email, for instance. So, there are tools that you can use like AI tools and other tools that can help you to understand, for instance, more about your client even before you get involved with them. Mordy Oberstein: You know where you can learn a lot about someone? By reading their news articles each and every week. I really feel like you really get to know them intimately and who they are and what they're about. Whoever your favorite journalist is. Mine is Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: We do love Barry. Shout out to Barry. Mordy Oberstein: So with that introduction and, well, let's get to know Barry a little bit better now as we get into some Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Well, an old friend has gone away. No, not referring to Carl Weathers, though that is really sad. Although on the same time, there's a new Billy Joel song that's really happy, because I'm a massive Billy Joel fan. I am off track on this. We're talking about the cash link on the SERP. Per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, Google search officially retires cash links. So when you went to the SERP, you could see the cash version of the page where you could until now. Now it's gone. Is it a big deal? I don't know. I liked it. SEOs, we really liked it. I have used it a few times to look at what was going on on a page relatively recently. I've actually used it for some social media stuff before, to see how people related to their social media profiles. I found it really helpful at certain moments in time and I'm actually sad that it is gone. However, if you would like to see an old version of the page, you should check out the Wayback Machine. We'll link to that in the podcast show notes. We actually talked about it on a previous podcast episode. It's a great tool. Make sure to donate to it because they always need our support. Okay. Next up, this from next week's guest, a little sneak peek there, Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land, and Google Bard Ads Image Generation. It is what it says. Google Bard now can create images. I love it. It's really, really, really, really good. I've basically been using a combination of the Wix image AI Generator within the image upload tool and Bing's version of it. Bard is really good. I'm adding Bard to my little AI image repertoire. I love AI images. It's way easier looking for stock images. I think it's a great use of AI technology as opposed to just creating blog posts, which I am not a big fan of. So, Bard offering great images is great for the web in my opinion. Just to have a quick look, head over to Bard, generate whatever you want. It is really good. It does, interestingly, surprisingly to me, it will actually create images for entities like sports teams or sports stadiums or other sports stuff. Because I like sports. Besides Billy Joel, I like sports. You're really getting a little insight into what I prefer, but not that you actually care. But I was a little bit surprised that it does that. It won't do actual people. So for example, you could say, "Hey, create an image of the New York Yankees." But then if you said, "Hey, create an image of Lou Gehrig giving a speech at Yankee Stadium," it says, "No, I can't do that." If you try to fool into doing that, it knows what you're trying to do and it won't do it. So, check that out. It's really cool. I like it. Next up, also from Barry Schwartz but now we're moving on to SERoundtable.com, but we're not moving away from AI. It's Barry, right? Google Maps has AI-generated answers for local questions with local guides. I actually also love this. I'm somewhat of an AI curmudgeon, and this is two AI things that I really like. Okay, let me explain what this is before I get overly excited about it because I think it's really cool. So basically, you're on Google Maps and you want to, I don't know, I'll give you Google's example. They show a GIF and the article link to it in the show notes. You're looking for, I don't know, a restaurant or a cafe or whatever it is. You want a vintage vibe. So, you go into the AI little pop-up thing that a slider thing that it has there, and you say, "Hey, looking for a cafe with vintage vibe. Find me a place," and it shows you a bunch of places. "Find me a record store nearby," and that kind of thing. So, it's an interactive way of being able to move from one local query to the next local query and expand your local maps journey. The reason why I like this, I was just having this problem the other day. It's my anniversary coming up soon. Wow, you're really getting a look into my life with this little news segment here. I was looking for a cafe. The cafe that my wife wanted to go to does not have great desserts, but I really wanted dessert. So I'm like, "Okay, show me a cafe." I went to Google, I found the cafe that she wanted, and I went to look for a dessert place and it was really annoying because when you look for the dessert place, you lose the pin. So now, how far away is the dessert place from the cafe? I don't know. It got really confusing and really annoying. But if you can use an AI assistant within Google Maps and say, "Okay, show me cafe whatever it is on the map. Great. Now, show me a great dessert place that serves fudge, whatever, whatever, within a two-minute walk." That would be really, really helpful and really, really useful. So I think with Maps, the way that Maps works, it can be very, very difficult to go from one search to the next search while keeping the context of the original search. If this SGE kind of experiment that Google is showing within the local maps can help solve that problem, that is a great place. A fabulous place to use that sort of SGE-ish experience within the Google results. With that, and now knowing about all of my life and life preferences, that is this week's Snappy News. The best part wasn't the news. The best part was getting to know Barry better and doing the news. Crystal Carter: Precisely, and I hope that wherever he is, whether it's sunny or not sunny, that he's enjoying himself. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: I hope he's having so much fun. Mordy Oberstein: And enjoying a nice butter sandwich. Which brings us to our follow of the week. What the butter sandwich has to do with the follow of the week, I don't know, but we're just going to run with it. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Our follow of the week this week is Chase Freezman, who maybe he enjoys a good butter sandwich. Chase, do you? Let us know on social media. Chase is a fabulous person. He's a great SEO, worked at Seer. You could follow him on, which is a great SEO agency by the way, Digital Marketing Agency, you can follow him on X@ChaseFreezman, that's F-R-E-E-Z-M-A-N. Of course, we'll link to Chase in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's a great SEO. Super friendly, super nice and super clever. So yeah, do follow him to find out lots more great information and also what's happening at Seer. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and ask him. Maybe he likes butter sandwiches. Crystal Carter: Does he ever run with a butter sandwich? This is the question. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Well, you would run and... Would you just be running and holding it or running and eating the butter sandwich? Crystal Carter: I've definitely walked around eating a butter sandwich. Well, I'm not sure if I've eaten a butter sandwich. I think I just had bread with butter on it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Right, right. I know. Who makes a sandwich out of it? I'll be honest with you, I don't really know the last time I've ever ate butter and bread. It's got to be years. Crystal Carter: I like carbs. Mordy Oberstein: You like the butter and the bread? Crystal Carter: So, I will regularly. I mean, if it's good bread, I don't need anything else. Mordy Oberstein: Right. No, it's true. No, I enjoy it. I love bread and butter. I just don't think I've sat down and ate bread and butter in the years. Is that weird? Crystal Carter: You've never been to Olive Garden? Cheesecake Factory? Mordy Oberstein: It's not Kosher. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Okay. I see. Mordy Oberstein: No, but first off, okay, yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: We could go to my whole history of eating and bread and butter and restaurant visits and so forth. Crystal Carter: You don't have it all with butter? Is that not... Do you do that? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, people do. My kids, my 12-year-old twins, I have 12-year-old twins, loves bread and butter. He makes a little toast, he puts the butter on. I don't. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm almost surprised at myself. Crystal Carter: You should get involved. Crystal Carter: You should get involved with it. Gary loves it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. He loves chunks, rips the bread right up, makes a mean butter sandwich. But you know what it's like now? You ever, you think about yourself and you're really like, "Wow, what a blind spot I've had"? Crystal Carter: Yeah, man. Mordy Oberstein: What a blind spot. I've never had bread and butter for years? I feel disappointed in myself. Crystal Carter: This is the real deep thought. Mordy Oberstein: This is the real deep thought. Crystal Carter: What have I been doing with my life? It's like, yeah ... Mordy Oberstein: What have I been eating? What's wrong with me? Crystal Carter: Who am I? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know who I am anymore. Wow. I have to go make a butter sandwich now. With that, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into Google's Gemini and what it means possibly, maybe, who knows, for SEO. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on our SEO Learning Hub over at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Sydni Craig-Hart Andrew Foxwell Chase Freezman Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Smart Simple Marketing Foxwell Digital Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) News: Google Search officially retires cache link Google Bard adds image generation Google Maps Tests AI Generated Answers For Local Questions With Local Guides Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Sydni Craig-Hart Andrew Foxwell Chase Freezman Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Smart Simple Marketing Foxwell Digital Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) News: Google Search officially retires cache link Google Bard adds image generation Google Maps Tests AI Generated Answers For Local Questions With Local Guides Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha and mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast where we're putting together some groovy to insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of our SEO brand here at Wix Central. The amazon, the fabulous, the incredible, the unequivocal Head of Risk and Communications here at Wix. The one, the only Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: It is me. Hello, internet people. Welcome to our podcast on the internet. Mordy Oberstein: It's on the internet? That's so cool. Crystal Carter: Yes. It's coming through fiber optic things. Mordy Oberstein: It's in the computer? Crystal Carter: Yes, we are in the computer or the phone or possibly the... Mordy Oberstein: Tablet? Crystal Carter: Do people listen to podcasts in their... I mean, a Tesla is essentially a tablet on wheels basically, so if you're listening to us in your Tesla, give us a little boop, boop. Thanks. But yeah, welcome. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome. Welcome back to us. This is our first recording after the holiday season. Crystal Carter: This is the first one of 2024, the first recording of 2024. If you were listening to this in whatever month it comes out... Mordy Oberstein: Right. Who knows? Crystal Carter: Yeah. You'll know that we plan ahead in advance. We like to get ahead of ourselves. Mordy Oberstein: You got to plan. You got to produce it, you got to get guest clip. It's a lot that goes into it. Crystal Carter: Magic doesn't happen by itself. Mordy Oberstein: No. Even though if it could, that'd be amazing. Anyway, this SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Search Light, over at Wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also access a wide variety of SEO resources such as templates, checklists, and one-pagers that you can implement SEO the right way. Share them with designers, devs, et cetera, so that you can ensure you hand your clients the most well optimized site possible. Because this week, we're talking about SEO and clients and which SEO clients you should and shouldn't take. When it does and doesn't make sense to take on an SEO client, spoiler alert, if you're listening and you are that client, here's what your SEO agency is probably thinking about you. We're diving into how to best assess client fit, red flags to watch for, when should outsider considerations factor in to taking on a client and when they shouldn't. Also, big client, small client, does it matter? The CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, talks how to qualify all sorts of potential clients. We'll also hear from Foxwell Digital's founder, Andrew Foxwell, about how qualifying leads is set to change going forward. Plus, we have the snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So the next time a client says, "Take on me, take me on, I'll be gone in a day or two," you might say goodbye right now as episode number 73 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you have an aha moment about which clients to take on and which will be stumbling away. I went 80s. Crystal Carter: You did. You did. Mordy Oberstein: I love Aha. My kids like Aha. They have one song, to be honest with you. So when I say they like Aha, they like that one song. Crystal Carter: Right. I mean, I think that that song is also, so there's the high note on it and there's also the video. The video is very good. Mordy Oberstein: The high note is very high. Crystal Carter: The high note, it's very... Mordy Oberstein: It's very, very high. But by the way, if a client ever came over to me and started singing Take On Me as a way to get me, I would just 100%, "Fine. I'll add you to my queue because that's incredible." Anyway, we're talking about which clients should you take, should you not take, and I think it's a very tricky topic because this is sort of like gut instinct. Take everyone. Especially when you're getting started, you want to make sure that you're... Maybe you're not as well established as you'd like to be yet because you've just gotten started. So, yeah, take whoever. Crystal Carter: Right. People think that but it doesn't work that way. Mordy Oberstein: It doesn't work that way and I believe very, very quickly you'll realize that's not the approach. Crystal Carter: No, no. I think that people will often find this, they'll learn this the hard way. Unfortunately, sometimes clients don't pay, sometimes people ask you for blood from a stone, but without giving you appropriate things, sometimes people can give you a lot of stress over it. Don't get me wrong, there are wonderful, fantastic, incredible client relationships and things. But sometimes SEO's, agency folks will sometimes discuss red flags sometimes that come up when choosing which clients. So just looking around my network for instance, Anthony Barone, who is the managing director of Studio Hawk, we had him on the podcast previously. He posted recently about an issue with a client and one of the red flags that he saw was they had two stars out of 200 reviews on Google, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That's a great way to qualify that leave there. Crystal Carter: Right. They had 3.2 on Trustpilot, and this was one of the mistakes that he said, he didn't look at them, at the reputation of them before signing with the company. Sometimes that can be things from reviews or sometimes it can be from around the agency network. Have they worked with other agency owners that you know? Or have they worked with other freelancers that you know? Have they worked with a lot of freelancers or a lot of agencies within a shorter period of time? Because that can sometimes be a sign that the client isn't necessarily ready to have an agency or an account manager from an external party. That's something that can be really tricky. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it's not always like, oh, they're a bad client. To me, it's a lot of, they're not the right client for us or for me. I think a lot of it comes down to, I look at it almost as if it's a job application where you're trying to hire somebody. When you're taking on a client, you're in a way hiring somebody in a backwards way. You want to make sure that they align with what you're trying to achieve for yourself. There's many kinds of clients with many types of websites doing many different things. Is that what you do? It sounds like a silly fundamental, like obviously you need to ask that, but a lot of times we don't. I made that mistake a gazillion times. I have very limited bandwidth. I like to say yes. I like to help people and I like to say, "Yes, I will help you with your website." But a lot of times, this really isn't for me, it's not what I like to focus on. It's not what I specialize in, it's not what I'm interested in, it's not what I really excel at because I don't have the bandwidth in general. Why would I take this on? That was silly. So, really just fundamentally making sure what the client is, who they are, what they do, what their business is, and what they need in terms of SEO aligns to what you do. It's such a fundamental thing but it's such a big payoff. Or not payoff. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, precisely. No, precisely. If they're asking for the moon on a stick and you don't have that, then just don't get involved. Don't get involved. Mordy Oberstein: That's such a red flag. I will tell you a little trick that I do. You're having a conversation with the prospective client. You're going back and forth in emails. Don't reply a day or two and see what happens. Are they in your inbox again chirping, "Hey, just to follow up on our conversation," a day afterwards? That's a red flag to me. Crystal Carter: That's a red flag for you? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because that's a client I feel like who's going to be... Some days I get to my emails in the morning, sometimes I get to my emails in the evening, sometimes I don't get to my emails that day. 24-hour turnaround time is normal. I think that's a normal turnaround time. If they're in your inbox in a 24-hour period asking for a follow-up right away, so that's a red flag. Because once we get started with the work and you feel more entitled because now you're actually paying me, we've agreed on the account, whatever, this is not going to end well for me. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Here's another one that someone else was discussing. So, shout out to Aaron Redman Hawkins, who also works for another agency. He was saying that he was asking questions. The pitch was a big pitch, right? A six-figure pitch, but he was asking for questions and they got upset about the questions that he was asking. They were asking him like, "What's with all the probing questions?" they said. He says, "I was attempting to get a solid understanding of what the actual numbers were so I would have an accurate baseline to work from," and they didn't want to answer his questions. Mordy Oberstein: That's a red flag. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: It's an immediate red flag. Crystal Carter: He's like, "I need to know what I'm working with before I get involved," And that's something that's a red flag entirely, if people aren't able to answer your question. Either they don't know the answers, which is problematic because that means they don't know their business and therefore won't be able to recognize the value that you're giving to them, or they're hiding something which is worrisome. So, that's something to think about as well. That's pretty much the same with most relationships. If people don't want to answer questions or something, what's going on there? Mordy Oberstein: Right, it's like a relationship. You're getting involved in a relationship and in this case, and what makes it difficult is you want that other person to change. That's a very complicated, thinking about your personal life if, if men did that. But that's really what you're asking, because you're going to come in and you're going to make hopefully recommendations. Otherwise, what are you doing? If the other party is not receptive to changing, that's a problem and that's something you kind of need to figure out. I'll say, I used to do a lot of hiring for an old, old, old job I used to have. I don't know, it's like 20 years. I'm old at this point. I'm talking about my job I had 15 years ago. I used to interview a lot of people and I knew within five minutes whether or not this person was a good fit. Now, we can talk about their qualifications and were they qualified or not? I had a sense in five minutes this person is going to be difficult to work with or easy to work with. And if you're taking on a client, and if you are a prospective client listening to this podcast, be mindful that, yes, it might be hard to take the advice of the SEO, but it's in your best interest. If you're going to be difficult or not receptive to that change, that's a red flag to the agency, to the consultant, because they need your buy-in. You're a team and if you don't come off as being willing to make changes and being receptive to changes, it's not going to end well for anybody. Crystal Carter: Right, right. I think it's really important for people to realize that collaborative element, because you'll get better results when you work together. You'll get better results when you're collaborative, and I think that that's really important. Just shout out to Amelia Fowler, who is also a fantastic SEO, fantastic person. One of her red flags is people asking for guaranteed results. Yeah. Yeah. She's saying, "Nobody, no single agency or freelancer can guarantee results. They can benchmark, they can illustrate potential, they can do math and estimate, they can give you similar results from campaigns in the industry, but can you guarantee results? No." I've had people come to me and they're like, "Oh, we'll pay you after you get these results for us." Mordy Oberstein: Right. No. No. Crystal Carter: I'm like, "No. I'm not in charge of your sales funnel." We can get you traffic, we can get you increased rankings, we can do that sort of stuff. But what happens after the lead comes in is up to you and that's how you close the sale. I can't be held accountable for that. Mordy Oberstein: That. Not even that. I just tweeted about this the other day. When I say the other day, the other day of recordings. You got to go way back in the amount of nonsense I tweet out to find this tweet. But you're coming in as an SEO, and let's say you're working on A, B, and C. You're just getting started. A, B, and C. Up comes an algorithm update and because of X, Y, and Z, which you haven't even gotten to, may not even be your scope of work, the website now gets slaughtered in the rankings. If you're going to be getting paid based on rankings and organic traffic and whatever, there's so much that's not even in your scope of work, especially initially. Or that's in your control or in your hands or that you've even gotten to yet. You're just going to end up in an impossible situation for yourself, because the work that you were brought on to do, you did. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: It's not my fault that I didn't know or didn't get to yet, or wasn't even asked me about, or wasn't a part of the scope of work that you bought links 10 years ago from PBNs and Google finally realized, and now you're slaughtered in the rankings. Crystal Carter: Right. I think this is also one of the reasons why people should expect to be in SEO for a good amount of time. A lot of SEOs will say, "Give me six months. Give six months to do a good job." We could do some quick wins stuff in the first couple of months, and it's always good practice to do the quick wins quickly and things. If you see quick wins to do, sure, do them quickly and you can see. Move the needle a little bit and you can that show the value of your work fairly early on. But to get real results, to get real value, you should expect to see some of that coming through after a few months. A lot of SEOs will do that and it's good practice. If you get an SEO that tells you that, that's because it's good practice. I think that it can sometimes be a red flag if somebody wants something to happen straight away, particularly with SEO. Because there's so many moving parts, there's so many algorithms things. Like you're saying, SERP features, lots of different stuff can happen. So, if somebody's expecting you to be able to turn on the SEO tomorrow and for them to get buckets of sales and all that sort of stuff, that can be really, really tricky. So, I think that's something to be wary of. Mordy Oberstein: It speaks to bad expectations. The expectations are just completely unrealistic, unaligned, otherworldly. Crystal Carter: Right. Anu Adegbola, the founder of PPC Live, she's talked about that for PPC. That people looking for PPC results straight away and things like that can be a little bit of a tricky thing, particularly with regards to sales. I think that it can be something that can be tricky depending on what type of product it is and all of that sort of stuff. You can get great results from PPC of course, but people should be realistic about the timeline, should be realistic about their expectations around that. Especially with PPC with budget sometimes. I found that when I've worked on PPC, people are like, "Oh, I want to see all this sort of stuff," and I'm like, "Yo, your budget's too small to see that return. It's just too small." Mordy Oberstein: I want to spend $1 and get a million back. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I'm sorry, it's just not going to happen. I also want to shout out to Nick Leroy. Nick Leroy has a great video within the Wix. I think it's a Wix partners website. Mordy Oberstein: Partners, yeah. Crystal Carter: And so, there's a great YouTube video where he talks about qualifying clients and qualifying and that sort of stuff. He also has a great one about folks who are getting SEO and the red flags you should be thinking about if you're getting an SEO team involved. We also have an article in the SEO Hub about this as well, about how to find an SEO agency. But one of the things Nick Leroy talked about was who's fulfilling the SEO? So, one of the things that can be tricky sometimes is that sometimes SEOs will say, "Oh, I can do all this SEO," but you don't necessarily know who's actually going to implement it or who's actually going to do that work. So, it's worth having that discussion and understanding who's involved with that. Also, he talks about not being able to get references for them. Are they able to tell you who their previous clients are? Do they have good accolades, good reputation and good reputation with evidence? Also, one of the things that he points out is a high employee turnover. That's also a good one as well because it is true. If you're seeing agencies where people are constantly circulating through, that's not a great sign of cohesion in the business at the moment. Great agencies will have folks working there for years and that are contributing to it and helping the agency to build in terms of skills and also in terms of abilities. So, that's something to definitely think about as well. Mordy Oberstein: Fundamentally, you need to, both parties need to evaluate the relationship, boundaries need to be created, boundaries need to be respected by both parties. You don't want to be asking your SEO agency a gazillion questions a gazillion times a day. They shouldn't be sending you a million different things. Piecemeal, piecemeal, piecemeal, piecemeal. Boundaries, respect, expectations, alignment, all that needs to be considered if you're going to take a client on and if you're going to take an agency on or a consultant on. To help us qualify or better qualify taking on big clients and how they might differ from taking on smaller clients. We have the CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, to help us help you take on the right clients. Sydni Craig-Hart: One of the biggest differences between qualifying big clients versus small clients is that big clients often have more stakeholders involved in the decision-making process than small clients. For example, the person that you are speaking to, who is super excited to have met you, is really interested in your product or service and thinks you're so cool, may not actually be the final decision maker and may not be controlling the budget that will be needed to actually invest in what it is that you're offering. So it's really, really important that when you're having these conversations that you are digging in and understanding who are all of the people involved in making this decision? Who needs to sit at the table? Who needs to be involved in the conversation and what's their perspective? What's their role? What is their impact in this particular project or initiative? Because if you don't involve those folks in the conversation, you might find yourself in a situation where the person that you're speaking to is then left with the task of trying to sell you to the person who is actually making the decision. And in no circumstance is that individual going to be able to sell you as well as you will be able to sell yourself. Now, when you're selling to smaller clients, you don't really have this issue. Usually, the person you're speaking to is the decision maker. They are crystal clear on what they need, what their expectations are, what their budget is, and they can say yes or no pretty quickly to what it is that you are offering without jumping through any hoops or having to go through procurement or legal or what have you. They can just say yes and sign the contract and you can be on your way. But with larger clients, there's usually a lot of other departments and steps that are involved. It's just really, really critical that you're digging in and asking a lot of questions, still respectfully of the person that you are speaking to because you want to honor their role and their contribution to this process, but you really need to understand what their position is and are they the final decision maker. And find out is there someone else whose opinion you would value or is there someone else who's going to weigh in on this decision? Is there someone else's viewpoint that we need to consider? Who is finally going to make the decision about whether this is initiative you're going to move forward with? When you ask those kinds of questions, you understand are there more people that you need to be inviting to these conversations as you and this individual are discussing whether or not this is an opportunity that you're going to pursue. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much for that Sydni. Crystal, kind of your point there about bigger organizations have different people you don't know who you're working with and who's going to do what and what's going to happen on the client side also. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, I think you have some really great points there, particularly with larger clients. I think that what she talks about not expecting that the person that you're talking to is the last person that's going to see the document or your presentation or whatever. I think that is such an important tip and it's such an important part of leveling up. I had a great conversation with Sydni about how she went from working with smaller clients to working with people like Facebook and other folks like that and stuff. I think that understanding that if you're making a pitch deck for instance, it should include enough information for anyone in the organization to understand so that the person you're speaking to, for instance, can pass it on to the CEO, the CMO, the whoever, operations, whoever it is, and that they can understand it. That your website is accessible for all of that sort of stuff and has enough information on it to make sure that you look legit. That you look like you know what you're doing and that you're ready for the job. She's got some great insights on that and, yeah, I think it's a great advice. Mordy Oberstein: Now, we could talk about grabbing leads forever, and we can talk about grabbing lots and lots of leads and qualifying, taking as many as you possibly can, but it's one thing to take all the leads and qualify them. It's something else to understand how to qualify them the best way. To help us with this and to make sure that you're spending your precious time getting as much value out of qualifying leads as much as possible, we decided to go a little bit deep into the weeds in terms of qualifying leads with Foxwell Digital's founder, Andrew Foxwell. So, here's a look at how will qualifying leads change in the future. We actually asked Andrew that very question, how will qualifying leads change in the future? Here's what Andrew Foxwell had to say about how qualifying leads will change in the future. Take it away, Andrew. Andrew Foxwell: First of all, I guess I think qualifying leads isn't going to change at all. It's going to be totally, exactly the same forever. Obviously, I'm making that up. Qualifying leads as an agency, how is this going to change over time? I think that it's going to change over time by, number one, having probably more AI being part of the game. Right? Having more automation being part of the game, and people not being sure whether something is automated or real is likely going to be true I think as leads get qualified over time. I also think that going through and looking at the lead itself, and if you're really looking to qualify a lead, looking through and doing more research on that particular person is going to be more available. That's something that I think people have been doing a little bit more of. But if you're really qualifying lead, there's so much social media out there and where people are talking and presenting themselves. It's going to source all that together and allow you to see a more full picture of what's taking place with that person in their life and why they're submitting their information along to bring them through being an MQL as it stands. I think that would be a part of it, is knowing more about the person. I think the other thing that's probably going to change as it relates to qualifying leads over time in the future is really looking at that whole person. I think that if you really want to do lead qualification properly, you can do all this automation and fancy stuff, but in order to win, you need to make sure that you're understanding the stages that the person has gone through. You're understanding what they've clicked on in all your properties, what they've read and why. And you're going to want to bring to them a conversation with vulnerability of, "Hey, we noticed you were looking here and that might be a thing you're struggling with. Here's something that we think could help." Leading with that empathetic, less salesy tactic, but knowing that you are the person that can help solve their problem. You're a person that potentially can help solve the problem. So, I think those are probably the ways that things are going to change. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much for that, Andrew. Make sure we check out Andrew on social media. We'll link to his profile in the show notes. Of course, Sydni as well. Meant to mention that before. I love, by the way, he went from AI to, yeah, use automation, but where you're really going to win is actually digging deep. I meant to bring this up earlier of going and looking at the social media accounts and really understanding who that person is. Such a great point. Forget just taking on the client and qualifying them, but understanding what the best way to work with them might be. What kind of personality they are and maybe where have some common ground so you can work better with them once you do qualify the lead, get them on board and now actually have to work with them for the long term. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it's really important to know your clients. To actually know your clients. I used to spend a lot of time doing a lot of the what seems like nothing. The small talk stuff before the meeting starts where you say, "Oh, what'd you do this weekend?" and things like. All of that intel is really, really useful. Like, "Oh, well, you got any plans for the weekend or something?" "Oh yeah, I'm taking the kids." Note they have children. Right? "Oh, and I'm going to here and, oh, I just got back from this concert." Okay, they're a music person. There's things that are really, really useful for this. For one, for instance if they have kids, then you know that wherever you live, there's going to be school vacation time. Right? So chances are during school vacation, they're going to be less available or at least slightly less focused maybe than they will be during the other times. So, you should plan your stuff accordingly. Right? If they've got a particular interest with music or sports or something or other or things like that, that's really useful for the kinds of metaphors and things that you can use to help them to understand what you're talking about. Mordy Oberstein: Touchdown. Touchdown. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly. You can use things like that. Mordy Oberstein: A home run, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Right, just to make things more relatable to them and to build more trust with them. It's really, really useful. So, yeah. I think he discussed how things kind of change but they kind of stay the same. You still have to interact with people. Mordy Oberstein: People are people. That hasn't changed fundamentally ever. I don't know. I'm not a psychologist. Crystal Carter: Automation will help or whatever, but eventually you've got to get your hands dirty. You've got to get involved. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you got to really get to know them. Take them for a picnic. I don't know. Go for a long walk together or something. Crystal Carter: Break some bread. Have a drink. Whatever you need to do. Mordy Oberstein: Go on vacation together. Something that's not... Crystal Carter: We're not going on vacation together. Mordy Oberstein: I was like, when were you going to catch? I'm like, go for a picnic, go for a long walk. Crystal Carter: Look, who's clients are these? Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: My favorite clients. I take them on a picnic. We play softball. I will say that if you're qualifying based on social media, be careful or be cautious because who people are on social media, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, are not who they are in real life to a certain extent. Or it's like a caricature of that person. Like I'm very sarcastic on social media. I am sarcastic in general but I'm not that sarcastic. Crystal Carter: I mean, what? Mordy Oberstein: Well, all right. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: I might be a bad example. I might be a very bad example. Crystal Carter: But I think that there's definitely tools you can get. For instance, one tactic I've seen is that people will take LinkedIn posts, for instance, and they'll analyze them for tone of voice and style and things like that. You can also figure out that this person is not somebody that likes a very, very long email, for instance. If lots of their posts are fairly concise and things like that, of course cover the details and things, but maybe put them in bullet points. Maybe put them in a little list. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's a great tip right there. Crystal Carter: Things like that. If somebody's writing longer ones, then they're probably somebody who likes to have more detail, more nuance, more et cetera in the email, for instance. So, there are tools that you can use like AI tools and other tools that can help you to understand, for instance, more about your client even before you get involved with them. Mordy Oberstein: You know where you can learn a lot about someone? By reading their news articles each and every week. I really feel like you really get to know them intimately and who they are and what they're about. Whoever your favorite journalist is. Mine is Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: We do love Barry. Shout out to Barry. Mordy Oberstein: So with that introduction and, well, let's get to know Barry a little bit better now as we get into some Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Well, an old friend has gone away. No, not referring to Carl Weathers, though that is really sad. Although on the same time, there's a new Billy Joel song that's really happy, because I'm a massive Billy Joel fan. I am off track on this. We're talking about the cash link on the SERP. Per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, Google search officially retires cash links. So when you went to the SERP, you could see the cash version of the page where you could until now. Now it's gone. Is it a big deal? I don't know. I liked it. SEOs, we really liked it. I have used it a few times to look at what was going on on a page relatively recently. I've actually used it for some social media stuff before, to see how people related to their social media profiles. I found it really helpful at certain moments in time and I'm actually sad that it is gone. However, if you would like to see an old version of the page, you should check out the Wayback Machine. We'll link to that in the podcast show notes. We actually talked about it on a previous podcast episode. It's a great tool. Make sure to donate to it because they always need our support. Okay. Next up, this from next week's guest, a little sneak peek there, Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land, and Google Bard Ads Image Generation. It is what it says. Google Bard now can create images. I love it. It's really, really, really, really good. I've basically been using a combination of the Wix image AI Generator within the image upload tool and Bing's version of it. Bard is really good. I'm adding Bard to my little AI image repertoire. I love AI images. It's way easier looking for stock images. I think it's a great use of AI technology as opposed to just creating blog posts, which I am not a big fan of. So, Bard offering great images is great for the web in my opinion. Just to have a quick look, head over to Bard, generate whatever you want. It is really good. It does, interestingly, surprisingly to me, it will actually create images for entities like sports teams or sports stadiums or other sports stuff. Because I like sports. Besides Billy Joel, I like sports. You're really getting a little insight into what I prefer, but not that you actually care. But I was a little bit surprised that it does that. It won't do actual people. So for example, you could say, "Hey, create an image of the New York Yankees." But then if you said, "Hey, create an image of Lou Gehrig giving a speech at Yankee Stadium," it says, "No, I can't do that." If you try to fool into doing that, it knows what you're trying to do and it won't do it. So, check that out. It's really cool. I like it. Next up, also from Barry Schwartz but now we're moving on to SERoundtable.com, but we're not moving away from AI. It's Barry, right? Google Maps has AI-generated answers for local questions with local guides. I actually also love this. I'm somewhat of an AI curmudgeon, and this is two AI things that I really like. Okay, let me explain what this is before I get overly excited about it because I think it's really cool. So basically, you're on Google Maps and you want to, I don't know, I'll give you Google's example. They show a GIF and the article link to it in the show notes. You're looking for, I don't know, a restaurant or a cafe or whatever it is. You want a vintage vibe. So, you go into the AI little pop-up thing that a slider thing that it has there, and you say, "Hey, looking for a cafe with vintage vibe. Find me a place," and it shows you a bunch of places. "Find me a record store nearby," and that kind of thing. So, it's an interactive way of being able to move from one local query to the next local query and expand your local maps journey. The reason why I like this, I was just having this problem the other day. It's my anniversary coming up soon. Wow, you're really getting a look into my life with this little news segment here. I was looking for a cafe. The cafe that my wife wanted to go to does not have great desserts, but I really wanted dessert. So I'm like, "Okay, show me a cafe." I went to Google, I found the cafe that she wanted, and I went to look for a dessert place and it was really annoying because when you look for the dessert place, you lose the pin. So now, how far away is the dessert place from the cafe? I don't know. It got really confusing and really annoying. But if you can use an AI assistant within Google Maps and say, "Okay, show me cafe whatever it is on the map. Great. Now, show me a great dessert place that serves fudge, whatever, whatever, within a two-minute walk." That would be really, really helpful and really, really useful. So I think with Maps, the way that Maps works, it can be very, very difficult to go from one search to the next search while keeping the context of the original search. If this SGE kind of experiment that Google is showing within the local maps can help solve that problem, that is a great place. A fabulous place to use that sort of SGE-ish experience within the Google results. With that, and now knowing about all of my life and life preferences, that is this week's Snappy News. The best part wasn't the news. The best part was getting to know Barry better and doing the news. Crystal Carter: Precisely, and I hope that wherever he is, whether it's sunny or not sunny, that he's enjoying himself. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: I hope he's having so much fun. Mordy Oberstein: And enjoying a nice butter sandwich. Which brings us to our follow of the week. What the butter sandwich has to do with the follow of the week, I don't know, but we're just going to run with it. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Our follow of the week this week is Chase Freezman, who maybe he enjoys a good butter sandwich. Chase, do you? Let us know on social media. Chase is a fabulous person. He's a great SEO, worked at Seer. You could follow him on, which is a great SEO agency by the way, Digital Marketing Agency, you can follow him on X@ChaseFreezman, that's F-R-E-E-Z-M-A-N. Of course, we'll link to Chase in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's a great SEO. Super friendly, super nice and super clever. So yeah, do follow him to find out lots more great information and also what's happening at Seer. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and ask him. Maybe he likes butter sandwiches. Crystal Carter: Does he ever run with a butter sandwich? This is the question. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Well, you would run and... Would you just be running and holding it or running and eating the butter sandwich? Crystal Carter: I've definitely walked around eating a butter sandwich. Well, I'm not sure if I've eaten a butter sandwich. I think I just had bread with butter on it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Right, right. I know. Who makes a sandwich out of it? I'll be honest with you, I don't really know the last time I've ever ate butter and bread. It's got to be years. Crystal Carter: I like carbs. Mordy Oberstein: You like the butter and the bread? Crystal Carter: So, I will regularly. I mean, if it's good bread, I don't need anything else. Mordy Oberstein: Right. No, it's true. No, I enjoy it. I love bread and butter. I just don't think I've sat down and ate bread and butter in the years. Is that weird? Crystal Carter: You've never been to Olive Garden? Cheesecake Factory? Mordy Oberstein: It's not Kosher. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Okay. I see. Mordy Oberstein: No, but first off, okay, yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: We could go to my whole history of eating and bread and butter and restaurant visits and so forth. Crystal Carter: You don't have it all with butter? Is that not... Do you do that? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, people do. My kids, my 12-year-old twins, I have 12-year-old twins, loves bread and butter. He makes a little toast, he puts the butter on. I don't. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm almost surprised at myself. Crystal Carter: You should get involved. Crystal Carter: You should get involved with it. Gary loves it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. He loves chunks, rips the bread right up, makes a mean butter sandwich. But you know what it's like now? You ever, you think about yourself and you're really like, "Wow, what a blind spot I've had"? Crystal Carter: Yeah, man. Mordy Oberstein: What a blind spot. I've never had bread and butter for years? I feel disappointed in myself. Crystal Carter: This is the real deep thought. Mordy Oberstein: This is the real deep thought. Crystal Carter: What have I been doing with my life? It's like, yeah ... Mordy Oberstein: What have I been eating? What's wrong with me? Crystal Carter: Who am I? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know who I am anymore. Wow. I have to go make a butter sandwich now. With that, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into Google's Gemini and what it means possibly, maybe, who knows, for SEO. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on our SEO Learning Hub over at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Are Google’s algorithm updates disrupting your digital marketing zen? The days of a stable algorithms (Google and beyond) may be gone. So what is the path forward to “escape Algo-traz,” and why is going beyond the algorithm the growing focus of more and more marketers? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter cover the current algorithm landscape with Jake Hundley, founder of Evergrow Marketing. Join them as they dive into the unpredictable nature of today’s digital ecosystem so you know how to stay ahead without solely relying on social and search algorithms. Get insight into future trends to look toward, such as LLM search engines, and walk away with audience engagement strategies to win the day! Step out of the algorithmic box on this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Back Is it time to leave algorithms behind? Are Google’s algorithm updates disrupting your digital marketing zen? The days of a stable algorithms (Google and beyond) may be gone. So what is the path forward to “escape Algo-traz,” and why is going beyond the algorithm the growing focus of more and more marketers? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter cover the current algorithm landscape with Jake Hundley, founder of Evergrow Marketing. Join them as they dive into the unpredictable nature of today’s digital ecosystem so you know how to stay ahead without solely relying on social and search algorithms. Get insight into future trends to look toward, such as LLM search engines, and walk away with audience engagement strategies to win the day! Step out of the algorithmic box on this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 111 | November 20, 2024 | 47 MIN 00:00 / 47:33 This week’s guests Jake Hundley Jake Hundley is the founder and co-owner of Evergrow Marketing, a digital marketing agency that focuses on the lawn care and landscaping industry. His background and strengths lie primarily in digital strategy, PPC, and SEO, specifically local SEO. Jake is also the co-host of the Agency Growth Podcast, a podcast for agency owners of all sizes and industries. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We've got some groovy to 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 very autonomous, do not tell me what I have to do, I will set my own future, the destiny is in my own hands, Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: All my ladies independent. Throw your hands up with me. Yeah. Independently of yourself, even though I just told you what to do. No, I'm kidding. No. Yes. Yeah, I agree. Mordy Oberstein: Independence is- Crystal Carter: I do what I want. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, when I want to, except when I'm dealing with my kids and I end up doing most of what they want to. Crystal Carter: What they want. Mordy Oberstein: Yo. Crystal Carter: But ideally doing what they want, whilst I also have the option of going to the spa. Somebody was like, "How do I go on vacation with kids?" I'm like, "You go to a place that's a resort for families that also has a spa, that has a daycare and a spa." They have like, "Oh, we're doing activities. We're doing singalong. We're doing archery." They can do archery for an hour. You can go to the sauna. Mordy Oberstein: Either that or you can literally leave your kids in front of a screen for a week, go and come back, and they'll still be sitting there like zombies, as if nothing happened. They may have defecated themselves, or they may have gone to the bathroom. That depends on the child. Crystal Carter: Good thing this isn't a parenting podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, but literally we went out last night. I have two older ones who can babysit the two younger ones, but the two younger ones are a handful. So here, you can watch a movie while we go out. One of them fell asleep. The other one was... We came back two hours later, three hours later, his eyes are red and he's just sitting there like a zombie. But we got out for sushi, so hey, that'll work. Crystal Carter: Yeah. This is how we are on a plane. We don't do a lot of screen time, but if we're on a plane and we're flying long haul, guess what? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, watch all you want. Go ahead, watch whatever you want. Crystal Carter: Guess what, it is what it is. Do what you need to do, fam. There's nothing else to do. Mordy Oberstein: Funny story, the last time I was on a plane with my little kids, they were really young and they were watching Batman and Ninja Turtles and they got introduced the idea of a butler because Alfred's a butler, but they thought it was an insult because it's a butt-ler. So they were for a good year calling each other butlers as an insult. Crystal Carter: Have you introduced them to Beavis and Butthead yet? Mordy Oberstein: I would. My wife's like, "Maybe that's not the best idea." It really formed my childhood, which explains a few things, but we're trying something more wholesome with my kids. Crystal Carter: Right. Okay. I can see that. That makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: Less damage, more on the wholesome side. That's the game plan. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio as we awkwardly transition, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search later over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also have multiple tools to help you build up your email lists, including an inbuilt email marketing platform as well as a tie-in to MailChimp and apps from Constant Contact and others. This, as we cover making the great escape from the clutches of the algorithms and moving your marketing towards freedom. Why going beyond the algorithm has come into focus. Why going algorithm-free is the way to be, and how to get beyond the algorithms, and why it's more than just email lists. To help us jump the algorithmic fence, CEO of Evergrow Marketing and co-host of the Agency Growth podcast, Jake Hundley is set to join us in just a jiffy. Plus we'll dive into the insane levels of rank volatility on the SERP and what it means for digital marketers of all kinds. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So grab your metal spoons and start digging and get ready to swim because tonight we make our great escape from the Rock, known as Alcatraz, on the 111th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. The Rock. Crystal Carter: That is a classic, classic film. Mordy Oberstein: Classic film. Crystal Carter: There's probably bits of it that are not brilliant in terms of today's modern things, but at the time I definitely enjoyed it. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's a classic movie. And Sean Connery, we spoke about this. I don't remember where it was we spoke about it, but he's always the same. Sean Connery. Crystal Carter: Sean Connery. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we spoke about it on another podcast. One Ping Only, if you remember. Again, this is the same dude, he's just Sean Connery. Crystal Carter: He's Sean Connery. There's no volatility in the delivery of the Sean Connery. He just shows up, he Sean Conneries, and he leaves. That's it. That that's all you need. Very consistent. Mordy Oberstein: That's kind of the issue. That's kind of the issue because like it or not, we're a bit beholden to algorithms, if you're in the SEO space you know this already, because all we talk about is the algorithm all the time, but it applies everywhere. If you're in the SEO space, there are other algorithms like social media. Each one of those platforms is a different algorithm. There's algorithms for paid ads by Greg Finn and all sorts of other algorithms and like a perfect storm, they've all become unstable all at once, amazingly. Crystal Carter: Yeah, completely. And I mean, to be honest, I know that, I don't want to sound like I told you so, but I remember calling this when they started talking about mum and when they started talking about all of that stuff, I remember thinking we're going to see loads and loads more volatility because they've got all these different machine learning systems that they're trying to run at the same time. And basically they're all learning, they're all doing different things, and they need to test every single one of them. And basically it's like they need data so they have to run them and we just have to hope that we don't get caught in the crossfire on some occasions. And so that I think is what's happening on Google at the moment where we're seeing lots and lots of machine learning running in tangent and they tell us this. They're like, "We're running the spam update at the same time as we're running the core update, as we're running the product update, as we're running all of these different things." They're running them all at the same time. If you're trying to talk to clients or you're trying to figure out what's going on between, it's very difficult to pick the things apart because it's not like this is an update, mark this date, and then afterwards it's changed. It's much more complex now. Mordy Oberstein: And first off, good call, first off because clearly you were correct. And then snap, snap, snap, snap, snap fingers, and then social, obviously, with the whole X thing. That became interesting. And then there was Threads and that was interesting. And then LinkedIn has been interesting. Facebook for a long time has been garbage. They said, "Yeah, we're killing organic," years ago. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, it's been- Mordy Oberstein: That's always been a problem. I don't know about TikTok because I don't do that, but all of the platforms have been just complicated. It's all been algorithmically complicated as of late, and it's created this conversation. I can't tell you how many people I've seen now versus, I don't know, six months ago even saying, "All right, everybody, get off the algorithm train and build up your email marketing list and do this and do that because don't be beholden to the algorithm." That chatter has been noticeable. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. I think on the other side, I've also seen people that are actively marketing themselves as algorithm marketing teams like that we will help you- Mordy Oberstein: Gurus? Algorithm gurus? Crystal Carter: Well, no, agencies. Agencies that actively say we do algorithm marketing, we'll help you to understand the algorithm marketing. And I think that what's interesting in terms of SEO is that SEO's algorithm or Google's algorithm has historically been more stable than some of the social media algorithms. I remember when we were able to get organic traffic on Facebook, I remember those times. I know I'm dating myself. Mordy Oberstein: It's been 84 years. Crystal Carter: Right? I know. So I remember those days and I remember when people would have thousands of followers and then they'd post something and they'd get some traction on the things. And nowadays if you don't boost the posts then you don't get any traction. And Google on the other hand was more stable as a platform. It was one of the reasons why I gravitated towards SEO. I was on a podcast recently and somebody said, "Why did you choose SEO over other marketing channels?" And the reason why I said was because the algorithm was more stable. You could do more things and see the activity over time. But I think that that's shifting and I think that we are seeing those conversations where you have to think about your content in a different way. Not everything's going to make a big splash in terms of search. And some things are for customer value, some things are for keeping people in your platform. Sometimes you write a piece of content so that you don't have to link out to an external partner, but so that you can link to yourself and keep your customers within your ecosystem. And that might not necessarily get a lot of search traffic, but it will add value to your clients. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. We are getting to an era where it's just more strategic. I literally posted a day before recording this, it's a picture of me sticking my tongue out going thh and the image says, "My feelings on the idea that every campaign has to make a big splash." What I'm saying is like whomp, whomp, no, please stop. It's ridiculous. Especially now because of the algorithms. Let's dive into a little bit more on what's going on within the algorithms and why we should be making a switch is CEO of Evergrow Marketing and co-host of the Agency Growth podcast, Jake Hundley sat down to talk with us. Welcome to the show, Jake. How's it going? Jake Hundley: Good, thanks Mordy. Thanks for having me on the show. Mordy Oberstein: Can I tell you a little fun fact? Jake Hundley: I would love to hear it. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. But I don't want to offend you at the same time, so I'm feeling a little apprehensive. Jake Hundley: You won't offend me. Mordy Oberstein: All right, so I'm going to offend myself, because I'm dating myself with this. Every time I see your name, Jake Hundley. There used to be a catcher for the Met in the early '90s named Todd Hundley. And my immediate association is his baseball card, every time I see your name pop up. Jake Hundley: I've seen.. Everybody Googles themselves, or maybe it's just me. Mordy Oberstein: Multiple times a day. Jake Hundley: Yeah, right. The only other Jake Hundleys that I see, I see other Jake Hundleys out there. And there was a baseball player literally named Jake Hundley also. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? Jake Hundley: Yeah, then I think there was a football player named Jake Hundley as well. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that sucks. You'll never get that knowledge panel now. Jake Hundley: We'll see about that, right? Because the one thing that I am that they aren't is an SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, and by the way, you search for Jake Hundley, you're everywhere. There is nobody else. Jake Hundley: That's good. That's what I've been trying for. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Poor baseball player didn't stand a damn chance. Jake Hundley: Not against this guy from Iowa. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. Okay, so ironically, we're looking at the SERP and talking about ranking at least for your name, which requires an algorithm. But today we're talking about getting beyond algorithms and it's become become a thing. I noticed it on LinkedIn and people are talking about it. We're talking about it here, people talking about it there. Get beyond the algorithms, let's orient the audience. How did we get here? Because we used to be all about algorithms. Jake Hundley: I think it just became an oversaturation of just people buying into the algorithm. So whether it's Google, whether it's Facebook or YouTube or anything like that, everything is fed off of some algorithm. But if everybody treats it like a checklist and it becomes easy to exploit, or not necessarily easy to exploit, but everybody tries to exploit it in some way, everyone's going to be doing it. Which means now the algorithms have to continually update and try to figure out what do people actually want to see? And that's always what they've been from the beginning of any kind of search algorithm or any kind of social media algorithm. And so I think the biggest thing that Google looks for is there's two main things. Is the page that a user is looking for answering their question or getting them what they want the fastest, because that's ultimately what they're in business for. And then two, is it authentic? And I think the more people hyper fix it on algorithms, the less authentic they become. And that's why you need to shift away from those overly analyzed algorithmic checklists. Mordy Oberstein: Which is interesting because as you're trying to do that, which is what you should be doing, focusing on your audience, the algorithm itself has been wonky. I think there's been a lot of criticism. I think a lot of it is legitimate, and a lot of it is the entire internet has changed and Google's got to figure it all out. So combining the fact that something is broken somewhere somehow in some kind of way, shape, or form, and the whole content world is changing, the algorithm is wonky. So you're trying to do that and now the algorithm is wonky and it feels like, well, this is not good. Jake Hundley: And everyone wants to blame algorithm updates for their site tanking. Really every time I see it, I mean tons of SEO groups on Facebook and every time I see it, it's like, "How do you recover from the recent helpful content update?" And I'm like, "Well, you could have provided helpful content in the first place." Mordy Oberstein: That's the fine line between this thing. So there are legitimate businesses who have been hit, and I know Google's having a creator summit. I don't when this episode is going live, it may have already happened by then, but Google had recently announced that maybe like a day or two before this recording, "We're going to sit down, Danny Sullivan and the engineers, we're all going to sit down, we're all going to talk about why your sites are not doing well because it seems like they should be." And Danny even said when he got interviewed by Barry Schwartz over at SE Roundtable, "Hey, we do recognize that some of these sites should see more improvements and we hope they'll see more improvements going forward." My question is, if you know they should get improvements, why aren't they seeing improvements? But leaving that aside for a minute, there are legitimate reasons or legitimate complaints, but at the same time, a lot of the people who were complaining, I remember one person was complaining, "My site got hit, I got a niche site and blah blah blah," and I went to the website. I'm like, "There's ads everywhere." Everywhere. Jake Hundley: I do believe there's some validity in actual legitimate sites being hit that shouldn't have been. And this is all speculation, but I do think that perhaps the algorithm might've been a little bit more primitive in its update to where it really did go after the illegitimate websites that just didn't have a good user experience. But as a consequence, there were some, I guess if you're looking at the diagram, like mutual connections between those sites and maybe some of the better sites. Mordy Oberstein: I have this wild theory, I have no proof about this whatsoever, but I feel like from some of the things that Danny Sullivan said when he got interviewed by Barry, it seems like they have a certain direction they want to take the algorithm in and that contradicts rewarding some of these other sites at the same time and they have to somehow figure that out. But that's just me speculating. I want to add another layer in on all this. The Google algorithm is one thing. At the same time as all of these issues around the algorithm, we can talk about AIO reviews, we can talk about Reddit on the SERP, we can talk about rank instability. I think we just saw some rush data Barry posted the longest set of rank volatility, high rank volatility ever recorded, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. Which obviously instability means it's just difficult and now what do you do? But at the same time, social algorithms have been a mess. Jake Hundley: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So it's been compounded. Jake Hundley: Part of me thinks that... I think the impetus of all this was like ChatGPT and generative AI. It just seems like when that came out, everything went crazy. And you can say that Google had flip-flopping statements on whether or not that they liked AI-generated content or whether they were okay with it as long as it was helpful. But the fact is that regardless of it's helpful or not, the amount of it that's getting pushed out is just absolutely insane. And that doesn't just affect Google, that also affects social networks. So I think everybody is trying to combat not the fact that it's AI content, but the fact that it's the quantity of content that's being pushed out and trying to decide what they want to show users. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really good point. And it's because it's been so weird and has, I feel like social kind of goes through waves. Twitter was a mess. Twitter I feel still is a mess. LinkedIn was great for a while and then LinkedIn became weird. Threads was great for a little bit, and then Threads became weird. When everybody's shifting around from platform to platform, and I think a lot of that's what's happening. I agree, there's so much content going on and they just don't know what to do with it. Or, I think also part of the LinkedIn thing is they knew people were leaving Twitter, they started rewarding you with insane levels of engagement and then once they got you, they tapered that off also. So that's also a conspiracy theory, I don't know if that's true or not. Jake Hundley: I can't remember who posted it, but someone said something about they posted this really long LinkedIn post and they're like, "If you are an AI commenter, comment something." And then it was just the post just filled up with spambots and it was like you could literally see in real time how many AI bots are on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's amazing. It's unbelievable. So it's why I feel like, yes, you should be doing SEO. Yes, you should be on social media. You kind of have no choice, I got a little bit of a hot take. So people will be saying, "Okay, build up your email list. That'll get you off of the algorithmic drug. You can control your own narrative, you can control your own audience," and I'm all for that. But my issue with that is yes, but to do that you have to promote yourself when you're somehow most likely going to need an algorithm to do that, to build up that list. Jake Hundley: Yeah, I used to work very heavy in first party data with media companies and I think the reasoning would be that it's easier to get somebody on an email list because it's a low ask. So if you promote to get people on your email list versus promote to actually make a sale, then you can build up that audience that's bigger and then retarget that audience for either upsells or create lookalike audiences off of those. And so I think there's some validity to building your email list up and building your first-party data, especially in an age where not only are we dealing with all this generative AI content within the algorithm, but also the lack of third-party cookie tracking. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. No, I am all for building up your email list. I think it's a great strategy. I am very much like you should never have put all your eggs in one basket, which, let's say, SEO. Putting your eggs in the algorithm, where there's all the algorithms, is your eggs in one basket kind of thing. And you should definitely build up that direct consumer list, email marketings, whatever it is. But I feel like you need to go one step beyond that. You need to really start creating momentum for yourself. You have to build up that brand, you have to create relationships, you have to create momentum and cadence and potential opportunities and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And some of that will be doing things on social. I think a lot of generating that momentum that will bring in people to sign up for your email list, is partnering with other people, collaborating, going to events, creating those relationships builds momentum and that gets spread across the internet. And that's how you can bring in people to your email list and then have your own audience and do your thing and not worry about the algorithms as much. But I don't think you can just focus on, I will build up my email marketing list. That's an actual activity, that I think is more of a result, in my opinion. Jake Hundley: Yeah, 100%. It goes in line with a lot of what you've been saying on this podcast, which is just building up the brand. It does kind of feel like SERPs are rewarding brand queries now, but not just brand queries, brands with more branded queries. This is something that we tested with our podcast. It wasn't necessarily a test. So our agency is Evergrow Marketing, and we started our podcast called Everbros Agency Growth Podcast. I for one, actually hate that name. It just reminds me of the bropreneur kind of thing, but it's a play on word. And I actually decided to keep it on there because when I mentioned something about the podcast or whatever, I would say, "Yeah, it's on the Everbros Agency Growth podcast episode," whatever. And I wouldn't link to it. One, because everybody generally agrees that social media platforms don't like links, so I won't paste the link, I'll just force people to Google it. And that Everbros part of it was like the brand anchor to the query that I actually wanted to rank, which was Agency Growth podcast. And then eventually it got to a point where I had so many branded queries that if you just drop the Everbros and just look up Agency Growth podcast, we're number one for that. There are multiple agency podcasts, but this is the methodology behind what I'm thinking, which is try to get a search where you can append the query you want with the brand name and then you attack it from both angles. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's funny because now that the whole brand thing is coming to the SEO equation. It started really with the leaks talking about mentions and now, okay, now I need to get those branded searches. There's a whole patent about that also. So get people to search for me, mention my brand, and align with my product or align with the service and create that semantic connection, now Google will understand this, so now brand comes into focus. I'm like, that's been true forever. This is not new. It's been true for the longest time, like you thought what? It's only until recently Google was looking at Nike and seeing how many times people were searching the word Nike and I don't know, shoes. Jake Hundley: I think it just became a saturation issue. I think before Google or search engines in general gave... I think the philosophy behind it was giving the smaller brands power to outrank if they had "better content." But then it's like, well, when everybody has the same generative AI content, then you have to default to something else. So maybe speculation again, but maybe brand has always played a role, but now it's even more so important because generative AI can't produce a brand that everybody knows and loves. Mordy Oberstein: Well, that's true for sure in terms of, just... Forget the algorithm for a second. This is true in terms of human receptability and if you don't have a brand, then you're now there's so much content, it all sounds the same. It all looks the same, it all adds the same tone to it. Look at any SaaS platform, it all sounds the same, it all looks the same kind of thing. You need to differentiate brand just for your audience. And if it works for an algorithm, added bonus. Jake Hundley: Yeah, for sure. And we do the same thing with our websites. It's always like, people are always saying what are the... They're trying to look for the highest volume keywords that are relatively related to the service with low competition. And I never hear about people wanting to focus on the more impactful business keywords. Just because that one has a high volume and low competition, doesn't necessarily mean that's the one that you want to go after, because it might have low ROI and it might not be the intent where people want it to be. And I think that's true in a lot of cases, especially with having that brand, making sure that you're capitalizing on people knowing your brand and coming to your site. Mordy Oberstein: Where do you think this all ends off, a year or five years from now? Whatever it is. Because right now, again, there's so much chat about don't get stuck on the algorithm, especially the Google algorithm. It's a total mess right now. Find other ways to reach your audiences that are not based on an algorithm, which I completely agree with, but where do we end up? Do we end up in five years from now where SEO is our... We are really branching out and doing more brand activity, momentum building, more traditional marketing, or is this a blip on the radar, or a moment in time? And in a year from now, we're back on the algorithmic crack, so to speak? Jake Hundley: I've thought about this a little bit. I think it's cyclical. So I think what's going to happen, and I could be totally wrong, I could be the worst predictor in the world, but I think there's going to be fragmented search engines where they're more niche and there already are, right? There's Yelp and Houzz and Angie's and things like that. But I think the adoption of those from a user base is going to become more and more prevalent as Google just gets more muddied up and exploring AI overviews. And not that those are necessarily bad, but I just think it's going to get more and more complicated and saturated that people are going to start switching and moving over towards those kind of niche search engines. Mordy Oberstein: That's like one of the... Like before, if you would've asked me five years ago, are we seeing the death of Google, or are we seeing Google really... Because Google's so hyperbolic. Are we seeing Google really lose its luster? I would've said, nah, whatever. But now when you ask me that question, I take that question really seriously and I answer to that, I don't know, maybe. Maybe? Especially if the DOJ does what it wants to do. Jake Hundley: I think a lot of the studies that I see where it's like so many people are using AI search engines now, Perplexity and things, I can't help but feel like they're over-reported, just subjectively speaking of people in my own life. And I think that eventually, again, it'll be cyclical. So I do think that maybe these fragmented niche search engines will take off and have their peak, but I think ultimately it'll come back to just everybody going into a general search engine again. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it'll be interesting. Honestly, my take is, I kind of feel like, I'm trying to think of a good example of this where something like catastrophic happens or you know what? You go to a restaurant, your favorite restaurant, you've been there a thousand times, you go one time and your stomach is completely demolished. You'll go back, because you've been there a thousand times, it was your favorite restaurant forever, but it's never going to be the same kind of thing. I feel like, and maybe I'm wrong, I feel like we'll go back to Google, but it's never going to be the same. And I think people will be less interested, or less reliant on focusing on algorithms and they're going to try to do things to keep that marketing autonomy for themselves, which they haven't done in the past because of this moment in time. Jake Hundley: I think there's a lot of- Mordy Oberstein: Which I could be wrong. Jake Hundley: I think there's a lot of things going on in the Google ecosphere. It's multilayered. You have a lot of advertisers, you have stuff with the DOJ where now that's coming out where it's like the auction really isn't an actual auction. And you have advertisers with rising CPCs and CPAs and they're out looking for alternative platforms, our agency included. And ultimately Google, they want to provide the best search experience for users, but they also need to make revenue, which they do off of ads. And there's been a bigger push on Google's end to, I think, cut agencies out of the picture, especially with Performance Max and Smart Bidding and even local service ads, even with their huge push to broad match keywords. And it just feels like they're trying to oversimplify it. And then I just read a study, or I don't know if it was a study, but I think it was Search Engine Land or Search Engine Journal, talking about how Google's push to Performance Max and broad match keywords is really causing prices to increase even on branded terms. And so I feel like as Google wants to cut agencies out, more agencies are going to look for alternative search engines to put their money in. And I don't really know what that's going to do to Google's revenue market share unless they can really get a stakehold on the local business. But then you have platforms like Yelp who are actually going after agencies to get individual businesses back onto the platform. Mordy Oberstein: It's crazy what's going on. It's like everything is like, I wouldn't call it mess, not what we do on this podcast, but it is kind of a mess. Jake Hundley: Yeah, yeah, it's very messy out there in the search engine world right now. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, man. On that happy note, where can people find you? Jake Hundley: Well, you can find me... Well, apparently, if you Google me, you can find me everywhere. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. You won't get a baseball and/or a football player. So, that's saying a lot. Jake Hundley: Well, it depends on the algorithm though, the time of the day. You can find me on LinkedIn, just Jake Hundley, you can also find, I have all the links to all my socials at our podcast, at the Agency Growth podcast or Everbros Agency Growth podcast, however you want to call it. And yeah, I'm all over social. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing, Jake, thanks so much for coming on. Check out Jake's podcast and links to his profiles in the show notes. Thanks again for coming on and being part of the show. Jake Hundley: Thanks, Mordy, it was a good time. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure you follow Jake, make sure you follow his podcast. Again, a really interesting conversation about how the SEO algorithm, the Google algorithm in particular, rather, has been complicated. Why maybe it still makes, maybe it will make a comeback as being a stable thing. Maybe it won't. Again, I don't know. I feel like the Google algorithm is the seminal algorithm. It's like the algorithm and there've been a lot of issues lately, a lot of issues between marketers and algorithms. And the conversation's really gotten... It's really hit the mother of all algorithms lately, the Google algorithm, which again is perceived as the most complex algorithm out there. But there's been a lot of instability as we hinted at, as I've talked about a bit with Jake. But maybe let's explore that a little bit more in depth. Because I feel like an algorithm like the Google algorithm deserves a little bit more attention. So let's explore that instability on a little segment we call Going... Going... Google. And it's Going... Going... Google, it's out of here. So a little summary of where we stand with the instability. There was a bunch of core updates that didn't do exactly what I think Google wanted them to do because they integrated the helpful content update into the core or they didn't integrate it into the core, they integrated helpfulness into the core and got rid of the helpful content update. There's been a bunch of Reddit on the server. There's the AI overviews, and with the last update, the August 2024 update, there was just endless volatility. And what made that one interesting, I think we talked about it on the show before, there was tons of volatility beforehand. Then comes the August update, then they announced it's finished, and then there's still an insane level of volatility. According to Semrush, as covered by Barry Schwartz, it is the longest set of volatility their tools recorded ever, which is insane. But it also impacts... Usually, okay, fine, you have the sites that were impacted negatively, positively by the core update and once that's done, they're good. But they weren't, and they haven't been. So nothing's good. Nothing is good. Doom and gloom. Crystal Carter: I think to quote Tom Capper, who's somebody who studies these things as well, he was like, "When does volatility just become the norm?" If it is the case that it's always volatile, then you just have to expect that, expect the unexpected. And I think that as you're planning out your content, again, I think that it should be a question of thinking about content, not for the question of gaining clicks, but once you get the clicks, how can you retain those users? How can you retain those relationships? How can you continue to build on the relationship so that that's an opportunity to engage with users, yes, on search. So they might discover you on search. How can you maintain that cohort? And I think that that's interesting that with the GA4, you start seeing cohort data. So you can say everybody who... Let's say you launched a campaign. Let's say you launched, I don't know, hypothetically like an SEO course with 10 different courses with some fantastic incredible instructors like say on the Wix Studio Academy, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: With like Aleyda Solis and Andrew Optimsey and Debbie Chu and Judith Lewis and so forth? Crystal Carter: Yeah, just for instance. Mordy Oberstein: For instance. Crystal Carter: So let's say you launched a course like that, then you can track the people who came to your website from the day of the launch and you can see what part of the website they continued through, how many of them were new, how they're engaging with you. You can also think about email capture and stuff so that you can engage with these folks for a longer period of time and things like that. And I think that's really important that it's not just clicks, it's not just traffic. So in the early days of SEO, we didn't have a lot of these funnel tools. So everybody didn't have mailing lists, didn't have social media in the same way. So a lot of times the conversations all have been clicks from the algorithm, clicks from Google, clicks from wherever. But we have so many more ways to engage with clients, with customers, with folks. That that absolutely has to be core to your SEO strategy of how the SEO is the hook for getting a connection with people and how you build on that connection because that makes you less beholden and less vulnerable to algorithm changes because you are using the traffic that you initially got to build on a relationship for the long term that is outside of the algorithm. Mordy Oberstein: And that's what I was talking about with Jake. There's so much that goes into doing that and you're almost forced to do that now. You're almost forced to think about audience and you're almost forced to think about, how do you build up that momentum, partnering with others, doing live events, like getting out there and being seen and getting shared because you're seen. It is something that you have to think about now. And if the SEO comes into it, and you get great, and if the social media works out, great, all that's great, but that's not where you start. And it's because, I hate to say it this way, there's nothing else to do. I mean, think about it for a second. It used to feel like an SEO, you knew where the volatility was and you knew what was going to happen, what was going on. Lily Ray was talking about it. Glenn Gabe was talking about the same thing. Marie Haines was talking, and they all had a very unified theme. And I'm not saying that they don't anymore, they still do, I think. But now you have other voices coming and saying, "No, I'm seeing this and I'm seeing that and this is not what I'm seeing," and there's too much chirping and... Let me put this differently. There's a lot of chirping, not too much. There's a lot of chirping from a lot of different directions and it's hard to make sense of what's what and what's actually happening. So what are you supposed to do? And then on top of that, it's impossible to analyze any of the updates anymore because forget the volatility before and forget the volatility afterwards, like we saw with the August update. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Like you mentioned before, they're rolling out a spam update at the same time as they're rolling out this update. Then they do the same, they got that update, how are you supposed to pull that apart? Crystal Carter: Right. Too many variables. Mordy Oberstein: Too many variables. Crystal Carter: And also, we talk about the Google algorithm, but there's so many different algorithms within the algorithm. You've got a great article- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah, algorithming the algorithms. Crystal Carter: So you've got a great article on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, What is a Google Algorithm? And then you also have a separate one that's What's a Google Algorithm Update, and those documents- Mordy Oberstein: Well, no, I had an article that somebody who shall remain nameless split up very well into two articles, restructured for me, and almost helped me redo both of them so that they can be on the Hub. Her name rhymes with Bistle. Bistle Barter. Crystal Carter: Anyway, they're great pieces of content. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, they are. Crystal Carter: And- Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Crystal Carter: They're great pieces of content. And one of the things that's important to think about is, for instance, people working in the local space, they are significantly impacted. They're not outside of the main algorithms, but they're significantly impacted by the local pack and the way that that algorithm works and that information there. People who are working with e-commerce, they're going to be more impacted by the reviews update and how that review system works in the spam and those sorts of elements as well. So while it is important to see general trends that you might hear from across the community, you also have to be really tapped into which parts of the algorithm affect you most and which are affecting you most consistently. And I think that when you look at some of the tools, like you mentioned the Semrush Sensor, Moz has a great tool, Algoranker, various different things. We also have another article that lists all of the tools that list what's going on. And when you look at those tools, they split them out by vertical, for instance. So news will be impacted and health will be impacted. Mordy Oberstein: Right, news is always incredibly volatile because everything's changing day by day. And that's been as normal-ish. Crystal Carter: Yeah, exactly. So you need to tap in too and understand which ones work for you. Google has some good documentation about which algorithms and which ranking systems they have. It's worth spending time on that if you're finding that your rankings are going up and down a lot. And it's also we're thinking about where you can try to find some consistency amongst all of this. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And there's dueling algorithms like Glenn Gabe's talked a lot about that. I think that within the core algorithm itself, there's jostling for position or impact that happens. Which is why I think you have statements from Danny Sullivan saying, "Yeah, I'm really looking forward to these smaller websites, seeing some more improvement coming in the future," but why isn't it there now? Because there's competing things that are prioritizing, other things that are not prioritizing those websites at the moment. So it's complicated. It's complicated. You know what's also complicated? I find very complicated, not very straightforward, really a complicated person. Barry Schwartz. Layers, like an onion. Crystal Carter: I feel like Barry is one of the least complicated people I know. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry, that's what I meant. Crystal Carter: I'm sure that there's many, many layers, but in terms of what we get, what Barry shares with us, it's like SEO... Mordy Oberstein: No, I feel like there's two layers. It's what Barry says, and there's what he's actually thinking. Crystal Carter: He does the SEO and he does the news. That's what a Barry do. He also is all about efficiency. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Barry is efficient. Very efficient. Very uncomplicated. There's no drama with Barry. I actually do really appreciate that. There's no drama. Crystal Carter: Yeah, #uncomplicated. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's what I meant to say. Sorry, Barry. I meant uncomplicated, which means it's time to jump into the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. It's here, the Google November 2024 core update is rolling out now. It should still be rolling out by the time you hear this. On November 11th, Google announced the November 2024 core update saying it'll take about two weeks to roll out, that being reported by Barry Schwartz over on Search Engine Land. So by the time you're listening to this, it should still be rolling out, but who knows what Google will do and can do and whatever. That said, Google's typical advice around this, and this is what they've said before, is around creating quality content, yada, yada, yada, yada. I'll read to you what they've said according to Barry in a previous statement, "There's nothing new or special that creators need to do for this update as long as they've been making satisfying content meant for people. For those that might not be ranking well, we strongly encourage reading our Creating Helpful, Reliable People First Content help page," Google said previously, according to Barry Schwartz, so that's that. Now it's a little bit of a weird-ish update because the weather tools like the Semrush Sensor, which are tracking the rank volatility, show less rank volatility now, which is strange because we're in the middle of a core update. So Barry Schwartz, again on Search Engine Round Table, a twofer from Barry, again, almost every week at this point, "Google November 2024, core update, movement slow, but for some massive." That's dramatic, Barry. So Barry is covering what people are saying, the chatter out there. Glenn Gabe was showing a bunch of websites on X showing that they've shown massive... I don't want to call it massive, but strong, ranking swings and increases and decreases and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then you have people saying, "Hey, I don't see much going on right now." So there's a mixed bag of chatter. Barry was quoting some SEO saying, "No movement yet. Discover's also not moving at all. Had a strange two-day spike last week, but nothing either way after the update," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So some people are seeing movement, some people are not seeing movement, at least at the time of this recording. I can tell you that for some of the websites I'm working, one-on-one plan in particular, seeing massive movement, swings back and forth, back and forth, up and down, interesting to see where it'll end up. So I'm not sure how big or massive the update is. It's really hard to tell. I'll say this, it's getting really hard to tell just by looking at the weather tracking tools like the Semrush Sensor, Moz Cast and so forth. I'm wondering, and this is just a theory that the reason why you might be seeing a decrease in the volatility on some of these tools is, Google might've been doing some other testing, some other whatever, whatever, whatever, not related or pre-related to this update. And now that stopped, and now just the update volatility is there and all of that other stuff that Google was doing in aggregate was enough volatility that if you only have the core update or if you take that away and only have the core update volatility, it actually looks like a downgrade in rank volatility. So it's really, in my opinion, really hard to tell how big the updates are just by looking at these weather tools. This update, the last update was very similar. It's getting more and more complicated. And with that, that's this week's Snappy News. And because it's so snappy, it's so uncomplicated, just like Barry. Thank you, Barry. Crystal Carter: Thanks, Barry. Mordy Oberstein: Unless I went particularly long on this one because I recorded that section of the podcast later, so it could be it went really long and this part now it makes no sense. Crystal Carter: Oh, no, was it volatile? Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to how we record our podcast. There was one time where I went really long, Barry covered his interview with Danny Sullivan, and Barry complained on X, like, "You went too long." I'm like, "You're complaining I went too long, covering your article, which is also too long?" Crystal Carter: Here's the thing, do you remember seeing the movie LA Story with Steve Martin? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, man. Crystal Carter: He's in LA and it's everyday hot and sunny. And then at one point he tries to go on vacation, so he records the weather early and he goes, "Yeah, it's super sunny," and there's a deluge. And so I see what you're talking about. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Mr. Sunshine, okay. Which another great person in the industry is our follow of the week, which is Glen Allsopp, also known as... Great Twitter handle, by the way, ViperChill. Glen writes at detail.com, and the reason why he's our follow of the week is because he writes some really detailed analysis of who's winning and what's happening on the SERP, quarter by quarter, like detail Q4, analyzing the SEO playbook of digital goliaths in depth, every quarter. And he'll just go through who's ranking, who's not ranking, what's happening on the SERP, and surveying what's been happening on Google so you can get an idea of, wait a second, now all of a sudden these types of sites haven't been dominating the landscape. That is so interesting. So check out Glen, check out detail.com, and check out those particular articles. They're really insightful. You'll see everybody from Aleyda Solis to whoever else. I'm sharing them on social media, so you should just read them yourself directly by going to detail.com and checking out @ViperChill. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's got some great stats in there. One of my favorite ones, we were talking about this on It's New the other day, I was looking at some of the content producers around the world and which companies show up in Google search results a lot like Hearst, for instance, being one of them. Ziff Davis, which are the parent company for Moz, for instance. Vox Media, loads of other folks as well. But that's a really fascinating graphic and that's something that they've kept up with for a while, and that's this. It's a great resource. So yeah, detail.com is super awesome. Thanks, Glen, for all the work you do. Mordy Oberstein: I just want to know, how do you get a viper to chill? Or is viper chill a type of chill? Like, it's so chill. Crystal Carter: I mean, they are cold-blooded- Mordy Oberstein: But it's not chill at the same time? Crystal Carter: ... they're cold-blooded animals. Like Vipers are- Mordy Oberstein: Are they? Crystal Carter: ... they're reptiles, they're cold-blooded. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, they're actually cold-blooded, not like, oh, they're cold-blooded. Crystal Carter: No. Well, I mean that too, but also, but yeah, they're cold-blooded, that's why they have to sit under a lamp. If you are somebody who keeps reptiles, you have to buy one of those lamps, which I think might run up your electric bill. But presumably you thought about that before you- Mordy Oberstein: Which is why you don't want to have a viper in your house. Mainly because of the electric bill. If it were me. Can I tell you, I spent most, I think I've mentioned on this podcast, I spent most of my day turning off the lights after my kids. I just follow them around, turning off lights. Crystal Carter: Totally a thing. You leave the house and you turn around and it looks like, it looks like fricking, I don't know, JFK airport. Mordy Oberstein: It's like Christmas. And I'm Jewish. Crystal Carter: You're like, why are we lighting up the whole house? Why does the dust need to be illuminated? I don't understand. Mordy Oberstein: And it's daytime. We get good sunlight, and I know I'm saving a penny, but I can't. It just bothers me. Crystal Carter: And also, that's a dad thing. That's such a dad thing. And the thermostat, and the all these sorts of things. It's very much a dad thing. My dad used to do the same thing. Mordy Oberstein: Thermostat's an issue. I'm not cheap. I like it cold, so I'm not cheap on the air conditioning. But I was at my sister and brother-in-law's over the summer. I'm like, it's so hot. I complained I'm like, "I don't want to complain, but." Just, yeah, I know, Sam, if you're listening to this. He wants to keep it, like you know, he wants to save a little bit. He keeps it way up. I always complain. Oh, you can't cheap out on the air conditioning. I'm sorry. There's certain things. There's a limit. Crystal Carter: Especially not on the East Coast, because it's too humid to open the windows. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, and anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into what to know before diving into an SEO study. First, know how deep it is. Because if you don't, if you dive and it's too shallow, you can really hurt yourself. Anyway, look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of the great content and webinars over on the Wix Studio Learning Hub, SEO Learning Hub, at you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Jake Hundley Glen Allsopp Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Detailed SEO Blog Evergrow Marketing Agency Growth Podcast News: Google November 2024 core update rolling out now Google November 2024 Core Update Movement - Slow But For Some Massive Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Jake Hundley Glen Allsopp Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Detailed SEO Blog Evergrow Marketing Agency Growth Podcast News: Google November 2024 core update rolling out now Google November 2024 Core Update Movement - Slow But For Some Massive Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We've got some groovy to 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 very autonomous, do not tell me what I have to do, I will set my own future, the destiny is in my own hands, Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: All my ladies independent. Throw your hands up with me. Yeah. Independently of yourself, even though I just told you what to do. No, I'm kidding. No. Yes. Yeah, I agree. Mordy Oberstein: Independence is- Crystal Carter: I do what I want. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, when I want to, except when I'm dealing with my kids and I end up doing most of what they want to. Crystal Carter: What they want. Mordy Oberstein: Yo. Crystal Carter: But ideally doing what they want, whilst I also have the option of going to the spa. Somebody was like, "How do I go on vacation with kids?" I'm like, "You go to a place that's a resort for families that also has a spa, that has a daycare and a spa." They have like, "Oh, we're doing activities. We're doing singalong. We're doing archery." They can do archery for an hour. You can go to the sauna. Mordy Oberstein: Either that or you can literally leave your kids in front of a screen for a week, go and come back, and they'll still be sitting there like zombies, as if nothing happened. They may have defecated themselves, or they may have gone to the bathroom. That depends on the child. Crystal Carter: Good thing this isn't a parenting podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, but literally we went out last night. I have two older ones who can babysit the two younger ones, but the two younger ones are a handful. So here, you can watch a movie while we go out. One of them fell asleep. The other one was... We came back two hours later, three hours later, his eyes are red and he's just sitting there like a zombie. But we got out for sushi, so hey, that'll work. Crystal Carter: Yeah. This is how we are on a plane. We don't do a lot of screen time, but if we're on a plane and we're flying long haul, guess what? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, watch all you want. Go ahead, watch whatever you want. Crystal Carter: Guess what, it is what it is. Do what you need to do, fam. There's nothing else to do. Mordy Oberstein: Funny story, the last time I was on a plane with my little kids, they were really young and they were watching Batman and Ninja Turtles and they got introduced the idea of a butler because Alfred's a butler, but they thought it was an insult because it's a butt-ler. So they were for a good year calling each other butlers as an insult. Crystal Carter: Have you introduced them to Beavis and Butthead yet? Mordy Oberstein: I would. My wife's like, "Maybe that's not the best idea." It really formed my childhood, which explains a few things, but we're trying something more wholesome with my kids. Crystal Carter: Right. Okay. I can see that. That makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: Less damage, more on the wholesome side. That's the game plan. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio as we awkwardly transition, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search later over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also have multiple tools to help you build up your email lists, including an inbuilt email marketing platform as well as a tie-in to MailChimp and apps from Constant Contact and others. This, as we cover making the great escape from the clutches of the algorithms and moving your marketing towards freedom. Why going beyond the algorithm has come into focus. Why going algorithm-free is the way to be, and how to get beyond the algorithms, and why it's more than just email lists. To help us jump the algorithmic fence, CEO of Evergrow Marketing and co-host of the Agency Growth podcast, Jake Hundley is set to join us in just a jiffy. Plus we'll dive into the insane levels of rank volatility on the SERP and what it means for digital marketers of all kinds. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So grab your metal spoons and start digging and get ready to swim because tonight we make our great escape from the Rock, known as Alcatraz, on the 111th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. The Rock. Crystal Carter: That is a classic, classic film. Mordy Oberstein: Classic film. Crystal Carter: There's probably bits of it that are not brilliant in terms of today's modern things, but at the time I definitely enjoyed it. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's a classic movie. And Sean Connery, we spoke about this. I don't remember where it was we spoke about it, but he's always the same. Sean Connery. Crystal Carter: Sean Connery. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we spoke about it on another podcast. One Ping Only, if you remember. Again, this is the same dude, he's just Sean Connery. Crystal Carter: He's Sean Connery. There's no volatility in the delivery of the Sean Connery. He just shows up, he Sean Conneries, and he leaves. That's it. That that's all you need. Very consistent. Mordy Oberstein: That's kind of the issue. That's kind of the issue because like it or not, we're a bit beholden to algorithms, if you're in the SEO space you know this already, because all we talk about is the algorithm all the time, but it applies everywhere. If you're in the SEO space, there are other algorithms like social media. Each one of those platforms is a different algorithm. There's algorithms for paid ads by Greg Finn and all sorts of other algorithms and like a perfect storm, they've all become unstable all at once, amazingly. Crystal Carter: Yeah, completely. And I mean, to be honest, I know that, I don't want to sound like I told you so, but I remember calling this when they started talking about mum and when they started talking about all of that stuff, I remember thinking we're going to see loads and loads more volatility because they've got all these different machine learning systems that they're trying to run at the same time. And basically they're all learning, they're all doing different things, and they need to test every single one of them. And basically it's like they need data so they have to run them and we just have to hope that we don't get caught in the crossfire on some occasions. And so that I think is what's happening on Google at the moment where we're seeing lots and lots of machine learning running in tangent and they tell us this. They're like, "We're running the spam update at the same time as we're running the core update, as we're running the product update, as we're running all of these different things." They're running them all at the same time. If you're trying to talk to clients or you're trying to figure out what's going on between, it's very difficult to pick the things apart because it's not like this is an update, mark this date, and then afterwards it's changed. It's much more complex now. Mordy Oberstein: And first off, good call, first off because clearly you were correct. And then snap, snap, snap, snap, snap fingers, and then social, obviously, with the whole X thing. That became interesting. And then there was Threads and that was interesting. And then LinkedIn has been interesting. Facebook for a long time has been garbage. They said, "Yeah, we're killing organic," years ago. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, it's been- Mordy Oberstein: That's always been a problem. I don't know about TikTok because I don't do that, but all of the platforms have been just complicated. It's all been algorithmically complicated as of late, and it's created this conversation. I can't tell you how many people I've seen now versus, I don't know, six months ago even saying, "All right, everybody, get off the algorithm train and build up your email marketing list and do this and do that because don't be beholden to the algorithm." That chatter has been noticeable. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. I think on the other side, I've also seen people that are actively marketing themselves as algorithm marketing teams like that we will help you- Mordy Oberstein: Gurus? Algorithm gurus? Crystal Carter: Well, no, agencies. Agencies that actively say we do algorithm marketing, we'll help you to understand the algorithm marketing. And I think that what's interesting in terms of SEO is that SEO's algorithm or Google's algorithm has historically been more stable than some of the social media algorithms. I remember when we were able to get organic traffic on Facebook, I remember those times. I know I'm dating myself. Mordy Oberstein: It's been 84 years. Crystal Carter: Right? I know. So I remember those days and I remember when people would have thousands of followers and then they'd post something and they'd get some traction on the things. And nowadays if you don't boost the posts then you don't get any traction. And Google on the other hand was more stable as a platform. It was one of the reasons why I gravitated towards SEO. I was on a podcast recently and somebody said, "Why did you choose SEO over other marketing channels?" And the reason why I said was because the algorithm was more stable. You could do more things and see the activity over time. But I think that that's shifting and I think that we are seeing those conversations where you have to think about your content in a different way. Not everything's going to make a big splash in terms of search. And some things are for customer value, some things are for keeping people in your platform. Sometimes you write a piece of content so that you don't have to link out to an external partner, but so that you can link to yourself and keep your customers within your ecosystem. And that might not necessarily get a lot of search traffic, but it will add value to your clients. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. We are getting to an era where it's just more strategic. I literally posted a day before recording this, it's a picture of me sticking my tongue out going thh and the image says, "My feelings on the idea that every campaign has to make a big splash." What I'm saying is like whomp, whomp, no, please stop. It's ridiculous. Especially now because of the algorithms. Let's dive into a little bit more on what's going on within the algorithms and why we should be making a switch is CEO of Evergrow Marketing and co-host of the Agency Growth podcast, Jake Hundley sat down to talk with us. Welcome to the show, Jake. How's it going? Jake Hundley: Good, thanks Mordy. Thanks for having me on the show. Mordy Oberstein: Can I tell you a little fun fact? Jake Hundley: I would love to hear it. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. But I don't want to offend you at the same time, so I'm feeling a little apprehensive. Jake Hundley: You won't offend me. Mordy Oberstein: All right, so I'm going to offend myself, because I'm dating myself with this. Every time I see your name, Jake Hundley. There used to be a catcher for the Met in the early '90s named Todd Hundley. And my immediate association is his baseball card, every time I see your name pop up. Jake Hundley: I've seen.. Everybody Googles themselves, or maybe it's just me. Mordy Oberstein: Multiple times a day. Jake Hundley: Yeah, right. The only other Jake Hundleys that I see, I see other Jake Hundleys out there. And there was a baseball player literally named Jake Hundley also. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? Jake Hundley: Yeah, then I think there was a football player named Jake Hundley as well. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that sucks. You'll never get that knowledge panel now. Jake Hundley: We'll see about that, right? Because the one thing that I am that they aren't is an SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, and by the way, you search for Jake Hundley, you're everywhere. There is nobody else. Jake Hundley: That's good. That's what I've been trying for. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Poor baseball player didn't stand a damn chance. Jake Hundley: Not against this guy from Iowa. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. Okay, so ironically, we're looking at the SERP and talking about ranking at least for your name, which requires an algorithm. But today we're talking about getting beyond algorithms and it's become become a thing. I noticed it on LinkedIn and people are talking about it. We're talking about it here, people talking about it there. Get beyond the algorithms, let's orient the audience. How did we get here? Because we used to be all about algorithms. Jake Hundley: I think it just became an oversaturation of just people buying into the algorithm. So whether it's Google, whether it's Facebook or YouTube or anything like that, everything is fed off of some algorithm. But if everybody treats it like a checklist and it becomes easy to exploit, or not necessarily easy to exploit, but everybody tries to exploit it in some way, everyone's going to be doing it. Which means now the algorithms have to continually update and try to figure out what do people actually want to see? And that's always what they've been from the beginning of any kind of search algorithm or any kind of social media algorithm. And so I think the biggest thing that Google looks for is there's two main things. Is the page that a user is looking for answering their question or getting them what they want the fastest, because that's ultimately what they're in business for. And then two, is it authentic? And I think the more people hyper fix it on algorithms, the less authentic they become. And that's why you need to shift away from those overly analyzed algorithmic checklists. Mordy Oberstein: Which is interesting because as you're trying to do that, which is what you should be doing, focusing on your audience, the algorithm itself has been wonky. I think there's been a lot of criticism. I think a lot of it is legitimate, and a lot of it is the entire internet has changed and Google's got to figure it all out. So combining the fact that something is broken somewhere somehow in some kind of way, shape, or form, and the whole content world is changing, the algorithm is wonky. So you're trying to do that and now the algorithm is wonky and it feels like, well, this is not good. Jake Hundley: And everyone wants to blame algorithm updates for their site tanking. Really every time I see it, I mean tons of SEO groups on Facebook and every time I see it, it's like, "How do you recover from the recent helpful content update?" And I'm like, "Well, you could have provided helpful content in the first place." Mordy Oberstein: That's the fine line between this thing. So there are legitimate businesses who have been hit, and I know Google's having a creator summit. I don't when this episode is going live, it may have already happened by then, but Google had recently announced that maybe like a day or two before this recording, "We're going to sit down, Danny Sullivan and the engineers, we're all going to sit down, we're all going to talk about why your sites are not doing well because it seems like they should be." And Danny even said when he got interviewed by Barry Schwartz over at SE Roundtable, "Hey, we do recognize that some of these sites should see more improvements and we hope they'll see more improvements going forward." My question is, if you know they should get improvements, why aren't they seeing improvements? But leaving that aside for a minute, there are legitimate reasons or legitimate complaints, but at the same time, a lot of the people who were complaining, I remember one person was complaining, "My site got hit, I got a niche site and blah blah blah," and I went to the website. I'm like, "There's ads everywhere." Everywhere. Jake Hundley: I do believe there's some validity in actual legitimate sites being hit that shouldn't have been. And this is all speculation, but I do think that perhaps the algorithm might've been a little bit more primitive in its update to where it really did go after the illegitimate websites that just didn't have a good user experience. But as a consequence, there were some, I guess if you're looking at the diagram, like mutual connections between those sites and maybe some of the better sites. Mordy Oberstein: I have this wild theory, I have no proof about this whatsoever, but I feel like from some of the things that Danny Sullivan said when he got interviewed by Barry, it seems like they have a certain direction they want to take the algorithm in and that contradicts rewarding some of these other sites at the same time and they have to somehow figure that out. But that's just me speculating. I want to add another layer in on all this. The Google algorithm is one thing. At the same time as all of these issues around the algorithm, we can talk about AIO reviews, we can talk about Reddit on the SERP, we can talk about rank instability. I think we just saw some rush data Barry posted the longest set of rank volatility, high rank volatility ever recorded, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. Which obviously instability means it's just difficult and now what do you do? But at the same time, social algorithms have been a mess. Jake Hundley: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So it's been compounded. Jake Hundley: Part of me thinks that... I think the impetus of all this was like ChatGPT and generative AI. It just seems like when that came out, everything went crazy. And you can say that Google had flip-flopping statements on whether or not that they liked AI-generated content or whether they were okay with it as long as it was helpful. But the fact is that regardless of it's helpful or not, the amount of it that's getting pushed out is just absolutely insane. And that doesn't just affect Google, that also affects social networks. So I think everybody is trying to combat not the fact that it's AI content, but the fact that it's the quantity of content that's being pushed out and trying to decide what they want to show users. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really good point. And it's because it's been so weird and has, I feel like social kind of goes through waves. Twitter was a mess. Twitter I feel still is a mess. LinkedIn was great for a while and then LinkedIn became weird. Threads was great for a little bit, and then Threads became weird. When everybody's shifting around from platform to platform, and I think a lot of that's what's happening. I agree, there's so much content going on and they just don't know what to do with it. Or, I think also part of the LinkedIn thing is they knew people were leaving Twitter, they started rewarding you with insane levels of engagement and then once they got you, they tapered that off also. So that's also a conspiracy theory, I don't know if that's true or not. Jake Hundley: I can't remember who posted it, but someone said something about they posted this really long LinkedIn post and they're like, "If you are an AI commenter, comment something." And then it was just the post just filled up with spambots and it was like you could literally see in real time how many AI bots are on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's amazing. It's unbelievable. So it's why I feel like, yes, you should be doing SEO. Yes, you should be on social media. You kind of have no choice, I got a little bit of a hot take. So people will be saying, "Okay, build up your email list. That'll get you off of the algorithmic drug. You can control your own narrative, you can control your own audience," and I'm all for that. But my issue with that is yes, but to do that you have to promote yourself when you're somehow most likely going to need an algorithm to do that, to build up that list. Jake Hundley: Yeah, I used to work very heavy in first party data with media companies and I think the reasoning would be that it's easier to get somebody on an email list because it's a low ask. So if you promote to get people on your email list versus promote to actually make a sale, then you can build up that audience that's bigger and then retarget that audience for either upsells or create lookalike audiences off of those. And so I think there's some validity to building your email list up and building your first-party data, especially in an age where not only are we dealing with all this generative AI content within the algorithm, but also the lack of third-party cookie tracking. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. No, I am all for building up your email list. I think it's a great strategy. I am very much like you should never have put all your eggs in one basket, which, let's say, SEO. Putting your eggs in the algorithm, where there's all the algorithms, is your eggs in one basket kind of thing. And you should definitely build up that direct consumer list, email marketings, whatever it is. But I feel like you need to go one step beyond that. You need to really start creating momentum for yourself. You have to build up that brand, you have to create relationships, you have to create momentum and cadence and potential opportunities and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And some of that will be doing things on social. I think a lot of generating that momentum that will bring in people to sign up for your email list, is partnering with other people, collaborating, going to events, creating those relationships builds momentum and that gets spread across the internet. And that's how you can bring in people to your email list and then have your own audience and do your thing and not worry about the algorithms as much. But I don't think you can just focus on, I will build up my email marketing list. That's an actual activity, that I think is more of a result, in my opinion. Jake Hundley: Yeah, 100%. It goes in line with a lot of what you've been saying on this podcast, which is just building up the brand. It does kind of feel like SERPs are rewarding brand queries now, but not just brand queries, brands with more branded queries. This is something that we tested with our podcast. It wasn't necessarily a test. So our agency is Evergrow Marketing, and we started our podcast called Everbros Agency Growth Podcast. I for one, actually hate that name. It just reminds me of the bropreneur kind of thing, but it's a play on word. And I actually decided to keep it on there because when I mentioned something about the podcast or whatever, I would say, "Yeah, it's on the Everbros Agency Growth podcast episode," whatever. And I wouldn't link to it. One, because everybody generally agrees that social media platforms don't like links, so I won't paste the link, I'll just force people to Google it. And that Everbros part of it was like the brand anchor to the query that I actually wanted to rank, which was Agency Growth podcast. And then eventually it got to a point where I had so many branded queries that if you just drop the Everbros and just look up Agency Growth podcast, we're number one for that. There are multiple agency podcasts, but this is the methodology behind what I'm thinking, which is try to get a search where you can append the query you want with the brand name and then you attack it from both angles. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's funny because now that the whole brand thing is coming to the SEO equation. It started really with the leaks talking about mentions and now, okay, now I need to get those branded searches. There's a whole patent about that also. So get people to search for me, mention my brand, and align with my product or align with the service and create that semantic connection, now Google will understand this, so now brand comes into focus. I'm like, that's been true forever. This is not new. It's been true for the longest time, like you thought what? It's only until recently Google was looking at Nike and seeing how many times people were searching the word Nike and I don't know, shoes. Jake Hundley: I think it just became a saturation issue. I think before Google or search engines in general gave... I think the philosophy behind it was giving the smaller brands power to outrank if they had "better content." But then it's like, well, when everybody has the same generative AI content, then you have to default to something else. So maybe speculation again, but maybe brand has always played a role, but now it's even more so important because generative AI can't produce a brand that everybody knows and loves. Mordy Oberstein: Well, that's true for sure in terms of, just... Forget the algorithm for a second. This is true in terms of human receptability and if you don't have a brand, then you're now there's so much content, it all sounds the same. It all looks the same, it all adds the same tone to it. Look at any SaaS platform, it all sounds the same, it all looks the same kind of thing. You need to differentiate brand just for your audience. And if it works for an algorithm, added bonus. Jake Hundley: Yeah, for sure. And we do the same thing with our websites. It's always like, people are always saying what are the... They're trying to look for the highest volume keywords that are relatively related to the service with low competition. And I never hear about people wanting to focus on the more impactful business keywords. Just because that one has a high volume and low competition, doesn't necessarily mean that's the one that you want to go after, because it might have low ROI and it might not be the intent where people want it to be. And I think that's true in a lot of cases, especially with having that brand, making sure that you're capitalizing on people knowing your brand and coming to your site. Mordy Oberstein: Where do you think this all ends off, a year or five years from now? Whatever it is. Because right now, again, there's so much chat about don't get stuck on the algorithm, especially the Google algorithm. It's a total mess right now. Find other ways to reach your audiences that are not based on an algorithm, which I completely agree with, but where do we end up? Do we end up in five years from now where SEO is our... We are really branching out and doing more brand activity, momentum building, more traditional marketing, or is this a blip on the radar, or a moment in time? And in a year from now, we're back on the algorithmic crack, so to speak? Jake Hundley: I've thought about this a little bit. I think it's cyclical. So I think what's going to happen, and I could be totally wrong, I could be the worst predictor in the world, but I think there's going to be fragmented search engines where they're more niche and there already are, right? There's Yelp and Houzz and Angie's and things like that. But I think the adoption of those from a user base is going to become more and more prevalent as Google just gets more muddied up and exploring AI overviews. And not that those are necessarily bad, but I just think it's going to get more and more complicated and saturated that people are going to start switching and moving over towards those kind of niche search engines. Mordy Oberstein: That's like one of the... Like before, if you would've asked me five years ago, are we seeing the death of Google, or are we seeing Google really... Because Google's so hyperbolic. Are we seeing Google really lose its luster? I would've said, nah, whatever. But now when you ask me that question, I take that question really seriously and I answer to that, I don't know, maybe. Maybe? Especially if the DOJ does what it wants to do. Jake Hundley: I think a lot of the studies that I see where it's like so many people are using AI search engines now, Perplexity and things, I can't help but feel like they're over-reported, just subjectively speaking of people in my own life. And I think that eventually, again, it'll be cyclical. So I do think that maybe these fragmented niche search engines will take off and have their peak, but I think ultimately it'll come back to just everybody going into a general search engine again. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it'll be interesting. Honestly, my take is, I kind of feel like, I'm trying to think of a good example of this where something like catastrophic happens or you know what? You go to a restaurant, your favorite restaurant, you've been there a thousand times, you go one time and your stomach is completely demolished. You'll go back, because you've been there a thousand times, it was your favorite restaurant forever, but it's never going to be the same kind of thing. I feel like, and maybe I'm wrong, I feel like we'll go back to Google, but it's never going to be the same. And I think people will be less interested, or less reliant on focusing on algorithms and they're going to try to do things to keep that marketing autonomy for themselves, which they haven't done in the past because of this moment in time. Jake Hundley: I think there's a lot of- Mordy Oberstein: Which I could be wrong. Jake Hundley: I think there's a lot of things going on in the Google ecosphere. It's multilayered. You have a lot of advertisers, you have stuff with the DOJ where now that's coming out where it's like the auction really isn't an actual auction. And you have advertisers with rising CPCs and CPAs and they're out looking for alternative platforms, our agency included. And ultimately Google, they want to provide the best search experience for users, but they also need to make revenue, which they do off of ads. And there's been a bigger push on Google's end to, I think, cut agencies out of the picture, especially with Performance Max and Smart Bidding and even local service ads, even with their huge push to broad match keywords. And it just feels like they're trying to oversimplify it. And then I just read a study, or I don't know if it was a study, but I think it was Search Engine Land or Search Engine Journal, talking about how Google's push to Performance Max and broad match keywords is really causing prices to increase even on branded terms. And so I feel like as Google wants to cut agencies out, more agencies are going to look for alternative search engines to put their money in. And I don't really know what that's going to do to Google's revenue market share unless they can really get a stakehold on the local business. But then you have platforms like Yelp who are actually going after agencies to get individual businesses back onto the platform. Mordy Oberstein: It's crazy what's going on. It's like everything is like, I wouldn't call it mess, not what we do on this podcast, but it is kind of a mess. Jake Hundley: Yeah, yeah, it's very messy out there in the search engine world right now. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, man. On that happy note, where can people find you? Jake Hundley: Well, you can find me... Well, apparently, if you Google me, you can find me everywhere. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. You won't get a baseball and/or a football player. So, that's saying a lot. Jake Hundley: Well, it depends on the algorithm though, the time of the day. You can find me on LinkedIn, just Jake Hundley, you can also find, I have all the links to all my socials at our podcast, at the Agency Growth podcast or Everbros Agency Growth podcast, however you want to call it. And yeah, I'm all over social. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing, Jake, thanks so much for coming on. Check out Jake's podcast and links to his profiles in the show notes. Thanks again for coming on and being part of the show. Jake Hundley: Thanks, Mordy, it was a good time. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure you follow Jake, make sure you follow his podcast. Again, a really interesting conversation about how the SEO algorithm, the Google algorithm in particular, rather, has been complicated. Why maybe it still makes, maybe it will make a comeback as being a stable thing. Maybe it won't. Again, I don't know. I feel like the Google algorithm is the seminal algorithm. It's like the algorithm and there've been a lot of issues lately, a lot of issues between marketers and algorithms. And the conversation's really gotten... It's really hit the mother of all algorithms lately, the Google algorithm, which again is perceived as the most complex algorithm out there. But there's been a lot of instability as we hinted at, as I've talked about a bit with Jake. But maybe let's explore that a little bit more in depth. Because I feel like an algorithm like the Google algorithm deserves a little bit more attention. So let's explore that instability on a little segment we call Going... Going... Google. And it's Going... Going... Google, it's out of here. So a little summary of where we stand with the instability. There was a bunch of core updates that didn't do exactly what I think Google wanted them to do because they integrated the helpful content update into the core or they didn't integrate it into the core, they integrated helpfulness into the core and got rid of the helpful content update. There's been a bunch of Reddit on the server. There's the AI overviews, and with the last update, the August 2024 update, there was just endless volatility. And what made that one interesting, I think we talked about it on the show before, there was tons of volatility beforehand. Then comes the August update, then they announced it's finished, and then there's still an insane level of volatility. According to Semrush, as covered by Barry Schwartz, it is the longest set of volatility their tools recorded ever, which is insane. But it also impacts... Usually, okay, fine, you have the sites that were impacted negatively, positively by the core update and once that's done, they're good. But they weren't, and they haven't been. So nothing's good. Nothing is good. Doom and gloom. Crystal Carter: I think to quote Tom Capper, who's somebody who studies these things as well, he was like, "When does volatility just become the norm?" If it is the case that it's always volatile, then you just have to expect that, expect the unexpected. And I think that as you're planning out your content, again, I think that it should be a question of thinking about content, not for the question of gaining clicks, but once you get the clicks, how can you retain those users? How can you retain those relationships? How can you continue to build on the relationship so that that's an opportunity to engage with users, yes, on search. So they might discover you on search. How can you maintain that cohort? And I think that that's interesting that with the GA4, you start seeing cohort data. So you can say everybody who... Let's say you launched a campaign. Let's say you launched, I don't know, hypothetically like an SEO course with 10 different courses with some fantastic incredible instructors like say on the Wix Studio Academy, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: With like Aleyda Solis and Andrew Optimsey and Debbie Chu and Judith Lewis and so forth? Crystal Carter: Yeah, just for instance. Mordy Oberstein: For instance. Crystal Carter: So let's say you launched a course like that, then you can track the people who came to your website from the day of the launch and you can see what part of the website they continued through, how many of them were new, how they're engaging with you. You can also think about email capture and stuff so that you can engage with these folks for a longer period of time and things like that. And I think that's really important that it's not just clicks, it's not just traffic. So in the early days of SEO, we didn't have a lot of these funnel tools. So everybody didn't have mailing lists, didn't have social media in the same way. So a lot of times the conversations all have been clicks from the algorithm, clicks from Google, clicks from wherever. But we have so many more ways to engage with clients, with customers, with folks. That that absolutely has to be core to your SEO strategy of how the SEO is the hook for getting a connection with people and how you build on that connection because that makes you less beholden and less vulnerable to algorithm changes because you are using the traffic that you initially got to build on a relationship for the long term that is outside of the algorithm. Mordy Oberstein: And that's what I was talking about with Jake. There's so much that goes into doing that and you're almost forced to do that now. You're almost forced to think about audience and you're almost forced to think about, how do you build up that momentum, partnering with others, doing live events, like getting out there and being seen and getting shared because you're seen. It is something that you have to think about now. And if the SEO comes into it, and you get great, and if the social media works out, great, all that's great, but that's not where you start. And it's because, I hate to say it this way, there's nothing else to do. I mean, think about it for a second. It used to feel like an SEO, you knew where the volatility was and you knew what was going to happen, what was going on. Lily Ray was talking about it. Glenn Gabe was talking about the same thing. Marie Haines was talking, and they all had a very unified theme. And I'm not saying that they don't anymore, they still do, I think. But now you have other voices coming and saying, "No, I'm seeing this and I'm seeing that and this is not what I'm seeing," and there's too much chirping and... Let me put this differently. There's a lot of chirping, not too much. There's a lot of chirping from a lot of different directions and it's hard to make sense of what's what and what's actually happening. So what are you supposed to do? And then on top of that, it's impossible to analyze any of the updates anymore because forget the volatility before and forget the volatility afterwards, like we saw with the August update. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Like you mentioned before, they're rolling out a spam update at the same time as they're rolling out this update. Then they do the same, they got that update, how are you supposed to pull that apart? Crystal Carter: Right. Too many variables. Mordy Oberstein: Too many variables. Crystal Carter: And also, we talk about the Google algorithm, but there's so many different algorithms within the algorithm. You've got a great article- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah, algorithming the algorithms. Crystal Carter: So you've got a great article on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, What is a Google Algorithm? And then you also have a separate one that's What's a Google Algorithm Update, and those documents- Mordy Oberstein: Well, no, I had an article that somebody who shall remain nameless split up very well into two articles, restructured for me, and almost helped me redo both of them so that they can be on the Hub. Her name rhymes with Bistle. Bistle Barter. Crystal Carter: Anyway, they're great pieces of content. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, they are. Crystal Carter: And- Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Crystal Carter: They're great pieces of content. And one of the things that's important to think about is, for instance, people working in the local space, they are significantly impacted. They're not outside of the main algorithms, but they're significantly impacted by the local pack and the way that that algorithm works and that information there. People who are working with e-commerce, they're going to be more impacted by the reviews update and how that review system works in the spam and those sorts of elements as well. So while it is important to see general trends that you might hear from across the community, you also have to be really tapped into which parts of the algorithm affect you most and which are affecting you most consistently. And I think that when you look at some of the tools, like you mentioned the Semrush Sensor, Moz has a great tool, Algoranker, various different things. We also have another article that lists all of the tools that list what's going on. And when you look at those tools, they split them out by vertical, for instance. So news will be impacted and health will be impacted. Mordy Oberstein: Right, news is always incredibly volatile because everything's changing day by day. And that's been as normal-ish. Crystal Carter: Yeah, exactly. So you need to tap in too and understand which ones work for you. Google has some good documentation about which algorithms and which ranking systems they have. It's worth spending time on that if you're finding that your rankings are going up and down a lot. And it's also we're thinking about where you can try to find some consistency amongst all of this. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And there's dueling algorithms like Glenn Gabe's talked a lot about that. I think that within the core algorithm itself, there's jostling for position or impact that happens. Which is why I think you have statements from Danny Sullivan saying, "Yeah, I'm really looking forward to these smaller websites, seeing some more improvement coming in the future," but why isn't it there now? Because there's competing things that are prioritizing, other things that are not prioritizing those websites at the moment. So it's complicated. It's complicated. You know what's also complicated? I find very complicated, not very straightforward, really a complicated person. Barry Schwartz. Layers, like an onion. Crystal Carter: I feel like Barry is one of the least complicated people I know. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry, that's what I meant. Crystal Carter: I'm sure that there's many, many layers, but in terms of what we get, what Barry shares with us, it's like SEO... Mordy Oberstein: No, I feel like there's two layers. It's what Barry says, and there's what he's actually thinking. Crystal Carter: He does the SEO and he does the news. That's what a Barry do. He also is all about efficiency. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Barry is efficient. Very efficient. Very uncomplicated. There's no drama with Barry. I actually do really appreciate that. There's no drama. Crystal Carter: Yeah, #uncomplicated. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's what I meant to say. Sorry, Barry. I meant uncomplicated, which means it's time to jump into the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. It's here, the Google November 2024 core update is rolling out now. It should still be rolling out by the time you hear this. On November 11th, Google announced the November 2024 core update saying it'll take about two weeks to roll out, that being reported by Barry Schwartz over on Search Engine Land. So by the time you're listening to this, it should still be rolling out, but who knows what Google will do and can do and whatever. That said, Google's typical advice around this, and this is what they've said before, is around creating quality content, yada, yada, yada, yada. I'll read to you what they've said according to Barry in a previous statement, "There's nothing new or special that creators need to do for this update as long as they've been making satisfying content meant for people. For those that might not be ranking well, we strongly encourage reading our Creating Helpful, Reliable People First Content help page," Google said previously, according to Barry Schwartz, so that's that. Now it's a little bit of a weird-ish update because the weather tools like the Semrush Sensor, which are tracking the rank volatility, show less rank volatility now, which is strange because we're in the middle of a core update. So Barry Schwartz, again on Search Engine Round Table, a twofer from Barry, again, almost every week at this point, "Google November 2024, core update, movement slow, but for some massive." That's dramatic, Barry. So Barry is covering what people are saying, the chatter out there. Glenn Gabe was showing a bunch of websites on X showing that they've shown massive... I don't want to call it massive, but strong, ranking swings and increases and decreases and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then you have people saying, "Hey, I don't see much going on right now." So there's a mixed bag of chatter. Barry was quoting some SEO saying, "No movement yet. Discover's also not moving at all. Had a strange two-day spike last week, but nothing either way after the update," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So some people are seeing movement, some people are not seeing movement, at least at the time of this recording. I can tell you that for some of the websites I'm working, one-on-one plan in particular, seeing massive movement, swings back and forth, back and forth, up and down, interesting to see where it'll end up. So I'm not sure how big or massive the update is. It's really hard to tell. I'll say this, it's getting really hard to tell just by looking at the weather tracking tools like the Semrush Sensor, Moz Cast and so forth. I'm wondering, and this is just a theory that the reason why you might be seeing a decrease in the volatility on some of these tools is, Google might've been doing some other testing, some other whatever, whatever, whatever, not related or pre-related to this update. And now that stopped, and now just the update volatility is there and all of that other stuff that Google was doing in aggregate was enough volatility that if you only have the core update or if you take that away and only have the core update volatility, it actually looks like a downgrade in rank volatility. So it's really, in my opinion, really hard to tell how big the updates are just by looking at these weather tools. This update, the last update was very similar. It's getting more and more complicated. And with that, that's this week's Snappy News. And because it's so snappy, it's so uncomplicated, just like Barry. Thank you, Barry. Crystal Carter: Thanks, Barry. Mordy Oberstein: Unless I went particularly long on this one because I recorded that section of the podcast later, so it could be it went really long and this part now it makes no sense. Crystal Carter: Oh, no, was it volatile? Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to how we record our podcast. There was one time where I went really long, Barry covered his interview with Danny Sullivan, and Barry complained on X, like, "You went too long." I'm like, "You're complaining I went too long, covering your article, which is also too long?" Crystal Carter: Here's the thing, do you remember seeing the movie LA Story with Steve Martin? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, man. Crystal Carter: He's in LA and it's everyday hot and sunny. And then at one point he tries to go on vacation, so he records the weather early and he goes, "Yeah, it's super sunny," and there's a deluge. And so I see what you're talking about. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Mr. Sunshine, okay. Which another great person in the industry is our follow of the week, which is Glen Allsopp, also known as... Great Twitter handle, by the way, ViperChill. Glen writes at detail.com, and the reason why he's our follow of the week is because he writes some really detailed analysis of who's winning and what's happening on the SERP, quarter by quarter, like detail Q4, analyzing the SEO playbook of digital goliaths in depth, every quarter. And he'll just go through who's ranking, who's not ranking, what's happening on the SERP, and surveying what's been happening on Google so you can get an idea of, wait a second, now all of a sudden these types of sites haven't been dominating the landscape. That is so interesting. So check out Glen, check out detail.com, and check out those particular articles. They're really insightful. You'll see everybody from Aleyda Solis to whoever else. I'm sharing them on social media, so you should just read them yourself directly by going to detail.com and checking out @ViperChill. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's got some great stats in there. One of my favorite ones, we were talking about this on It's New the other day, I was looking at some of the content producers around the world and which companies show up in Google search results a lot like Hearst, for instance, being one of them. Ziff Davis, which are the parent company for Moz, for instance. Vox Media, loads of other folks as well. But that's a really fascinating graphic and that's something that they've kept up with for a while, and that's this. It's a great resource. So yeah, detail.com is super awesome. Thanks, Glen, for all the work you do. Mordy Oberstein: I just want to know, how do you get a viper to chill? Or is viper chill a type of chill? Like, it's so chill. Crystal Carter: I mean, they are cold-blooded- Mordy Oberstein: But it's not chill at the same time? Crystal Carter: ... they're cold-blooded animals. Like Vipers are- Mordy Oberstein: Are they? Crystal Carter: ... they're reptiles, they're cold-blooded. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, they're actually cold-blooded, not like, oh, they're cold-blooded. Crystal Carter: No. Well, I mean that too, but also, but yeah, they're cold-blooded, that's why they have to sit under a lamp. If you are somebody who keeps reptiles, you have to buy one of those lamps, which I think might run up your electric bill. But presumably you thought about that before you- Mordy Oberstein: Which is why you don't want to have a viper in your house. Mainly because of the electric bill. If it were me. Can I tell you, I spent most, I think I've mentioned on this podcast, I spent most of my day turning off the lights after my kids. I just follow them around, turning off lights. Crystal Carter: Totally a thing. You leave the house and you turn around and it looks like, it looks like fricking, I don't know, JFK airport. Mordy Oberstein: It's like Christmas. And I'm Jewish. Crystal Carter: You're like, why are we lighting up the whole house? Why does the dust need to be illuminated? I don't understand. Mordy Oberstein: And it's daytime. We get good sunlight, and I know I'm saving a penny, but I can't. It just bothers me. Crystal Carter: And also, that's a dad thing. That's such a dad thing. And the thermostat, and the all these sorts of things. It's very much a dad thing. My dad used to do the same thing. Mordy Oberstein: Thermostat's an issue. I'm not cheap. I like it cold, so I'm not cheap on the air conditioning. But I was at my sister and brother-in-law's over the summer. I'm like, it's so hot. I complained I'm like, "I don't want to complain, but." Just, yeah, I know, Sam, if you're listening to this. He wants to keep it, like you know, he wants to save a little bit. He keeps it way up. I always complain. Oh, you can't cheap out on the air conditioning. I'm sorry. There's certain things. There's a limit. Crystal Carter: Especially not on the East Coast, because it's too humid to open the windows. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, and anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into what to know before diving into an SEO study. First, know how deep it is. Because if you don't, if you dive and it's too shallow, you can really hurt yourself. Anyway, look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of the great content and webinars over on the Wix Studio Learning Hub, SEO Learning Hub, at you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love and SEO. 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Does page experience still matter for ranking? What did Google say that brought confusion to the matter and what’s the real story? Wix’s own Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter dive headfirst into the critical role of page experience and where it fits into Google’s ranking systems. SEO legend Britney Muller joins the show to discuss the role of technical SEO now and in the future. Plus, Mordy and Crystal clue you in as to their top tool recommendation to help your page performance and optimization efforts. It’s all part of the “experience” on this week's episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Does page experience still matter? Does page experience still matter for ranking? What did Google say that brought confusion to the matter and what’s the real story? Wix’s own Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter dive headfirst into the critical role of page experience and where it fits into Google’s ranking systems. SEO legend Britney Muller joins the show to discuss the role of technical SEO now and in the future. Plus, Mordy and Crystal clue you in as to their top tool recommendation to help your page performance and optimization efforts. It’s all part of the “experience” on this week's episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 46 | July 12, 2023 | 35 MIN 00:00 / 35:30 This week’s guests Britney Muller Britney Muller, Founder of Data Sci 101 and a seasoned Marketing and Machine Learning (ML) Consultant, has carved out a unique niche in the industry with roles such as Marketing Manager at Hugging Face and Senior SEO Scientist at Moz. Her deep passion for ML and AI fuels her work, particularly her talent for breaking down complex tech concepts into understandable terms for non-technical people. With her blend of expertise, industry experience, and knack for communication, Britney is a compelling speaker, offering actionable insights on the intersection of marketing and technology. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up . Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and I am joined by, now batting, number two, this shortstop, Crystal Carter. Number two, Head of SEO Communications. Crystal Carter: Thank you, Mordy for that introduction. I never played shortstop. I played outfield. I used to do a little bit of that when I was playing softball, when I was 12 years old. Yeah. On the Reds. We won no games that season. Mordy Oberstein: Not even the actual Reds. Crystal Carter: There you go. Yeah, there you go. We had a good time. Mordy Oberstein: That's all it counts. By the way, just that was my Bob Shep... Bob Sheppard is a legendary announcer for the Yankees. He literally announced the players from 1900 through 2014. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. He was 550 when he retired. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: He looked like the Crypt Keeper at that point. That's how he announced. He announced, "Now batting, the shortstop. Number two, Derek Jeter." Crystal Carter: There you go. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know why you were the shortstop, because you're number two, which is Derek Jeter's number. The only person who's getting any of this is basically Glenn Gabe right now. Crystal Carter: Hey, we to cater to lots of folks, including our SEO friends, all of our SEO friends. Mordy Oberstein: Before we completely lose the audience on my baseball nonsense, the SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter , but where you can also measure site performance, including Core Web Vitals no matter what. No matter your site's level of traffic, yep. Probably the only place on the web, where to be honest, you can have field data without traffic thresholds, is right inside of the Wix Site Performance Dashboard. Crystal Carter: I love that site performance dashboard. It's one of my favorite things, because I also love field data, because field data is better than lab data. Lab data is useful, but field data is what actually happened. Mordy Oberstein: What position in the field did you play, shortstop? Crystal Carter: Ha, ha, ha. Mordy Oberstein: That was so perfect. I didn't even plan it. Crystal Carter: Ha, ha. The field data that I got when I was playing outfield was that I needed to run around a lot to make sure that I was in line with the shortstop, in order to get the ball back towards the home base so we didn't get so many runs in from the other team. Mordy Oberstein: Why are we talking about baseball today? Don't know. But why are we talking about performance? Well, performance, it's a little bit scandalous right now. Okay. Performance, as it pertains to SEO, needs a little bit of clarification, so today we're covering, what did Google say that brought the question of page experience and ranking back into question? What is the status of the page experience update? Performance and SEO? What's the deal with that? To help us, legend, legend, absolute legend, Britney Muller stops by to share her thoughts on the future of tech SEO, and we'll dive into a special little tool to help you go deep into page performance. Of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So, take a bow and bask in the glory of a great performance, as Episode Number 46 of the SERP's Up Podcast pulls up the curtain on the significance of performance in SEO. Crystal Carter: So, many metaphors. Mordy Oberstein: I can't help myself. Crystal Carter: You're doing it over time. Mordy Oberstein: Literally the highlight of my week is writing that little section. Crystal Carter: I would say you need to get out more, but I know that's not your thing. Mordy Oberstein: No, not my thing. I have a Shakespeare one coming up, by the way. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah. By the way, I hate Shakespeare for the record. Crystal Carter: To B2B or not to B2B? Mordy Oberstein: I obviously use that one because that's like- Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Mordy Oberstein: I only know three. Crystal Carter: Alas. Mordy Oberstein: I use all three. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Look for it wherever you consume your podcast in the future. Crystal Carter: Indeed, indeed. Well, moving on to a non-Shakespearean topic. We're talking about page experience, and the reason why we're talking about page experience is because, basically in April, 2023, we had an update from Google on the page experience situation, which said that they were basically adding it into the Helpful Content Update . This got a lot of interest from different SEOs. So, essentially they said, in their blog post on Google Search Central , they said, "Helpful content generally offers a good page experience. That's why today we've added a section on page experience to our guidance on creating helpful content, and revise our help page about page experience. We think this will help site owners consider page experience more holistically, as part of their content creation process." They basically said, "It's not one thing, it's all part of the whole SEO experience." This was written by Danny Sullivan. They posted that onto the Google Search Central blog. Then later on, they added a note clarifying and they said, "We haven't introduced any major new aspects of page experience to consider versus our previous guidance. If you have been paying attention to these things we've talked about in the past, such as Core Web Vitals , all that remains as before." The reason why they had to make that clarification was because SEOs had a really big response to this, a really big response to this. Mordy Oberstein: Understatement. Crystal Carter: Understatement, to the point where some people were like, "Google's saying it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter at all. What were we doing spending all of our time worrying about that?" Marie Haynes was like, "No, I think it still matters. I think it's still important. It's just not their system anymore." Google went back to clarify after this, explaining that one of the reasons why they changed it... So, they wrote one of those... Twitter's allowing people to write really long posts now, and they wrote one of those really, really, really long posts all about this clarifying their guidance , and they said that, "If you want to be successful with the core ranking systems of Google, consider these and other aspects of page experience." So, not just Core Web Vitals, not just being mobile friendly, but consider these as well as other things. They also said that they should have never had page experience on their ranking systems page at all, because they've said that they are ranking signals. So, they're saying that, "We had some things that were listed there that shouldn't have been there, and they shouldn't have been on the ranking systems page. They're signals that contribute to systems." Mordy Oberstein: It's not one unified thing. Crystal Carter: No. Which is what they clarified when they said, "It's part of the helpful content system . It doesn't mean that it doesn't apply, it just means that it's part of the system." It's not its own- Mordy Oberstein: It's not a separate system. This is where it gets... You can see why people got really confused. Crystal Carter: People were really confused. So, I think that when we're thinking about this, it's really important to remember that, because at the end of the day, they said, "Google's core ranking systems looks for reward content that gives a good page experience," end of. I agree with that, and I always have, because the page experience thing, and with all of Google's ranking systems, they're all a metric of value for users. What the page experience system and the Core Web Vital situation was helping us to do was provide better value for users. Slow websites, websites are loading super slowly, they're annoying. Websites with cumulative layout shift, they're annoying. We didn't have a name for that before we had that. Interstitials that are popping up all the time and you can't close them and you can't find them- Mordy Oberstein: You said interstitials. I'm forever calling them that now forever. Forever interstitials. Crystal Carter: Oh, gosh. So, these things pop up all the time and they're everywhere, they're not good page experience. I think that these are things that we need to make sure that we're providing that for our users, that we're providing good page experience for our users, because that is genuinely helpful. It doesn't matter really whether or not it's a ranking signal or a ranking system, it's still valuable and it's still important and it's still worth measuring and worth looking at. The thing I think is interesting about this whole thing is that Google seems to be rolling back some of the elements that they're doing around this. So, for instance, they're deprecating the Mobile-Friendly tests at of the end of the year. They're also deprecating the Mobile-Friendly API. Then they also deprecated the Test My Site tool in 2022. This means that, SEOs will have different tools for accessing this, and SEOs who want to access web performance elements and want to improve web performance elements might have to invest in more dedicated tools, more specific tools. There are a number of web performance tools around this, rather than having them available as openly to everyone. But they've also added loads of these tools into Chrome, so the Chrome Web Dev tools as well. So, there's opportunities to see all these things. But I think that if you're an SEO and you're wondering, do I need to worry about Core Web Vitals? Do I need to worry about having good page experience? Yeah, you do. But do it because it's good for your users, and that's why you should be doing it. Mordy Oberstein: Well, that was always the thing. All the data studies show, and its been Barry Schwartz's big thing when he talks about the ranking impact has been minimal in aggregate. That doesn't mean in specific instances, because Google's talked about this, that if it's a tiebreaker between this page and that page, it could be a very big deal, or in certain instances it could be a very big deal. But as a broad impact across the web, meh on the rankings for basically whatever data study has come out. Which is a separate question, by the way. I think what's gone on here is so confusing at so many different levels. One is, the deprecation of a tool sends a signal. It sends a strong signal and it's very confusing. At the same time, it's very confusing that they said, "Wait. They're not one unified ranking system. That's why we're separating them out," because the way they marketed it, and I'm not being critical here, I'm just talking fact, the way that it was presented very, very strong was like, this is the new page experience update. It wasn't like, "Oh, we have this signal and that signal, and this is all going to contribute together." It was not presented that way. It was very, very much cohesively, "This is the page experience update." When they took that off the page, off their ranking systems page, it was very confusing because of that. At the same time, I think there's a third thing going on, which is I think Google doesn't want you to define page experience in terms of Core Web Vitals. I think it wants you to look at page experience much more holistically, which is why they added it to the Helpful Content Update Guidance , because they want you... By the way, when they did, they also added things like, making sure that you can easily access the main content on the page as part of experience, meaning they're trying to make you think of experience in a much wider way than just Core Web Vitals. Crystal Carter: I think that that's really interesting, because I think during all of the... There was a lot of furore about around getting ready for Core Web Vitals and all of that sort of stuff, and certainly at Wix we invested a lot in things to make sure that we... I mean, we increased the Core Web Vitals performance by tenfold . Mordy Oberstein: I think it's more than that. The tenfold number by the way, we came with that number years ago. I think it passed that at this point. Crystal Carter: I think that that's a prime example. So, I think, last time I checked it was something like 65% of US websites on Wix were passing Core Web Vitals . That's good. Fundamentally, that's a good thing. But it's a fundamentally good thing, and that is something that Google is giving people tools to measure, and help people measure those things, but they're not all of it. In the same way that if you were trying to get healthy, losing weight for instance could be a relevant metric for whether or not you are healthy, but it is not the only metric, for instance. So, if you lost a bunch of weight, that might be a sign that your lifestyle is healthier, that might not be a sign that your lifestyle is healthier. I've definitely lost weight in times of stress, where that was not good. That was not good. So, sometimes I think that it's a question of Google making sure that people are approaching page experience in a more nuanced way, and in a way that is more beneficial to the web overall, which is their general goal. All of these signals are tools for measuring value for users. I've seen it before where I've worked on sites, and this was before I think, even the page experience update came in, where at a site we improved page speed and we saw our rankings improve. But part of that can be because there are other signals that improve. Users are staying on the site longer, users are bouncing less often, users are moving through more pages because they're confident that the site is... Users are able to find the things that they want because they're able to see them more quickly, things like that. So, there's lots of ways that these things benefit you. I think that the skills that you develop in order to manage Core Web Vitals are useful, valuable, and really, really important as a business, because you end up talking to lots of different stakeholders about what is valuable to the website, how the user's experiencing it. You're going to have to test on lots of different devices in order to see these things. You're going to have to make sure it's compatible with different browsers in order to make sure that your page is performing well. All of that stuff. Mordy Oberstein: I think it goes back to that interesting point, talking to the user and what they're actually experiencing, because I think the CRO angle of page experience is stronger than the ranking angle, because again, the ranking angle hasn't been a very powerful narrative because a lot of people haven't seen a lot of improvement based upon the corporate files. A lot of people have. Again, I'm not saying that's not a thing, but it's not a widespread thing to get widespread adoption. What is, is CRO. If you tell a site owner that if this thing moves around, this button moves around, the user will not be able to click buy. That gets adoption. I think it's interesting, just as a meta-analysis, and we discussed this briefly before we were recording the show, that it's funny that page experience and the factors that go into page experience, or particularly Core Web Vitals, haven't been widely adopted across the web. Its been a big thing in SEO or I would say in certain corners of SEO, we haven't seen the web which was Google's real goal I think, we haven't seen the web really transform into being way faster and way more efficient. Which is, by the way, good for the environment also. But leaving that aside, I think that's because it doesn't really align with how people approach building webpages from a conversion point of view. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think the thing about it is, I talked about losing weight, and it's like if you were trying to lose weight, you might say to yourself, "Okay, I won't have a donut. I won't eat that cake. I won't eat that slab of cheese. I won't have that third tub of ice cream," or whatever. That's hard because, let's say the donut is just sitting there, the donut looks great, or maybe you love eating french fries and they're your favorite thing and it's really easy for you to get those. I think it's the same with when you're building a website. People are like, "Oh, yeah. Throw this extra third party app on there, put this on here. Let's have giant photos, let's put seven videos. Let's put all of these things on there." So, you have to be, in order to do performance, and I've had conversations like this when working on web projects, where I'm like, "Yeah. No, no video." They're like, "But..." I'm like, "Nobody can see it. It doesn't load. It's not working. No. We're going to lead with text." They're like- Mordy Oberstein: YouTube is one of the things that's really slow. YouTube embeds really slow a page down. YouTube is not fast. The embed is not fast. But it's like when you go... The food example is the perfect example. But when you're hosting an event, you're hosting a PTA event, your kid's school, whatever it is. A local meetup, the food that you're going to offer is going to be junk food. You might have a carrot in the corner, one carrot for that one person kind of thing. You're going to have donuts and cakes and cookies and snacks. That's really the problem, because our association to, "If I'm going to offer light refreshments, donuts." If I'm going to build a webpage that's going to try to convert and bring my users in, and create a robust experience for them, you're thinking videos, multiple layers, fancy design, animations. You're thinking all of the, from a page experience point of view, all of the junk food automatically. The way of thinking that goes into page experience and doing that well, and the way of thinking where the average person, the average designer, the average... Whoever it is, the average whatever, building a webpage are two totally different mindsets. I think that's why it doesn't work across the web. I think in order for Google to get widespread adoption, and to make the web faster, there's going to have to be an alignment with how I normally go about thinking about what a good webpage is, just my natural association. Two, what a good webpage is from a page experience point of view, they have to align. Crystal Carter: They have to align from the very beginning. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. Crystal Carter: So, when I've worked on projects where it works really well, it's ingrained already. So, the person who's building the website is building it, and their objective is to make sure that the website is fast, as well as is visually appealing, usable, and all of that sort of stuff. So, it has to be something that is at the forefront, because if you build and then you go back and try to... It's a whole drama. This is one of the reasons why Wix has invested so many elements into the CMS, for instance, that we convert images to WebP where- Mordy Oberstein: Auto compress images. Crystal Carter: Auto compressing, if you add your fonts to your theme, that's going to preload in the fonts. We crop the pictures. So, you might put a picture in your website and we'll crop it so that when it loads, it only loads what's visible on it. There's things where the dom orders should be... Lots of different elements that are cooked into the CMS, and anyone who's building a website should be thinking in that way, where they're building it so that it's built from the very beginning with the page experience in mind, with making sure that the page is able to load and able to function on the devices, and within the network that you have. Because for instance, in some places, people are mostly on mobile, mostly. I think the last time I looked at this, the stats for Nigeria was something like 89% of people are online via mobile. I think that it's much lower in the US, but that's a real big factor. I know places where the cost of data is extremely expensive. So, if you have a website that's trying to load a giant video or something, that's not good for your users, that's not good for their page experience, that's not good for your business. So, these are things that you need to think about when you're creating content, and it should be something that's fundamental to the building process. Mordy Oberstein: If you had to ask me what will change the game for this, I think it's on the format side, meaning there's a video embed format that is just inherently faster. There is an image format, Google Traffic Web that's inherently fast. So, I'm a person building a webpage, I'm just adding... The video embed, it's automatically optimized that way. I think we're a long way off from that. Crystal Carter: This is why the food example is there. So, people are like, "Don't eat french fries, don't eat donuts, don't eat..." It's like, you need a replacement. A classic example is cars. So, people were like, "Oh, gas guzzlers and cars are gas guzzlers and it's terrible." It's like, well, if I don't have public transport where I live, how am I supposed to get where I need to go? Then people started making better electric cars, better electric cars that looks better, and that worked well, and they made hybrid cars and they were more accessible to people. So, now people can have a better alternative for something to use. If you don't have an alternative, then the idea of just going without is a harder sell for people. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's just a harder thing altogether because you're really just trying to pick apart and pick at the little crumbs, figure out ways to improve the page, where it's really about the infrastructure itself needs to change, and that's the future of page experience. Now speaking of futures, the whole idea of oh, page experience not a thing anymore. It's not a ranking system anymore. It's not important anymore. Nothing anymore. Bottom to the whole question of, is technical SEO still important? There was a whole lot of commentary on that. So, we thought we'd bring in an absolute SEO legend in Britney Muller, and have her talk about what exactly is the future of tech SEO . Britney Muller: Technical SEOs are in one of the very best positions, in my opinion, to understand and really harness AI technology. SEO is not going away, it's simply evolving. The future of technical SEO really looks like a couple of clear areas to me. One is really understanding how large language models work at their core . With your technical background, people will lean on you and trust your opinions on more technical knowledge. So, I think a lot of technical SEOs have a responsibility to better familiarize themselves with this information, so that they can effectively communicate it to the people that they work with and key stakeholders. Also to make sure that this tech is used responsibly and in the right ways, and not used for the tasks that they're inherently not good at, like information retrieval, facts, current events, you name it, that's a long list. Another part of the future, is having really strong soft skills, human skills, especially effective communication and storytelling abilities. Another one is navigating how to better understand users. We are going to see more nuanced search behavior than ever before, painting an even clearer picture of customer journeys. Technical SEOs are in a wonderful spot to help teams make use of that data. Also, really strongly believe that foundational data science and statistics 101 knowledge, is going to be huge in navigating and understanding and investigating large data sets in the future. This will be a hugely valuable asset to have in a role, and it's been a big part of why I've been investing so much time and resources into my datasci101.com content, which will hopefully be coming out soon, that delivers all the essentials in a really easy to understand way. Also, the ability to fine tune or leverage few shot learning to accomplish specific SEO tasks. So, the ability to help you and your team automate some of the more boring and repetitive tasks that occur on a regular basis, so that you can all really level up and work on higher strategy thinking, higher strategy planning, better outreach, more strategic content, you name it. You can start to free up resources to do more and more powerful things. I have a couple of quick examples. You could say, here's a content currently performing well on our site, create 10 new article ideas that might also do well. Or improve this content. Or summarize the following articles for an email roundup newsletter. I've heard that those take tons of time. What topics are covered in these page titles and what are some related topic opportunities to create content for? These opportunities go on and on and on. Again, if you understand how large language models work, what they're inherently good at, you yourself can come up with a brilliant high value application of this technology for an SEO task that hasn't been thought of before. So, keep an open mind, play around with this stuff. Lastly, unpopular opinion, mentions will be the new back links. The way things are going in the generative space, having more and more impact on search results, understanding that the quality and the amount of brand product mentions will be more important in the future. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Britney. Definitely make sure that you give Britney a follow over on Twitter, and that's at Britney Muller on Twitter , that's B-R-I-T-N-E-Y M-U-L-L-E-R over on Twitter, give her a follow. We'll make sure to link their profile in the show notes. I love the point about large language models and really understanding them, being able to leverage them. That actually falls under technical SEO. If you're a technical person, you're going to be the one to be able to get into that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, exactly. I think that that's certainly something that I've been really interested in, and I think that there's a lot of crossover when you look at how to engage with some of those things. She's absolutely right. I've learned a lot from Britney about understanding large language models actually. I think that understanding of how entities work and understanding how large language models interpret language, interpret the language that they're modeling, is really important. I think also she was saying using it for some of the tools that it's good at for instance, I think is really, really important. What certainly what I found as a technical SEO, is that some of these tools are able to help you bridge gaps with some of the technical elements, that would normally have taken you longer to do. As a technical SEO sometimes you've got a new tech stack and maybe there's a new language, or maybe there's a new tool, or maybe there's a new way of coding or something, that the team that you're working with is using, and you have to learn how to unpack that or how to make the recommendation for the best way to do it. One of the things that's useful about some of these tools is that they've got a lot of coding libraries within them, particularly ChatGPT is pretty much built on the back of Stack Overflow, so it's got a lot of coding knowledge, a lot of spreadsheet knowledge for instance. A lot of these things will help you to get to your answer quicker, because it can fill some of the gaps and reduce some of the discovery time and exploratory time that you have to do to get up to speed on certain bits of code. I agree that there are some great opportunities coming forth as a technical SEO in this space. I think that it will be fascinating to see how it unfolds. I think Britney Muller's a great person to follow to see how that all pans out. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Speaking, by the way, of tools to help you with your technical SEO, we have a great tool recommendation for you. We haven't done this segment in a while actually, so let's go, Tool Time, as we help show you a tool that can help you with your SEO performance. So, Crystal, you actually threw this my way, and I think it's a really, really cool tool. It's over at webpagetest.org, and it's run by somebody that we're really connected with. Take it away, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So, this is a tool called WebPageTest , and Henri Helvetica on Twitter put me onto this, and they run this great tool that allows you to test your webpage for performance. They also have a number of different podcasts and a lot of events that they get involved with as well. But you can test your Core Web Vitals, you can do Lighthouse, you can do visual comparison. They also allow you to bury your location. You can test desktop, you can test mobile, and it's free. So, it's free to use. The way that they normally do it is that they'll run it through a few different scenarios and you'll get your waterfall tests, you can see what number of fonts you've got going on. You can see lots of different parts of your site, in order to make sure that you are getting a good performance. I know that there are a lot of people within the web perf community who are using this very regularly, and it's something that I've seen as being really super useful. Mordy Oberstein: So, big shout out to Henri over there. Give him a follow, we'll link to his Twitter profile in this show notes. It's a lot of follows this week, and we do have another follow coming for you, for our Follow of The Week, but in order to do that, we first have to do the SEO news. So, here's this week's, Snappy SEO News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Little bit of a slow week for SEO News with July 4th in the US last week, but still have a juicy one for you, per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable. Google to work on complimentary robot.txt protocols for AI and more. Essentially, Google put in an announcement saying, "Hey, we need to figure out how to give sites control over what AI can or can't access on the site and the current construct for telling bots what they can or can't access, IE the robot.txt file is 30 years old, so we need to have a conversation with you, the web, to figure out a better way." This was a little bit contentious, and the reaction I've seen out there from folks was a little bit mixed. For example, Barry Adams put out, "Yeah, great. Now that they've already scraped all the content and they've trained all of their systems, now they're saying we need to have control, and rather give you control over it." I think this is a good thing in general for the web to re-figure this out and to have some kind of way of giving instructions to the AI bots or programs out there, to tell them how they can or can't interact with your website. I think one of the points that has irked people over time has been, with Google we know the rules of engagement. If you don't know index the page, Google can crawl and index the content and it's out there. When, let's say open AI came out, we had no idea, for example, they were going through our content, they were running through the web and pulling in all this content to train their AI systems. So, the rules of engagement were unknown, and I think that's bothered some content creators. So, definitely going forward, having some kind of way of systematically and transparently having a way of blocking what the AI can or can't access is obviously a healthy thing for the web, regardless of where it's coming in the timeline. Okay. Item number two. Something not that practically important, but super interesting from an SEO point of view, from Matt Southern, over at Search Engine Journal. "Twitter's Google rankings plummet following actions by Elon Musk." So, basically what Twitter did was say, "Hey, if you're searching on the web and you're not logged in and you come across," only the Twitter that is, "And you come across, let's say a Twitter URL on Google, and you're not logged into Twitter, you won't be able to access that content." So, normally if I was searching on the web, I'm not logged into Twitter, I come across a Twitter URL on Google, I click on the Twitter link, I am still able to see that Tweet. When Twitter blocked you from doing that unless you were logged in, Google stopped indexing content. Tons of content was no longer being shown on the SERP from Twitter, and they lost a ton of traffic and a ton of ranking URLs, and blah, blah, blah, blah. Long story short, Twitter put a fix in for this so that they showed an overlay, but underneath the overlay was the actual Tweet and Google was able to see the actual content anyway. Once that happened, once that fix went into place, so then the rankings came back and all those URLs were now back in the index, and all of the metrics around Twitter, from the Google SERP, are back to relatively normal. So, super interesting little case study. We'll link to the article in the show notes. You should definitely have a look at it. It's just one of those weird SEO anomalies that happen. It's very rare for something like that to happen. So cool to read about it, cool to see about it. Definitely again, check out that URL, look at it because it is super unique and super interesting, and that is this week's, Snappy News. So, with Snappy News done now, we can actually get to... I hate putting it that way. Like, oh, we've just done the news, we can get to the Follow of The Week. Not true. But in terms of pivoting and continuity and flow of the show, here's this week's, Follow of The Week. It's the one, the only, Dan Shappir, Dan fricking Shappir, is our Follow of The Week. Dan Shappir used to work over here at Wix. I had many, many, many, many, many, many conversations about performance with Dan Shappir. If you're talking about Wix's improvements around Core Web Vitals, Dan was a major part of that, and he's got his own podcast, that's the JavaScript Jabber , putting that in the show notes as well so make sure you check out his podcast. And you check out his Twitter profile over at Dan Shappir, D-A-N S-H-A-P-P-I-R, where he's their tech lead perf... Tech lead rather, over at Next Insurance. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Dan Shappir's a great dude. He's not only incredibly smart, but he's very personable and funny and nice- Mordy Oberstein: Super funny. Crystal Carter: He's brilliant. We have on the SEO Hub , we have a webinar recording from back in the day, when he was talking about Core Web Vitals, when it was peak Core Web Vitals back in the day. He gets into a lot of the information there, and it's great to see him speak in the way that he thinks about performance and the way that he thinks about making sure that sites are performing well. He's very methodical, and again, like I said, and also very personable, and with a great sense of humor. So, shout out to Dan. Can't recommend him enough. Mordy Oberstein: An absolute great follow. You're absolutely right. If you ask Dan something, you go on Twitter, you follow Dan, you ask him a question, he will give you an answer. He will engage with you. He'll take the time for you. He's a really great guy. So, absolutely give Dan a follow. Cannot recommend him any higher. Crystal Carter: And he'll give you an answer in plain English. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. This is the thing. Crystal Carter: It can get very technical and stuff, but Dan's really great at explaining it in a way that makes sense, even if you're not in the weeds. So, yeah. Great. Mordy Oberstein: Let me also tell you something else in plain English, that now that we've done the Follow of The Week, that means that this is the end of the show. Crystal Carter: This is the end. The end is near. Mordy Oberstein: The end. Well, that went morbid real quick. Crystal Carter: Oh, gosh. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I'll tell you what's not morbid is that we'll be back next week. So, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into niche sites and the web. Look for us wherever you consume your podcasts, or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, over at wix.com/seo/learn. Link to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn . Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Britney Muller Henri Helvetica Dan Shappir Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Google: Page experience is not a ranking system, but it is a ranking signal WebPageTest JavaScript Jabber News: Google To Work On Complementary Robots.txt Protocols For AI & More Twitter’s Google Rankings Plummet Following Actions By Elon Musk Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Britney Muller Henri Helvetica Dan Shappir Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Google: Page experience is not a ranking system, but it is a ranking signal WebPageTest JavaScript Jabber News: Google To Work On Complementary Robots.txt Protocols For AI & More Twitter’s Google Rankings Plummet Following Actions By Elon Musk Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up . Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and I am joined by, now batting, number two, this shortstop, Crystal Carter. Number two, Head of SEO Communications. Crystal Carter: Thank you, Mordy for that introduction. I never played shortstop. I played outfield. I used to do a little bit of that when I was playing softball, when I was 12 years old. Yeah. On the Reds. We won no games that season. Mordy Oberstein: Not even the actual Reds. Crystal Carter: There you go. Yeah, there you go. We had a good time. Mordy Oberstein: That's all it counts. By the way, just that was my Bob Shep... Bob Sheppard is a legendary announcer for the Yankees. He literally announced the players from 1900 through 2014. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. He was 550 when he retired. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: He looked like the Crypt Keeper at that point. That's how he announced. He announced, "Now batting, the shortstop. Number two, Derek Jeter." Crystal Carter: There you go. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know why you were the shortstop, because you're number two, which is Derek Jeter's number. The only person who's getting any of this is basically Glenn Gabe right now. Crystal Carter: Hey, we to cater to lots of folks, including our SEO friends, all of our SEO friends. Mordy Oberstein: Before we completely lose the audience on my baseball nonsense, the SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter , but where you can also measure site performance, including Core Web Vitals no matter what. No matter your site's level of traffic, yep. Probably the only place on the web, where to be honest, you can have field data without traffic thresholds, is right inside of the Wix Site Performance Dashboard. Crystal Carter: I love that site performance dashboard. It's one of my favorite things, because I also love field data, because field data is better than lab data. Lab data is useful, but field data is what actually happened. Mordy Oberstein: What position in the field did you play, shortstop? Crystal Carter: Ha, ha, ha. Mordy Oberstein: That was so perfect. I didn't even plan it. Crystal Carter: Ha, ha. The field data that I got when I was playing outfield was that I needed to run around a lot to make sure that I was in line with the shortstop, in order to get the ball back towards the home base so we didn't get so many runs in from the other team. Mordy Oberstein: Why are we talking about baseball today? Don't know. But why are we talking about performance? Well, performance, it's a little bit scandalous right now. Okay. Performance, as it pertains to SEO, needs a little bit of clarification, so today we're covering, what did Google say that brought the question of page experience and ranking back into question? What is the status of the page experience update? Performance and SEO? What's the deal with that? To help us, legend, legend, absolute legend, Britney Muller stops by to share her thoughts on the future of tech SEO, and we'll dive into a special little tool to help you go deep into page performance. Of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So, take a bow and bask in the glory of a great performance, as Episode Number 46 of the SERP's Up Podcast pulls up the curtain on the significance of performance in SEO. Crystal Carter: So, many metaphors. Mordy Oberstein: I can't help myself. Crystal Carter: You're doing it over time. Mordy Oberstein: Literally the highlight of my week is writing that little section. Crystal Carter: I would say you need to get out more, but I know that's not your thing. Mordy Oberstein: No, not my thing. I have a Shakespeare one coming up, by the way. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah. By the way, I hate Shakespeare for the record. Crystal Carter: To B2B or not to B2B? Mordy Oberstein: I obviously use that one because that's like- Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Mordy Oberstein: I only know three. Crystal Carter: Alas. Mordy Oberstein: I use all three. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Look for it wherever you consume your podcast in the future. Crystal Carter: Indeed, indeed. Well, moving on to a non-Shakespearean topic. We're talking about page experience, and the reason why we're talking about page experience is because, basically in April, 2023, we had an update from Google on the page experience situation, which said that they were basically adding it into the Helpful Content Update . This got a lot of interest from different SEOs. So, essentially they said, in their blog post on Google Search Central , they said, "Helpful content generally offers a good page experience. That's why today we've added a section on page experience to our guidance on creating helpful content, and revise our help page about page experience. We think this will help site owners consider page experience more holistically, as part of their content creation process." They basically said, "It's not one thing, it's all part of the whole SEO experience." This was written by Danny Sullivan. They posted that onto the Google Search Central blog. Then later on, they added a note clarifying and they said, "We haven't introduced any major new aspects of page experience to consider versus our previous guidance. If you have been paying attention to these things we've talked about in the past, such as Core Web Vitals , all that remains as before." The reason why they had to make that clarification was because SEOs had a really big response to this, a really big response to this. Mordy Oberstein: Understatement. Crystal Carter: Understatement, to the point where some people were like, "Google's saying it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter at all. What were we doing spending all of our time worrying about that?" Marie Haynes was like, "No, I think it still matters. I think it's still important. It's just not their system anymore." Google went back to clarify after this, explaining that one of the reasons why they changed it... So, they wrote one of those... Twitter's allowing people to write really long posts now, and they wrote one of those really, really, really long posts all about this clarifying their guidance , and they said that, "If you want to be successful with the core ranking systems of Google, consider these and other aspects of page experience." So, not just Core Web Vitals, not just being mobile friendly, but consider these as well as other things. They also said that they should have never had page experience on their ranking systems page at all, because they've said that they are ranking signals. So, they're saying that, "We had some things that were listed there that shouldn't have been there, and they shouldn't have been on the ranking systems page. They're signals that contribute to systems." Mordy Oberstein: It's not one unified thing. Crystal Carter: No. Which is what they clarified when they said, "It's part of the helpful content system . It doesn't mean that it doesn't apply, it just means that it's part of the system." It's not its own- Mordy Oberstein: It's not a separate system. This is where it gets... You can see why people got really confused. Crystal Carter: People were really confused. So, I think that when we're thinking about this, it's really important to remember that, because at the end of the day, they said, "Google's core ranking systems looks for reward content that gives a good page experience," end of. I agree with that, and I always have, because the page experience thing, and with all of Google's ranking systems, they're all a metric of value for users. What the page experience system and the Core Web Vital situation was helping us to do was provide better value for users. Slow websites, websites are loading super slowly, they're annoying. Websites with cumulative layout shift, they're annoying. We didn't have a name for that before we had that. Interstitials that are popping up all the time and you can't close them and you can't find them- Mordy Oberstein: You said interstitials. I'm forever calling them that now forever. Forever interstitials. Crystal Carter: Oh, gosh. So, these things pop up all the time and they're everywhere, they're not good page experience. I think that these are things that we need to make sure that we're providing that for our users, that we're providing good page experience for our users, because that is genuinely helpful. It doesn't matter really whether or not it's a ranking signal or a ranking system, it's still valuable and it's still important and it's still worth measuring and worth looking at. The thing I think is interesting about this whole thing is that Google seems to be rolling back some of the elements that they're doing around this. So, for instance, they're deprecating the Mobile-Friendly tests at of the end of the year. They're also deprecating the Mobile-Friendly API. Then they also deprecated the Test My Site tool in 2022. This means that, SEOs will have different tools for accessing this, and SEOs who want to access web performance elements and want to improve web performance elements might have to invest in more dedicated tools, more specific tools. There are a number of web performance tools around this, rather than having them available as openly to everyone. But they've also added loads of these tools into Chrome, so the Chrome Web Dev tools as well. So, there's opportunities to see all these things. But I think that if you're an SEO and you're wondering, do I need to worry about Core Web Vitals? Do I need to worry about having good page experience? Yeah, you do. But do it because it's good for your users, and that's why you should be doing it. Mordy Oberstein: Well, that was always the thing. All the data studies show, and its been Barry Schwartz's big thing when he talks about the ranking impact has been minimal in aggregate. That doesn't mean in specific instances, because Google's talked about this, that if it's a tiebreaker between this page and that page, it could be a very big deal, or in certain instances it could be a very big deal. But as a broad impact across the web, meh on the rankings for basically whatever data study has come out. Which is a separate question, by the way. I think what's gone on here is so confusing at so many different levels. One is, the deprecation of a tool sends a signal. It sends a strong signal and it's very confusing. At the same time, it's very confusing that they said, "Wait. They're not one unified ranking system. That's why we're separating them out," because the way they marketed it, and I'm not being critical here, I'm just talking fact, the way that it was presented very, very strong was like, this is the new page experience update. It wasn't like, "Oh, we have this signal and that signal, and this is all going to contribute together." It was not presented that way. It was very, very much cohesively, "This is the page experience update." When they took that off the page, off their ranking systems page, it was very confusing because of that. At the same time, I think there's a third thing going on, which is I think Google doesn't want you to define page experience in terms of Core Web Vitals. I think it wants you to look at page experience much more holistically, which is why they added it to the Helpful Content Update Guidance , because they want you... By the way, when they did, they also added things like, making sure that you can easily access the main content on the page as part of experience, meaning they're trying to make you think of experience in a much wider way than just Core Web Vitals. Crystal Carter: I think that that's really interesting, because I think during all of the... There was a lot of furore about around getting ready for Core Web Vitals and all of that sort of stuff, and certainly at Wix we invested a lot in things to make sure that we... I mean, we increased the Core Web Vitals performance by tenfold . Mordy Oberstein: I think it's more than that. The tenfold number by the way, we came with that number years ago. I think it passed that at this point. Crystal Carter: I think that that's a prime example. So, I think, last time I checked it was something like 65% of US websites on Wix were passing Core Web Vitals . That's good. Fundamentally, that's a good thing. But it's a fundamentally good thing, and that is something that Google is giving people tools to measure, and help people measure those things, but they're not all of it. In the same way that if you were trying to get healthy, losing weight for instance could be a relevant metric for whether or not you are healthy, but it is not the only metric, for instance. So, if you lost a bunch of weight, that might be a sign that your lifestyle is healthier, that might not be a sign that your lifestyle is healthier. I've definitely lost weight in times of stress, where that was not good. That was not good. So, sometimes I think that it's a question of Google making sure that people are approaching page experience in a more nuanced way, and in a way that is more beneficial to the web overall, which is their general goal. All of these signals are tools for measuring value for users. I've seen it before where I've worked on sites, and this was before I think, even the page experience update came in, where at a site we improved page speed and we saw our rankings improve. But part of that can be because there are other signals that improve. Users are staying on the site longer, users are bouncing less often, users are moving through more pages because they're confident that the site is... Users are able to find the things that they want because they're able to see them more quickly, things like that. So, there's lots of ways that these things benefit you. I think that the skills that you develop in order to manage Core Web Vitals are useful, valuable, and really, really important as a business, because you end up talking to lots of different stakeholders about what is valuable to the website, how the user's experiencing it. You're going to have to test on lots of different devices in order to see these things. You're going to have to make sure it's compatible with different browsers in order to make sure that your page is performing well. All of that stuff. Mordy Oberstein: I think it goes back to that interesting point, talking to the user and what they're actually experiencing, because I think the CRO angle of page experience is stronger than the ranking angle, because again, the ranking angle hasn't been a very powerful narrative because a lot of people haven't seen a lot of improvement based upon the corporate files. A lot of people have. Again, I'm not saying that's not a thing, but it's not a widespread thing to get widespread adoption. What is, is CRO. If you tell a site owner that if this thing moves around, this button moves around, the user will not be able to click buy. That gets adoption. I think it's interesting, just as a meta-analysis, and we discussed this briefly before we were recording the show, that it's funny that page experience and the factors that go into page experience, or particularly Core Web Vitals, haven't been widely adopted across the web. Its been a big thing in SEO or I would say in certain corners of SEO, we haven't seen the web which was Google's real goal I think, we haven't seen the web really transform into being way faster and way more efficient. Which is, by the way, good for the environment also. But leaving that aside, I think that's because it doesn't really align with how people approach building webpages from a conversion point of view. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think the thing about it is, I talked about losing weight, and it's like if you were trying to lose weight, you might say to yourself, "Okay, I won't have a donut. I won't eat that cake. I won't eat that slab of cheese. I won't have that third tub of ice cream," or whatever. That's hard because, let's say the donut is just sitting there, the donut looks great, or maybe you love eating french fries and they're your favorite thing and it's really easy for you to get those. I think it's the same with when you're building a website. People are like, "Oh, yeah. Throw this extra third party app on there, put this on here. Let's have giant photos, let's put seven videos. Let's put all of these things on there." So, you have to be, in order to do performance, and I've had conversations like this when working on web projects, where I'm like, "Yeah. No, no video." They're like, "But..." I'm like, "Nobody can see it. It doesn't load. It's not working. No. We're going to lead with text." They're like- Mordy Oberstein: YouTube is one of the things that's really slow. YouTube embeds really slow a page down. YouTube is not fast. The embed is not fast. But it's like when you go... The food example is the perfect example. But when you're hosting an event, you're hosting a PTA event, your kid's school, whatever it is. A local meetup, the food that you're going to offer is going to be junk food. You might have a carrot in the corner, one carrot for that one person kind of thing. You're going to have donuts and cakes and cookies and snacks. That's really the problem, because our association to, "If I'm going to offer light refreshments, donuts." If I'm going to build a webpage that's going to try to convert and bring my users in, and create a robust experience for them, you're thinking videos, multiple layers, fancy design, animations. You're thinking all of the, from a page experience point of view, all of the junk food automatically. The way of thinking that goes into page experience and doing that well, and the way of thinking where the average person, the average designer, the average... Whoever it is, the average whatever, building a webpage are two totally different mindsets. I think that's why it doesn't work across the web. I think in order for Google to get widespread adoption, and to make the web faster, there's going to have to be an alignment with how I normally go about thinking about what a good webpage is, just my natural association. Two, what a good webpage is from a page experience point of view, they have to align. Crystal Carter: They have to align from the very beginning. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. Crystal Carter: So, when I've worked on projects where it works really well, it's ingrained already. So, the person who's building the website is building it, and their objective is to make sure that the website is fast, as well as is visually appealing, usable, and all of that sort of stuff. So, it has to be something that is at the forefront, because if you build and then you go back and try to... It's a whole drama. This is one of the reasons why Wix has invested so many elements into the CMS, for instance, that we convert images to WebP where- Mordy Oberstein: Auto compress images. Crystal Carter: Auto compressing, if you add your fonts to your theme, that's going to preload in the fonts. We crop the pictures. So, you might put a picture in your website and we'll crop it so that when it loads, it only loads what's visible on it. There's things where the dom orders should be... Lots of different elements that are cooked into the CMS, and anyone who's building a website should be thinking in that way, where they're building it so that it's built from the very beginning with the page experience in mind, with making sure that the page is able to load and able to function on the devices, and within the network that you have. Because for instance, in some places, people are mostly on mobile, mostly. I think the last time I looked at this, the stats for Nigeria was something like 89% of people are online via mobile. I think that it's much lower in the US, but that's a real big factor. I know places where the cost of data is extremely expensive. So, if you have a website that's trying to load a giant video or something, that's not good for your users, that's not good for their page experience, that's not good for your business. So, these are things that you need to think about when you're creating content, and it should be something that's fundamental to the building process. Mordy Oberstein: If you had to ask me what will change the game for this, I think it's on the format side, meaning there's a video embed format that is just inherently faster. There is an image format, Google Traffic Web that's inherently fast. So, I'm a person building a webpage, I'm just adding... The video embed, it's automatically optimized that way. I think we're a long way off from that. Crystal Carter: This is why the food example is there. So, people are like, "Don't eat french fries, don't eat donuts, don't eat..." It's like, you need a replacement. A classic example is cars. So, people were like, "Oh, gas guzzlers and cars are gas guzzlers and it's terrible." It's like, well, if I don't have public transport where I live, how am I supposed to get where I need to go? Then people started making better electric cars, better electric cars that looks better, and that worked well, and they made hybrid cars and they were more accessible to people. So, now people can have a better alternative for something to use. If you don't have an alternative, then the idea of just going without is a harder sell for people. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's just a harder thing altogether because you're really just trying to pick apart and pick at the little crumbs, figure out ways to improve the page, where it's really about the infrastructure itself needs to change, and that's the future of page experience. Now speaking of futures, the whole idea of oh, page experience not a thing anymore. It's not a ranking system anymore. It's not important anymore. Nothing anymore. Bottom to the whole question of, is technical SEO still important? There was a whole lot of commentary on that. So, we thought we'd bring in an absolute SEO legend in Britney Muller, and have her talk about what exactly is the future of tech SEO . Britney Muller: Technical SEOs are in one of the very best positions, in my opinion, to understand and really harness AI technology. SEO is not going away, it's simply evolving. The future of technical SEO really looks like a couple of clear areas to me. One is really understanding how large language models work at their core . With your technical background, people will lean on you and trust your opinions on more technical knowledge. So, I think a lot of technical SEOs have a responsibility to better familiarize themselves with this information, so that they can effectively communicate it to the people that they work with and key stakeholders. Also to make sure that this tech is used responsibly and in the right ways, and not used for the tasks that they're inherently not good at, like information retrieval, facts, current events, you name it, that's a long list. Another part of the future, is having really strong soft skills, human skills, especially effective communication and storytelling abilities. Another one is navigating how to better understand users. We are going to see more nuanced search behavior than ever before, painting an even clearer picture of customer journeys. Technical SEOs are in a wonderful spot to help teams make use of that data. Also, really strongly believe that foundational data science and statistics 101 knowledge, is going to be huge in navigating and understanding and investigating large data sets in the future. This will be a hugely valuable asset to have in a role, and it's been a big part of why I've been investing so much time and resources into my datasci101.com content, which will hopefully be coming out soon, that delivers all the essentials in a really easy to understand way. Also, the ability to fine tune or leverage few shot learning to accomplish specific SEO tasks. So, the ability to help you and your team automate some of the more boring and repetitive tasks that occur on a regular basis, so that you can all really level up and work on higher strategy thinking, higher strategy planning, better outreach, more strategic content, you name it. You can start to free up resources to do more and more powerful things. I have a couple of quick examples. You could say, here's a content currently performing well on our site, create 10 new article ideas that might also do well. Or improve this content. Or summarize the following articles for an email roundup newsletter. I've heard that those take tons of time. What topics are covered in these page titles and what are some related topic opportunities to create content for? These opportunities go on and on and on. Again, if you understand how large language models work, what they're inherently good at, you yourself can come up with a brilliant high value application of this technology for an SEO task that hasn't been thought of before. So, keep an open mind, play around with this stuff. Lastly, unpopular opinion, mentions will be the new back links. The way things are going in the generative space, having more and more impact on search results, understanding that the quality and the amount of brand product mentions will be more important in the future. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Britney. Definitely make sure that you give Britney a follow over on Twitter, and that's at Britney Muller on Twitter , that's B-R-I-T-N-E-Y M-U-L-L-E-R over on Twitter, give her a follow. We'll make sure to link their profile in the show notes. I love the point about large language models and really understanding them, being able to leverage them. That actually falls under technical SEO. If you're a technical person, you're going to be the one to be able to get into that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, exactly. I think that that's certainly something that I've been really interested in, and I think that there's a lot of crossover when you look at how to engage with some of those things. She's absolutely right. I've learned a lot from Britney about understanding large language models actually. I think that understanding of how entities work and understanding how large language models interpret language, interpret the language that they're modeling, is really important. I think also she was saying using it for some of the tools that it's good at for instance, I think is really, really important. What certainly what I found as a technical SEO, is that some of these tools are able to help you bridge gaps with some of the technical elements, that would normally have taken you longer to do. As a technical SEO sometimes you've got a new tech stack and maybe there's a new language, or maybe there's a new tool, or maybe there's a new way of coding or something, that the team that you're working with is using, and you have to learn how to unpack that or how to make the recommendation for the best way to do it. One of the things that's useful about some of these tools is that they've got a lot of coding libraries within them, particularly ChatGPT is pretty much built on the back of Stack Overflow, so it's got a lot of coding knowledge, a lot of spreadsheet knowledge for instance. A lot of these things will help you to get to your answer quicker, because it can fill some of the gaps and reduce some of the discovery time and exploratory time that you have to do to get up to speed on certain bits of code. I agree that there are some great opportunities coming forth as a technical SEO in this space. I think that it will be fascinating to see how it unfolds. I think Britney Muller's a great person to follow to see how that all pans out. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Speaking, by the way, of tools to help you with your technical SEO, we have a great tool recommendation for you. We haven't done this segment in a while actually, so let's go, Tool Time, as we help show you a tool that can help you with your SEO performance. So, Crystal, you actually threw this my way, and I think it's a really, really cool tool. It's over at webpagetest.org, and it's run by somebody that we're really connected with. Take it away, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So, this is a tool called WebPageTest , and Henri Helvetica on Twitter put me onto this, and they run this great tool that allows you to test your webpage for performance. They also have a number of different podcasts and a lot of events that they get involved with as well. But you can test your Core Web Vitals, you can do Lighthouse, you can do visual comparison. They also allow you to bury your location. You can test desktop, you can test mobile, and it's free. So, it's free to use. The way that they normally do it is that they'll run it through a few different scenarios and you'll get your waterfall tests, you can see what number of fonts you've got going on. You can see lots of different parts of your site, in order to make sure that you are getting a good performance. I know that there are a lot of people within the web perf community who are using this very regularly, and it's something that I've seen as being really super useful. Mordy Oberstein: So, big shout out to Henri over there. Give him a follow, we'll link to his Twitter profile in this show notes. It's a lot of follows this week, and we do have another follow coming for you, for our Follow of The Week, but in order to do that, we first have to do the SEO news. So, here's this week's, Snappy SEO News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Little bit of a slow week for SEO News with July 4th in the US last week, but still have a juicy one for you, per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable. Google to work on complimentary robot.txt protocols for AI and more. Essentially, Google put in an announcement saying, "Hey, we need to figure out how to give sites control over what AI can or can't access on the site and the current construct for telling bots what they can or can't access, IE the robot.txt file is 30 years old, so we need to have a conversation with you, the web, to figure out a better way." This was a little bit contentious, and the reaction I've seen out there from folks was a little bit mixed. For example, Barry Adams put out, "Yeah, great. Now that they've already scraped all the content and they've trained all of their systems, now they're saying we need to have control, and rather give you control over it." I think this is a good thing in general for the web to re-figure this out and to have some kind of way of giving instructions to the AI bots or programs out there, to tell them how they can or can't interact with your website. I think one of the points that has irked people over time has been, with Google we know the rules of engagement. If you don't know index the page, Google can crawl and index the content and it's out there. When, let's say open AI came out, we had no idea, for example, they were going through our content, they were running through the web and pulling in all this content to train their AI systems. So, the rules of engagement were unknown, and I think that's bothered some content creators. So, definitely going forward, having some kind of way of systematically and transparently having a way of blocking what the AI can or can't access is obviously a healthy thing for the web, regardless of where it's coming in the timeline. Okay. Item number two. Something not that practically important, but super interesting from an SEO point of view, from Matt Southern, over at Search Engine Journal. "Twitter's Google rankings plummet following actions by Elon Musk." So, basically what Twitter did was say, "Hey, if you're searching on the web and you're not logged in and you come across," only the Twitter that is, "And you come across, let's say a Twitter URL on Google, and you're not logged into Twitter, you won't be able to access that content." So, normally if I was searching on the web, I'm not logged into Twitter, I come across a Twitter URL on Google, I click on the Twitter link, I am still able to see that Tweet. When Twitter blocked you from doing that unless you were logged in, Google stopped indexing content. Tons of content was no longer being shown on the SERP from Twitter, and they lost a ton of traffic and a ton of ranking URLs, and blah, blah, blah, blah. Long story short, Twitter put a fix in for this so that they showed an overlay, but underneath the overlay was the actual Tweet and Google was able to see the actual content anyway. Once that happened, once that fix went into place, so then the rankings came back and all those URLs were now back in the index, and all of the metrics around Twitter, from the Google SERP, are back to relatively normal. So, super interesting little case study. We'll link to the article in the show notes. You should definitely have a look at it. It's just one of those weird SEO anomalies that happen. It's very rare for something like that to happen. So cool to read about it, cool to see about it. Definitely again, check out that URL, look at it because it is super unique and super interesting, and that is this week's, Snappy News. So, with Snappy News done now, we can actually get to... I hate putting it that way. Like, oh, we've just done the news, we can get to the Follow of The Week. Not true. But in terms of pivoting and continuity and flow of the show, here's this week's, Follow of The Week. It's the one, the only, Dan Shappir, Dan fricking Shappir, is our Follow of The Week. Dan Shappir used to work over here at Wix. I had many, many, many, many, many, many conversations about performance with Dan Shappir. If you're talking about Wix's improvements around Core Web Vitals, Dan was a major part of that, and he's got his own podcast, that's the JavaScript Jabber , putting that in the show notes as well so make sure you check out his podcast. And you check out his Twitter profile over at Dan Shappir, D-A-N S-H-A-P-P-I-R, where he's their tech lead perf... Tech lead rather, over at Next Insurance. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Dan Shappir's a great dude. He's not only incredibly smart, but he's very personable and funny and nice- Mordy Oberstein: Super funny. Crystal Carter: He's brilliant. We have on the SEO Hub , we have a webinar recording from back in the day, when he was talking about Core Web Vitals, when it was peak Core Web Vitals back in the day. He gets into a lot of the information there, and it's great to see him speak in the way that he thinks about performance and the way that he thinks about making sure that sites are performing well. He's very methodical, and again, like I said, and also very personable, and with a great sense of humor. So, shout out to Dan. Can't recommend him enough. Mordy Oberstein: An absolute great follow. You're absolutely right. If you ask Dan something, you go on Twitter, you follow Dan, you ask him a question, he will give you an answer. He will engage with you. He'll take the time for you. He's a really great guy. So, absolutely give Dan a follow. Cannot recommend him any higher. Crystal Carter: And he'll give you an answer in plain English. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. This is the thing. Crystal Carter: It can get very technical and stuff, but Dan's really great at explaining it in a way that makes sense, even if you're not in the weeds. So, yeah. Great. Mordy Oberstein: Let me also tell you something else in plain English, that now that we've done the Follow of The Week, that means that this is the end of the show. Crystal Carter: This is the end. The end is near. Mordy Oberstein: The end. Well, that went morbid real quick. Crystal Carter: Oh, gosh. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I'll tell you what's not morbid is that we'll be back next week. So, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into niche sites and the web. Look for us wherever you consume your podcasts, or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, over at wix.com/seo/learn. Link to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn . Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. 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