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Are digital marketing conferences right for you? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter alongside Sparktoro’s VP of Marketing, Amanda Natividad, help you decide if you're ready to board the digital marketing conference train. Plus, the founder of Brighton SEO’s international conference series, Kelvin Newman, joins to discuss securing a speaking role at a conference. Still unsure if digital marketing conferences will pay off? Tune in this week as the experts help you decide on episode 101 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Are digital marketing conferences worth it? Are digital marketing conferences right for you? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter alongside Sparktoro’s VP of Marketing, Amanda Natividad, help you decide if you're ready to board the digital marketing conference train. Plus, the founder of Brighton SEO’s international conference series, Kelvin Newman, joins to discuss securing a speaking role at a conference. Still unsure if digital marketing conferences will pay off? Tune in this week as the experts help you decide on episode 101 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 101 | September 11, 2024 | 57 MIN 00:00 / 56:55 This week’s guests Amanda Natividad Amanda Natividad is VP of Marketing for audience research startup, SparkToro. In her spare time, she writes a marketing newsletter called the Menu (with over 15k subscribers) and teaches Content Marketing 201. She’s also a contributor for Adweek, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist. Amanda previously led marketing for Growth Machine, led marketing for Liftopia, built Fitbit’s B2B content program, and led content and communications for NatureBox. Kelvin Newman Kelvin Newman is founder of brightonSEO, one of the best search marketing conferences out there. What started as a tiny meet-up of SEO geeks has exploded into a massive event that draws thousands of attendees from all over the world. With his finger firmly on the pulse of digital marketing, Kelvin’s known for his down-to-earth approach and knack for making SEO both fun and accessible. He also founded Rough Agenda, an events company that puts on marketing & advertising events that people love to attend. Always up for sharing his knowledge (and maybe a few laughs), Kelvin’s a true legend in the SEO scene, inspiring many with his passion and expertise. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who is the keynote to our podcast. The one, the only head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hear ye, hear ye. Here I am on the podcast speaking about things and in a keynote kind of way. That's not what people say. That would be a terrible, terrible way to open a keynote. Hear ye, hear ye, conference attendees. Mordy Oberstein: With a bell from the 1700s. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That sort of thing. People would- Mordy Oberstein: It sounds like the plague is coming. Crystal Carter: I don't think people would be into that, especially like ... Mordy Oberstein: Unless it was a conference about plagues. Crystal Carter: No. Well, I mean, yeah, I guess so. But I think they would be more worried. They'd be like, "No, is it?" They would have the details and they would be more worried. I don't think that if you were speaking to epidemiologists that that would be the way to open your conference. Mordy Oberstein: Probably not. If it's a really niche audience. Well, anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can get all of your events, structured data markup on all of your event pages on both Wix and Wix Studio done for you automatically. It's all automated and it all happens that you haven't got to do anything. That's what makes it great because that's automated. As this week we're talking about, should I even go to a digital marketing or SEO conference or event? How do you even know what conferences to go to and are they even worth it? What should your goals be when going to a live digital marketing event? And so you want to go to an SEO digital marketing conference, but how do you justify the cost? SparkToro's VP of marketing, Amanda Natividad will join us in just a jiffy to help you decide if you should punch your conference ticket or not. Plus, the founder of Brighton SEO's conference series, Kelvin Newman stops by the chat about how to pitch to be a speaker at a digital marketing conference. Plus, we have your Snappies of SEO News and who you should be following a social media for more SEO awesomeness. So join us as we help you summit the mountain that is deciding on the pros and cons of the digital marketing conference world as we expose you to a conference information fest on this, the 101st episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Did I miss any generic conference suffixes there? I got summit, con, world, expo and fest in there. Crystal Carter: I mean, you- Mordy Oberstein: That's a work or art, by the way. Crystal Carter: It was the kind of thing that a pundit on a panel might say. Mordy Oberstein: Well done. Well done. Okay. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much. Mordy Oberstein: So conferences are kind of costly, they can be. There's the trip itself, the flight, the hotel, the ticket for the actual conference, and does it actually make sense to go to a live conference? I don't pay for a webinar. I just kind of show up. What's the value of going to a conference? So please welcome to the show, the VP of Marketing over at SparkToro, which is a fabulous tool. I'm just going to say that I love that tool. Amanda Natividad, welcome to the SERP's Up podcast. Amanda Natividad: Hear ye, hear ye. I am here with my own cowbell of some sort. Crystal Carter: More cowbell. Mordy Oberstein: More cowbell. Crystal Carter: Always. Amanda Natividad: Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we're so happy you're here. Crystal Carter: So pleased to have you on the podcast. Honestly, a great person to talk to about this topic. Mordy Oberstein: Because full pitch, you are about to run your own conference. Amanda Natividad: Yes. Yeah, this is going to be SparkToro's first in-person conference, and we're really pumped about it. I mean, before I was marketing to marketers, I had some experience in running conferences for the HR and benefits space, and then of course my boss, Rand Fishkin, who people here might've heard have ... Obviously had built up MozCon and everything. So we have very strong opinions about conferences and we're really excited about it. I think we're really trying to do something different, something fresh, but we're also trying to figure out how to not market it that way because every conference organizer says, "No, we're different. We're fresh, we're exciting." And everyone is different in their own way. But we're going to try to figure out, well, we'll tell you what's different, and we'll position the conference around that. And then hopefully you will agree that it is different and that you will want to come. Mordy Oberstein: Where can people find it? Amanda Natividad: Oh, people can find it on the SparkToro website, sparktoro.com/sparktogether. This is the day long Spark Together summit. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Link in the show notes. Crystal Carter: And I think the thing that really makes the conference is really the vibe. That's really, really what makes the difference between one conference or another, because people will have ... A lot of conferences will have speakers and they'll have expos, and they'll have exhibitors and they'll have merch, and they'll have things like that. But really the difference is when you get there, how it feels, which is very, very tricky to, I don't know, quantify or whatever, but I certainly know that your team, the team at SparkToro, I don't think I would be wrong in describing you small but mighty. I think you've discussed that your team, you keep it tight for a reason. And I think that one of the things I'm really excited for about the event is I've met you in person. I know you energy. I've met Rand in person, I know his energy, and I know that the kinds of things that you as a team prioritize and I think it's going to be a great event because you'll be able to bring that emphasis, that energy into a real life space. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, that's absolutely the hope. I mean, so I have been toying with the idea of positioning it around, this is like an executive retreat except everyone's invited. Crystal Carter: Right. Amanda Natividad: That's kind of the vibe we want. And so by that, that means, I guess I haven't had a ton of experience with this, but I've gotten to go to a couple of events that were like founders retreats essentially, where various founders have spoken vulnerably about their stories. Like, "Here's where I got to where I am today." Or, "Here's about this time that I sold my business, and it actually went really well. But here are all the steps that we took to make sure that we were giving our employees great compensation." Things like that, that not everyone talks about at a conference. So we wanted to encapsulate that, which is why it's a storytelling conference. That's another thing we say, where each speaker is invited, speakers that we've invited, we've chosen and we've asked them to share a story that they've never told before. Something vulnerable, something really candid that has some kind of really transparent detail that they've never shared. Because our belief is that that's how we best learn. We best learn through stories and we learn through other people sharing their experiences, warts and all. So we have that. And then the other piece is, especially because it's our first event, we're keeping it relatively small. We have a goal of getting to 200 attendees. I think at the time of this recording, we have 30 or 40 tickets left and a couple months to go. So fingers crossed we get there. And the other thing we want to do is because it's going to be small enough, we're also hosting this sort of mini mastermind session where we'll put people into small groups. We'll have facilitators run the hour or so, and invite people to share a business problem that they have, a marketing problem they have, and have the group kind of workshop it together. So that's kind of the retreat sort of aspect. Mordy Oberstein: I really like that storytelling. That sounds really, really interesting because I'll say this, I don't want to sound like a snob when I say this. I've been to a lot of conferences before over the many, many years, and at this point, my conference journey, I don't really enjoy the session so much. That's not why I'm going to a conference at this point. So hearing something like it's someone sharing something they never really told before, it's a little more vulnerable. I would actually be interested in hearing that because I haven't experienced that. And I think that when you're deciding to go to a conference, I think that's one of the things you have to think about is, where are you on the spectrum right now? Because younger me would a million percent want to go do all of the sessions and would gain value from all the sessions. Whereas older me, because I'm an old person ... I'm actually middle age, which is ... My back hurts, which freaks me out. Crystal Carter: You are lucky if it's just your back. I'm just saying. Mordy Oberstein: It's not just my back. Older me doesn't find that same value anymore. So if you think, "Should I go to a conference or should I not go to a conference?" I think that's the wrong question. It's like, where are you right now? What will you get out of a conference at this point in your career? Amanda Natividad: Yeah. You know what, added to that, you also mentioned this at the intro of the show about where we may be as an industry, or maybe not industry, but the average attendee is at is, there's a lot of great content on YouTube, a lot of really good webinars where people are sharing playbooks, tactics, and those are great. But I guess what I as an organizer think about are, well, you can get all that already on YouTube, other webinars, and I don't know if people are going to come to our conference because they want the best tactics. I feel like it's because of the experience as a whole. And the experience as a whole is going to sessions that you wouldn't see otherwise online. So that's the other thing. At Spark Together, we're asking speakers to share a story but only tell that story at our conference. And that's kind of it. And it's not going to be recorded. And we are also going to foster the networking aspects so that it's going to be a little bit easier for people to meet people. We're going to have it at a nice venue. All the things that you can't really do online. So I actually feel like it's more important than ever that conference organizers really try to double down on the experience as a whole or on the networking aspect. Or it could be anything, right? Maybe it's food, maybe it's like this is a luxury kind of conference, you're going to get like multi-course meals. I don't know. But I just made that up obviously. Crystal Carter: I think also one of the things that I really value, I go to a lot of conferences, I speak at a lot of conferences. I volunteer at the Women in Tech SEO conferences. I've spoken at those as well. We've exhibited at Brighton SEO on a few occasions. So I do a lot of conference stuff. The thing that I really enjoy about the in-person aspect of it is being surrounded by your peers I think is super, super important. I went to a conference right after the Content Goblins Verge article came out, and it was so much fun seeing people wearing Content Goblins and somebody with an inflatable alligator and that sort of stuff. That's great. And it makes you feel, I think a lot of times marketers can very often be the only one. They are the head marketer and they're the only marketer at their company. And even in larger companies, you might be the SEO or you might be the one person who's handling that particular aspect in there and you're not able to bounce things off. So even being in the audience and hearing the questions that other people are asking, you can go, "Oh, yes, I have been wondering about that, and I'm not the only, that's great." And so that feeling of connecting with your peers I think is really, really valuable. So I think you mastermind bringing people together for networking, that's a great aspect of it. I think it's really, really important to facilitate and make spaces for that. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, I'm excited about it. And Crystal, now I'm very curious to hear from you, since you go to so many conferences and in different capacities, I imagine you have a top three or five that you really, really like for various reasons. So maybe of three, let's say random, because I don't want to say, hey, force rank all of them, but what are some of the things that you love about some of your favorite conferences? Crystal Carter: So first of all, Amanda, this is my podcast and I asked the questions. Second of all, thank you. So yeah, so one of the things I like, I remember being at Brighton SEO San Diego for the first one and Mordy was there as well, and we had a great time. One of the things that I found that was so much fun was that I literally met people, I was walking by and I looked at somebody's lanyard and we had him on the podcast, Will was on the podcast. And I was like, "You're the SEO from the Mayo Clinic." And it was literally, I had a full fan girl experience because I am fascinated by the SEO of the Mayo Clinic. And I walked by and I was like, "Oh my God, you work on the Mayo Clinic. That's amazing." Similarly, when I was at MozCon last time, I was sharing data from Rick Steve's community blog, and I was like, "Yeah, the Rick Steve community blog, they've seen loads of this massive hockey stick from the discussions and forums feature on Google." And I heard a whoop from the crowd. And then in lunchtime, the community blog SEO from Rick Steve's was like, "That's my blog. That was me whooping." I got a picture with them. Do you know what I mean? Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Crystal Carter: You're making the face that I was making, which was like, "Oh my God." So I think that, and that's what I mean with that peer thing is that you meet people. I met the SEO team from Suzuki, and I have a Suzuki and I love my car. And I was like, "Oh my God." And they were like, "We told our boss that you were so excited about it…" So I think it's really fun to find those moments of connectivity within your industry. And I think that that can really help invigorate how you feel about what you do and help you to keep going with learning. You meet people who you've only met online and things like that. And Mordy, I can see you want to jump in as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You sit here, I work remotely. So you sit here, you think, I am this weirdo who's doing SEO stuff and there's no one else out there. I mean, you see people on social media, whatever, but that connection of like, "Oh, there are other people who are like me," does motivate you, and I wouldn't sell that short. It is a really, really, really important thing. I'm not saying that's going to be the thing that you're going to say to your boss like, "Hey, I'm going to go so I feel like emotionally reinvigorated." That's probably not what's going to sell them on spending all that money to send you. But for yourself, it's really important you come back, you're motivated, you feel connected to a whole community, and that has a lot of psychological value that I wouldn't discount. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you're also able to ask people, like whenever I speak, people come up to me and they're like, "Well, how did you do that? Tell me more about this." Or I have people who are like, "Yeah, I'm running..." So I talked about forums at my last MozCon. The guys from Houzz, which is a design website, they came and talked to me about their thing and what they're experiencing and lots of great stuff. I know people go and talk to Lily Rae about all the different things that she's doing. As a speaker, honestly, I got to chat to Britney Muller for ages at MozCon. Fan girl me was losing her mind, I'm not going to lie. And so I think that there are incredible opportunities to connect with people in a way that you cannot do online when you join an in-person event, and there's plenty of time to do that as well. And you're focused because you're there. You're not being distracted by additional activities and things like that. So yeah, I think that in-person conferences are really, really super valuable. Mordy Oberstein: Amanda, you were just at MozCon, right? Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so- Amanda Natividad: What was it like? Mordy Oberstein: I missed it. A little bit of a FOMO, but we were talking about it before we started recording, it was a great event. What for you made that an event that worked for you? Amanda Natividad: The experience as a whole was great. What were some of the highlights? The food was really good. They had some good treats. They had mochi donuts. I can't say that first. Crystal Carter: The donuts were phenomenal. Amanda Natividad: They were so good. Crystal Carter: I had four of those donuts. They were delicious. Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Oh, they were so good. Honestly, really not just saying this, but the photo booth that you guys had set up for headshots was such a standout for me because I was like, "Oh, I haven't taken a headshot in six years." And it's not something I'm going to pay for just because I don't know, I'm cheap or whatever. I guess personally, I don't think to like, "Oh, I'm going to get a professional photo of myself." I just don't think that way. So when I saw it, I was like, "I need to do this." And then the photographer that you had was so mindful about each person. He took his time with each person. He showed me how to fix my hair, which no one had ever showed me how to do because I get these flyaways, right? He was like, "Smooth them out." He was like, "Smooth out your hair." He's like, "Pull it into two sections, smooth it out, and then smooth it out again." I was like, "Oh, oh, the flyaway is gone." But no one had ever taught me that before. But that's a small thing. Those things matter because I, as an attendee, felt really special for five to 10 minutes. And I'm not a speaker there. I was there to just hang out. I felt so special, got to cross something off my to-do list. But the other thing that was really special for me was, well, meeting a bunch of speakers who I was previously friendly with, who I was finally meeting in person. That was great. But one key moment for me was I met someone who was a big fan of Rand Fishkin, and he was like, "Oh, I'm a fan of you too," or, "I like you," or whatever it was. We had a nice conversation and he mentioned, he was like, "Do you know if Rand is going to stay?" He's like, "It would mean the world to me to meet him, because he's the reason I got into SEO and stayed." And I was like, my heart. I was like, oh. I was like, "He's not staying after. I will make sure that you meet him." And this person was like, "Okay. And I'm like, "No, we'll find him." And then Rand came by eventually, and I was like, "Rand, come here. You have to meet this person." He came over and this guy was so sweet. He was like, "Could you sign my book?" And he came from, I think he traveled from Nicaragua and he brought his book with... His Lost and Founder book. And I was like, "Oh my gosh. He traveled with that for this in case he got to meet Rand." So of course Rand signed it. And then I was like, wait, I got to get into full.... I don't know what this is, like momager mode maybe. But I was like, "You guys should also take a picture." And I saw his soul leave his body. He was like... I think he even made that sound… Mordy Oberstein: Like that aura sound, the heavens have opened. Nice. Amanda Natividad: I took a picture. Let's take a couple. So I took a couple and he was shaking and it was the sweetest thing ever. And then at some point I could sense that he was blacking out and not saying anything. So then I was just like, "Rand, you are the reason he got into SEO and stayed." And then he finally snapped in. He was like, "Yes," and then was able to talk again. But it was the most adorable thing. And I started to cry because, just to see somebody who was also just so influenced by Rand and to finally to see on his face, "Holy crap, one of my professional dreams is coming true right now," to be able to witness that for someone else was incredible. I was crying. I was like, "Don't look at me." It was a whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: So super hard contrast because that's a great story. That person didn't sell their boss on, I really want to get my book signed by Rand because I got inspired by Rand. There's no boss, unfortunately, who's going to say, "You know what? I'm going to fly from Nicaragua to Seattle. I'm going to put you at a hotel, pay for the conference. You got it." How would that person sell the conference? How do you sell it? Because all the things we're talking about are things, unfortunately, and I say unfortunately, that your boss probably doesn't care about. Crystal Carter: Dude, you're killing the buzz. Mordy Oberstein: I told you hard contrast. First off, you're expecting something different from me other than killing the vibe? Crystal Carter: This is our hundredth and one podcast, Mordy. No, I'm not expecting anything different. Amanda Natividad: Well, now, it's like, oh, the rain cloud just came on this beautiful story. But you're right. No, you are right. You can't tell your boss, "Oh, it would mean the world to me to maybe meet this one speaker who's been formative in my career." Sure, any decent boss would be like, "Oh, that's really cool." That's not a reason to expense this. I think that's when people say, right, because we... Rand did this survey several weeks ago maybe about why people choose an event, and the number one reason was the content, because I think it goes back to when you go to your boss and you're like, "Hey, I need to buy a plane ticket, get a hotel, but I can get a discount or I'll stay at a cheap hotel. I need to buy this ticket." Then it's like, okay, why are you going? And then you as an attendee, a person who wants to expense it, ultimately what you have to lean on is, well, the content's going to be really great. And I think it's figuring out what's unique about the content or speakers that you can position to your boss. So for SparkTogether, I might say, look, these are brand new talks of all these... Here's a speaker list. Look, some of these people are agency founders like us, or they are people who've built their audiences from scratch, and I really want to learn from them. But here are the people that are relevant to us and our business needs. Here's why I think they're relevant. They're also going to tell stories or give presentations. If your boss doesn't care about stories, they're going to give presentations they've never given before, and it's only for this audience and it's not going to be recorded, so I have to be there in person to learn all this. And they're going to tell all these stories and here's some examples. Someone once told a story about this multi-million dollar or million dollar content project that failed or near failed, and they had to fix it two days prior. I want to learn from that story. Or I'm going to learn from this person who they are an agency founder who had to meet some ridiculous, lofty revenue goal of, I think going from five figure ARR to going to over... or was it AR... Yeah, no, I think it was five figure ARR because it was small to get it to over 200K in three months. That's a ridiculous goal. So I want to learn from these people, and this is the only way that I can do it. I think that's one case you can make. Crystal Carter: I think also it can be extremely good value for money. If you think about an all day conference and you're going to all the sessions and you're hearing about all those different things, if you go to a good conference with good speakers, every single speaker is going to be giving you resources, links, stuff that you may not have considered. I'm thinking of, I watched Talia Wolf's talk at MozCon this year, for instance, and she was just like resource after resource after resource, link, link, link, link, link. And I was like, oh my God, if you've ever watched Aleyda Solis speak, she's like this one and that one and that one, and she'll give you a full play by play. Similarly, I think people underestimate the value of the exhibitors, but I've been to conferences, like MarTech conferences where I've seen stuff that I didn't even know existed. There were exhibitors there who were... And they're like, "This is my new stuff. This is my best thing." Because they spent money on the booth, they're doing the thing. So they're like, "This is my best thing that I have to show." And I remember seeing heat maps, but this is way, way, way, way, way back in the day. But I was stood there and they were like, "Yeah, we can track your eyeballs." I was like, "You can track my eyeballs?" I remember being blown away by this. I'm dating myself. But the exhibitors are able to show you stuff that you might not have even considered. They'll be giving away discounts on things, they'll be giving away things like that. And I think that if you were to think about how long it would take you to do CPD, that same kind of CPD over the course of a year or something, whereas how much you can get done in two days of all of those resources, all of that learning, all of that knowledge, those mastermind sessions you're talking about, the networking where you can meet other people who are connected to you, it can be very good value for money if you're thinking about it in that way. Mordy Oberstein: And just find that pain point. Every company is dealing with something. I don't know, AI overviews. How do we going to handle AI overviews? Well, so-and-so is speaking at whatever conference, and they wrote a whole bunch of articles about AI overviews. I would like to pick that... Mike King and Rand are going to be at the conference. I would like to pick their brains about AI overviews. So it's the sessions and who's going to be there that can help you solve business problems that you're currently facing because you're always facing some kind of thing. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, as you were saying that, I had an idea for marketing our conference. It's like, oh, I got to put a pin in that for later, because this is a really good idea because you called out Mike King and Rand Fishkin. And Mike King is speaking at SparkTogether. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Amanda Natividad: I was like, "Oh gosh, I need to write specific value props for each session and speaker, and then somehow send them to people." Anyway, sorry. That was weird. Mordy Oberstein: That's what we're here for. This is a brainstorm session. Crystal Carter: Yeah, anytime. Anytime you want to kick the tires. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, this is like a public brainstorm, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We should totally record actual brainstorm sessions. Then we would have the pinata idea for the conference, which is brilliant. Anyway, I'll tell you about that after the recording though. After the recording, Amanda Natividad: What comes out of the pinata? Is it going to be with stickers? Crystal Carter: Moving on. Mordy Oberstein: I think we have to move on. Amanda, where can people find you? Amanda Natividad: Oh, they can find me... Well, let's see. I'm mostly on LinkedIn nowadays. My personal site is amandanat.com, but mostly really go to Sparktoro.com, try out our audio research tool and consider coming to SparkTogether. We would love to have you. And I'll hug you in person if you're the hugging type. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. We'll put all the links in the show notes. Check out Amanda's and Rand's content on social media. It's really, really good. Those videos are great. I really enjoy them, the little ones that Rand's putting on LinkedIn. I even comment sometimes. I never comment on LinkedIn stuff. So big shout out for that, and thank you so much for joining us. Amanda Natividad: Thank you for having me. This so fun. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. So sometimes you don't want to attend a digital marketing conference. No, no, no. You want to speak at a digital marketing conference. But before that happens, you have to pitch to the conference and get that pitch accepted. And there's no one I can think of more qualified than the founder of brightonSEO himself to help you understand the best way to do that. So here's Kelvin Newman as he joins us for a little segment that we call Across the Wixverse. Oh, so before I get to Kelvin's little tips here, why am I calling it across the Wixverse because usually we talk to Wix folks about across the Wixverse? But in case you were wondering, we have been headlining brightonSEO for a good while now, the UK and- Yeah. And San Diego. So I kind feel like we're one big happy family. So it's across the Wixverse. Crystal Carter: There we go. There we go. Yeah, it's such a brilliant experience working with the brightonSEO team. Shout out to Kelvin and shout out to Andrea as well, and everybody there who does great work. Mordy Oberstein: They're really great to work with. So if you want to work with them and sponsor them as well, I'd recommend it. How's that for an endorsement? Okay. Anyway, enough of that. Here's Kelvin Newman on how to pitch to a digital marketing conference. Voiceover: Three, two, one, ignition. Liftoff. Liftoff. Kelvin Newman: Want to become a speaker at one of our events? Well, I wanted to share some practical advice on what we look for in speaker pitches. Now, first up, it's good to know that we get tons of speaker interest in brightonSEO. We could program a hundred tracks and still have more pitches than we have available slots, so it's quite competitive in that selection process. When we're choosing the talks, we tend to focus on speakers with advanced and practical knowledge that they're putting into their pitch. We also love working with new people too, so don't let a lack of experience put you off. In fact, actually sometimes being a first-time speaker can sometimes aid and help your application. We handle all of our pitches via a form that's up at brightonseo.com/pitch. We don't take pitches via LinkedIn or email. And by filling in that form, we get to know you a bit better, your background, your interests, and what we're most interested in, the potential topics for future events. So do spend some time thinking about that topic title as it's one of the key elements that we use when assessing pitches. We don't have a formal pitch timeline. If we like your submission, we'll reach out when we're planning the next event. We normally start planning about six months before the conference and invite people in waves as well. It's worth saying we only get back to successful speakers and we never fully decline a talk. So when we're inviting those speakers in waves, we like to have options if speaking starts to open up because people do and often have to drop out of events. And sometimes we can have people changing topics and all that kind of thing, so we like to have a bit of flexibility there. So we never formally decline a talk because a talk's always in consideration. We may indeed even roll your pitch forward to a future event as well. But if you don't hear back from us at that moment in time, you haven't been selected. Here's some practical advice as well in terms of what we're looking for in the talk topics themselves. We like them to be actionable. Our audience loves practical how-to information. So aim for takeaways like tasks, tools or recommendations that people can go and immediately put on their to-do list. Also try and make you talk specific. So the more specific the topic is the more likely it is to be chosen and reflect that in your pitch as well. So detailed titles and descriptions tend to win us over, so we like those. It's very clear what it's talking about rather than a big, broad topic. And usually the more detail there, the easier it is for us to understand what you're going to be talking about. And we also suggest that you avoid the basics. Our audience generally is not new to digital marketing. It's not new to search marketing measurement, web analytics and paid search and all that kind of thing as well. So generally speaking, aiming your talks at intermediate or maybe even advanced audience members is a good way of getting your talk selected. Yeah, no self-promotion. We avoid pitches that focus too much on your tool or your clients. A case study can occasionally be good, but make it about the audience, not you. Again, if you've done some particular research or it's a new piece of information or a research project, that can often be a nice thing to have in your pitch. And also be authoritative. It is really, really good if you know your subject inside and out. If you can demonstrate that here's a blog post I've written about it, here's a video, here's a previous talk I've done around that, that can often help you as well. And also keep the topic tight. Most of our talks are 20 minutes long. That is not a lot of time. We'll often get many pitches that look very good and potentially could be very, very good talks, but just the scope of what they're intending to cover is too broad for our particular program. So keep it tight, keep it the kind of thing that would definitely work in 10 to 15 minutes. Even though you've probably got 20, that will give you a bit more space to play with. And also, if you've spoken at lots of events before, rather than pitching again, I'd really encourage you to try and find a friend or a colleague, someone you know who's not spoken at an event before and mentor or encourage them to put themselves forward rather than applying for your 25th speaking slot. That's good karma as well. So yeah, if you've got an idea for a pitch, we will very soon be looking at the pitch ideas for our 2025 conferences. Go to brightonseo.com/pitch and get that submission in. Voiceover: 3, 2, 1, ignition, lift off. Crystal Carter: He's got some great insights there on first-time speakers. And I think that brightonSEO in particular, the UK edition is literally the biggest SEO conference in the world, and they are incredibly welcoming to first-time speakers. I remember the first time I spoke at brightonSEO, and they were really friendly. They have a whole program that supports first-time speakers. So not only are they welcoming to people, but also they have a presentation support. So they have a day in London where you can go and you can practice with somebody if you're not used to presenting. They also have a little group chat so that you can talk to other first-time presenters, and they also help you figure out your accommodation, all that sort of stuff. So they're really, really supportive. And I think that it's really, if you're looking to be a first-time speaker, it's good to look at conferences that welcome first-time speakers because they tend to also have that kind of support, which is really, really valuable and can help you move forward if that is a thing that you want to do. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's one of the great things about brightonSEO is their speaker line-up really is diverse and they do really have people you never really heard of before, which is I think unique for a digital marketing conference in general. I found it interesting, by the way, the focus on the title that he mentioned because you would think like, no, I'm going to have a description in there and it's really purposeful and it'll be really impactful and meaningful and yada, yada, and it might be. But I think you have to realize, maybe I'm reading between the lines here, Kelvin, by the way, thank you Kelvin for that submission. We shouldn't thank you yet. I would read between the lines of what he's saying. They're getting probably hundreds, maybe more of pitches and sifting through them as difficult. And having a headline like an article you're writing on your website, having a catchy headline is a way to pull that reader in, in this case the founder or the review board of the conference. You might think don't put such emphasis on the catchy title. I'll catchify it later once I get the pitch accepted, but maybe do it now so that you get their attention, and then have the very meaningful and prolific substantial description of what you want to talk about. Crystal Carter: And I think the other thing is so have a look at the, brightonSEO has their pitch form available all year round. It's really, really useful to give you the kind of idea for what somebody is looking for from any conference speaking pitch. So they ask you to send in your pitch title, the information. They also ask you to send in links to your social media profile. They also ask you to send in links to any talks that you've done or any articles that you've written, which basically helps them to realize how... Because it may be that you're a great SEO, you're a great marketer, you're a great agency owner, but maybe you're not big, maybe you don't have a huge following just yet, for instance. That doesn't mean that you don't have information to give. That doesn't mean that you don't have value to add. But if you've written an article somewhere, if you've done a webinar that you can share, if you've done a podcast that you can share, that's show don't tell, which is really, really, really valuable. And I think that sometimes with people who are like, "Oh, I want to do speaking." I'm like, "Cool. You don't necessarily have to go straight in on stage. You can demonstrate your expertise in a few other ways." And the blog could be on your own blog. The blog could be on LinkedIn. The blog could be wherever. It could even be a really good LinkedIn post. Let's say you write a really good LinkedIn post. Some people write whole essays on LinkedIn and let's say it went viral, or let's say you did one of those little carousel things. I know people who do really well with those as well. You can share those, for instance, to give people the kind of idea of how you do what you do, and that helps people to qualify you as a speaker, even if you haven't done speaking before. And if you can show that people are interested in what you're talking about, let's say a viral post or something that's got a little bit of, not necessarily attitude, but I guess personality can be really, really useful. Mordy Oberstein: I'll say also if you pitch and you don't get accepted, it's a numbers game to a certain extent. It's par for the course to not get accepted to multiple conferences. It's probably expected that you're going to pitch to 100 and get accepted to one kind of thing, so don't be too hard on yourself. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I think also in terms of the numbers game, supply and demand. For SEO for instance, there's a lot of people that are going to be talking about keyword research. How are you talking about it in a different way, for instance? Almost every year, almost every time before brightonSEO Kelvin puts out a shout saying, "We need more technical SEO talks." So for instance, if you are somebody who is able to talk about technical SEO, you're probably more likely to get through than somebody who's talking about say content marketing because there's a lot of content marketing folks. And I think also the personality type of content marketers tends to be more like, "Yeah, let's talk about all the things," and technical SEO folks tend to be more like head down looking at a million spreadsheets, that sort of thing. So I think that when you're thinking about it, and this is I think what he was talking about with the talk title, try to find an angle that's unique. That if there's something that you feel that people aren't talking about, try to find that to talk about. It's certainly something that I try to do when I'm pitching, and it's certainly something that I think I've seen be really effective. Now, you don't want to go too far out in the weeds. You don't want to be pitching, I don't know, a JavaScript deep dive talk to a content marketing thing. If it's not positioned for content marketers, you don't want to be like, "Oh yeah, here's how you do Ruby on Rails." They're not going to care. But you want to make sure that maybe it's a unique angle on something that appeals to that audience, and that'll make a big difference. Mordy Oberstein: And again, build that out beforehand. I think a lot of the work that you're going to do for the pitch is done beforehand. So write an article, not about that exact topic, but adjacent to that topic. Build up that brand, your personal branding around that area in whatever topic you want to talk about so then when you go to pitch it, you have that cache of like, "Okay, I've done this before around this topic. I did an article here. I did an article there. I did an article here. Here's the next evolution of this topic that I'm going to do uniquely for you," but you have something you can kind of grab onto. Crystal Carter: Definitely make sure you have things that are adjace. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, that's my new word, by the way. I use it all the time. Crystal Carter: I noticed this. Mordy Oberstein: It's because there's a podcast that I listen to. This is great. It's going off-topic for a second. There's a sports podcast that I listen to, and it's the announcer for the New York Yankees is a sports nut, okay? And I don't know, 10 years ago, they brought in a guy who does a hip-hop show on another radio station in the morning to do the afternoon show that they do, the sports show, to get the younger audience. And it's a whole big audience fight because the real sports nuts don't like him because he's not a real sports guy. It's great. Sal from Staten Island does not like Peter. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay. Mordy Oberstein: But he uses that word all the time, and I stole it from him. Crystal Carter: Right, okay, okay. So you're picking up the lingo. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, from the cool people who happens to be another forty-year-old Jewish guy, so whatever. Crystal Carter: Hello, fellow kids. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Welcome to our podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Then there was another forty-year-old Jewish guy, Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry has a million years experience or whatever. He started when he was 14. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Crystal Carter: It's crazy. Barry, what? 14 years old, Fourteen-year-old Barry was like, "You need a website." Mordy Oberstein: Can I develop an app for you? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Here's some news about SEO. Crystal Carter: Right, straight in there. Straight in there, no flies on him. Mordy Oberstein: So by the way, in case you're new to our podcast, which, hi and welcome, this is the part we pivot into the SEO news by waxing poetic and/or trolling Barry Schwartz who does all the SEO news. Crystal Carter: And who is our co-host on It's New, which is a daily dose of little tidbits, little snippets of information on the latest SEO News. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. If you love SEO news, if you love this segment of the podcast, check out It's New on the Wix SEO Learning Hub. It's right there. You show up, you see Barry's face, see our faces, Greg Finn. Just click on that, get some daily news. Anyway, it's time for the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, one article for you this week, just one because it is a mouthful. This from Barry Schwartz over on seoroundtable.com, my interview with Google search liaison on the August 2024 core update. My interview not being my interview, but Barry's interview with Google search liaison, Danny Sullivan. I'm going to go into sports radio host announcer mode here with this. I have a bunch of comments to make. It's a great interview. There's a lot in there. There's way more than the true one that I can possibly put into the Snappy News, and I already feel like this section is not going to be so snappy at all. I'll link to the article in the show notes. Have a look at it. I'm pulling out some random quotes from Danny throughout the article. I'm just going to comment on them and try to be as forthright with my thoughts as possible in a productive way. Okay, where do I want to start? Let's see. Okay, Danny said, "Yes, we have increased the amount of social content that appears in search." He's talking about Reddit. "The social content is indeed helpful for many queries. It's not perfect, but we continue to improve on it, but it can be very helpful. It can be very helpful in some cases to hear from other people who are encountering health issues that are looking for support." So this obviously is a response to the whole Reddit's, I'll call it a snafu like Reddit here, Reddit there, Reddit everywhere. Danny said afterwards, "When Reddit is actually outranking the content that actually produced the original thought," which has happened. There's been a whole, I don't know, hoopla about that, and that's not good, but social content is great. I am somewhere in between on this. Yes, there are a lot of things where the social content can be really good. I think it's not diverse enough, meaning you don't have enough diversity in the forums, the diversity type of content. And as you'll see later, Danny does talk about more firsthand experience content that's not actually social. So I think the reality is somewhere in the middle there. So on the whole social thing, Danny was talking about, or Barry asked Danny about the hidden gems update, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and Danny was talking about they want a little bit more content that's not just social, that takes things from a authentic human voice point of view, beyond social. So for example, Danny said, "One of the sites I saw on the feedback, I'm referring to the feedback form they sent out with the March update, it helps you understand if something was in a movie or a TV show that you want to buy, that's amazing," he told me. Sullivan added, "I would like to see us do better by them, and it's where we're trying to find a way to do better surface this kind of authentic human voice type of content." So Google is looking to move past pure social media for human voice, human experience content. I've talked about that a lot. The Reddit is a default. They don't have anything better. They are looking for actual longer form web content that is human voice or human experience-centric. I don't think it exists. Here's my sports radio critic voice coming in, to me, part of the problem with that is Google. I don't think Google is rewarding that kind of content enough. Meaning content creators are just going to follow what Google is rewarding. That's how the incentive cycle works. So if Google's not rewarding that kind of content, what incentive are you creating to produce that kind of content? And on the same front, I don't think Google's doing enough to actually explain what that means. And this is where I feel like there's a little bit too much of a critique about Google and what's going on with the algorithm, yada, yada, yada. I think Google is trying to get it right. I don't think they're trying to mess things over, like Danny said, because our goal is if you're doing good content, we wanted you to be successful. I think it's a hundred percent true. They want the best content to rank. It's in their best interest. It's in their best bottom line interest. So I think a lot of the narrative like Google's just nefarious, they're not. Getting this algorithm right is complicated. I'll get into it in a little bit in a second, because I have another quote that I want to get into. I'm actually going to end on that quote. They're not trying to get this wrong. They are trying to reward the best content. Part of the problem is si that I don't think people really understand what they're talking about. Danny said, as I've said several times on social elsewhere, if you know you're producing great content for your readers, that's your touchstone, your North Star, whatever you want to call it, if you're feeling confused about what to do in terms of rankings. Again, Google has been saying over and over again, do what's good for your readers. Do what's good for your audience. Maybe it's a little bit of a hot take. I don't think the vast majority of the web understands what it means to create good content. What does that mean? As a former teacher, someone with a master's degree in education, the pedagogical approach Google has here is non-existent. It's basically Danny, and I don't think it's Danny's job. Okay, I'm ranting now. I don't think it's Danny's job. Danny's job isn't to be a teacher about content on the web. You need to have some kind of content liaison to basically show you what does it mean to create really good content. Because what you basically have is insanity. You have basically people going through the quality readers guidelines and trying to reverse engineer that to get an understanding of what quality content is. That's not going to be successful. And at a certain point, what happens is when Google goes out there... And I think their intentions are good here. I think Danny is doing a great job with this. I just think it's not his job. But he goes out there and starts talking about create good content for your users, yada, yada, yada, it falls on deaf ears at this point because there's not enough context behind it. What does that mean pedagogically? What does it mean to create good content? And Danny has done, I think, a good job trying to show the best that he can in his limited scope there. He gives a couple of examples of some sites who requested," Hey, here's some feedback on the March update. Why did we lose rankings?" And he's offering, "Hey, well, maybe you should have because you didn't do this," or, "Your content is not as good because of X, Y, and Z." And that's really good stuff, but it's a little bit here, it's a little bit there, and it's just pedagogically you're not creating a knowledge scheme. So I think there needs to be a little bit of a shift. If Google's really serious about getting that content created that really has a human voice to it, they need to, A, incentivize the content by ranking such content, but they also need to actually show you what that actually means and what that actually looks like a little bit more in depth. And I don't think this Danny's job. I don't think it's fair for anybody to think that's Danny's job. That was a mouthful. Okay. One of the things Danny said I wanted to also talk about really, really quick is basically says if you move from first to second on the SERP and you lost traffic because of that, and you can lose traffic because of that, it doesn't mean we don't like you, meaning Google doesn't like you. You're ranking number two. That's great. But you might just not have the ability to earn as much traffic as you did before. I want to touch on that point because I think sometimes as SEOs we're like, "Oh, we'll get you ranking number one and we'll get you the traffic," and Google could just move you to number two and it's impossible to know why they moved you to number two. And it can mean a significant traffic loss and there could be nothing to do about it. So sometimes we think we have control over the system or it's clearly mapped out. It's not always like that. I just wanted to make that point. Okay. The last thing, I have a bunch of other ones. I feel like I've gone on too long a little bit already, but I just wanted to end off on this one. Danny was talking about some of the sites. Obviously the big narrative with this whole update was the recovery from the helpful content update in September 2023, yada, yada, yada. So Danny said, "I do think that some of those sites will continue to see good gains if they're good sites," meaning some of the sites that saw a bit of a rebound will continue to see good gains, if they're good sites and if they're "producing good content for people." "I hope that they continue to go that way," Sullivan told me. So I'm a little bit confused about that. If, and maybe again here, I'm sports analytics talk show host too much of a hot take mode right now, so maybe I'm reading too much into this. I just want to be forthright in saying that. Maybe I am reading too much into this. But if the website Danny is saying is good, they're doing a good job, then why weren't they already rewarded? Now, I do want to say that if Danny would've said, and he does say later on in the interview that it's a constant process. You can't get this right in just one update. We're going to work towards it, make continual improvements and we'll eventually get there. That, I buy. It is really hard to get an algorithm exactly where you want it to go with a super complicated algorithm obviously. And getting it exactly where you want to go is going to be super, super complicated. And I think as hard as it is, and if you lost rankings and you lost business, I don't blame you for feeling angry and I don't even blame you for screaming at me for saying this right now, because I can't imagine what you're going through. But I do think there was a little bit too much anger at Google for not just getting it right. It's not easy to get it right. It is easier said than done. That's said, that wasn't what Danny was really saying here. You're saying, "Yeah, I think they'll continue to get good gains." But look at the quote in the actual full context of the interview. It made me walking away feeling like, and this is again my speculation, Google is trying to do something with the algorithm. That to me is very clear. They have a very purposeful thing that they're trying to do. I don't know what it is, but it seems big. What it seems like to me is that Google realizes the web is undergoing a paradigm shift in ways that I'm not sure we even understand yet. And they're trying to align the algorithm to that shift, or they're trying to engineer the shift. Either one of those two options. Getting these sites that Danny's talking about up and ranking to the levels that they're "supposed to be" perhaps contradicts or is in conflict with the overall shift that Google's trying to make. And what it seemed like to me, and again, I'm really reading into this, what it seemed like to me Danny was saying was he wants those sites to improve. He thinks those sites should improve. He hopes they will improve. But there's something else in the algorithm that's currently going on that would preclude them from getting that full boost right now, because Google's got other goals in mind and it can't just engineer the algorithm to focus on improving these websites. So that I thought was interesting. Again, I thought it was a little bit of an internal contradiction. If you think these websites are great and then they're wonderful and they're writing the content that you're talking about, people should create and they should be ranking, which goes back to my earlier point. If you can't get those websites ranking the way that they should be ranking, you're fundamentally not creating the incentive cycle you need for what Danny was talking about, the hidden gems, that experience-based content, yada, yada, yada. And I see it in the algorithm updates. You'll see a couple of sites that do that kind of thing, and they do get rewarded. There are cases like that. But then you also see a ton of not like that. And it's like, okay, how do I create an SEO strategy, or a content strategy rather, where I don't know what it's going to be? Could be Google gets rewarded, Google doesn't get rewarded. It's hard to create a strategy based on something that's so not concrete. But again, kudos to Danny for talking with Barry. There's a lot of good stuff in there. The truth I think is always somewhere in the middle with all these things. Is Google getting it totally wrong? No. Is Google getting it totally right. No. Are there major problems? Yes. Have a look at the article. I've gone way too long for the Snappy News. I apologize for my speculation, but I'm going to call it the way I see it and offer my take. This is a podcast and that's what we do. And that's this week's Snappy News, or Not So Snappy News. Again, if you're looking for more news, check out It's New. It's not new anymore. It's been around for a little bit, but the news is new, so that's why it's It's New. Crystal Carter: I like it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a good name. Anyway, which brings us to a new follower or rather a new person that you should be following on social media to get some more SEO and marketing awesomeness. This time we have Cheryl Draper for you. She used to be over at Moz and running MozCon, and now it looks like she's partnering up with Noah Lerner on a little SEO conference thingamajigger that's pending and forthcoming. That should be exciting. Crystal Carter: That should be really exciting. And she has so much experience. She recently posted that she's going to be collaborating with Noah Lerner, Sean Huber, Nick Leroy, to bring the SEO community together in San Diego around the Brighton SEO for a fringe event. And it should be really, really good. It's an SEO community bash called Brighton SEO Boardwalk Bash, which should be super cool. Cheryl is such a fantastic person. I was talking about conferences that nurture new speakers, and Cheryl and the team that she had there did some incredible work there. And I think that that's just part of the core of who she is, seeing someone who nurtures new talent and encourages people to do great things. And so I am under no doubt that she will be able to do some incredible things with her next endeavor and that the upcoming event will be really awesome. And it'll be great to see her because she brings such incredible energy to everything she does. Mordy Oberstein: So look for Cheryl on LinkedIn, and on X @CherylDraper. Link in the show notes. Yeah. Okay. So when's our flight to the next SEO conference now that we've clearly advocated that you should be going to SEO conferences? Crystal Carter: I'm just there for the swag. I'll be completely honest. Mordy Oberstein: Can I tell you one, time I showed up to a conference, it was Brighton SEO in the UK, and I didn't have enough room in my suitcase for swag. I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to go buy another bag to put all my swag." Is that wrong and silly? I don't care. Crystal Carter: Honestly. My recent one was the MozCon hat that I have, which a lot of people are like, "Oh my God, I love the hat. Mordy Oberstein: I love that hat. I'm jealous. Crystal Carter: Everybody loves that hat. People are like, "Where'd you get it?" I'm like, "Yeah, I know. It's a good hat." Mordy Oberstein: Yo, Moz people. Send me that hat. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I got it from the stat booth. I was like, "Yo, hook it up. But yeah, and we also have great swag. If you come and see us at Brighton SEO, we will be at Brighton SEO in the UK in Autumn. We will also be at Brighton SEO in San Diego in Autumn, and we will be at a number of other events with incredibly juicy, incredible, fantastic swag. So do come and check that out if you're in the vicinity. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we do a lot of live events, so come find us and take our swag. Crystal Carter: Yes. Yes. Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well that'll do it. Thank you for joining the The SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. Back next week with a new episode as we go into BotLogs, the Transformers Chronicle. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and resource on the Wix Studio Learning up at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Amanda Natividad Kelvin Newman Cheryl Draper Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App Sparktoro BrightonSEO News: My Interview Of Google's Search Liaison On The August 2024 Core Update Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Amanda Natividad Kelvin Newman Cheryl Draper Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App Sparktoro BrightonSEO News: My Interview Of Google's Search Liaison On The August 2024 Core Update Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who is the keynote to our podcast. The one, the only head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hear ye, hear ye. Here I am on the podcast speaking about things and in a keynote kind of way. That's not what people say. That would be a terrible, terrible way to open a keynote. Hear ye, hear ye, conference attendees. Mordy Oberstein: With a bell from the 1700s. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That sort of thing. People would- Mordy Oberstein: It sounds like the plague is coming. Crystal Carter: I don't think people would be into that, especially like ... Mordy Oberstein: Unless it was a conference about plagues. Crystal Carter: No. Well, I mean, yeah, I guess so. But I think they would be more worried. They'd be like, "No, is it?" They would have the details and they would be more worried. I don't think that if you were speaking to epidemiologists that that would be the way to open your conference. Mordy Oberstein: Probably not. If it's a really niche audience. Well, anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can get all of your events, structured data markup on all of your event pages on both Wix and Wix Studio done for you automatically. It's all automated and it all happens that you haven't got to do anything. That's what makes it great because that's automated. As this week we're talking about, should I even go to a digital marketing or SEO conference or event? How do you even know what conferences to go to and are they even worth it? What should your goals be when going to a live digital marketing event? And so you want to go to an SEO digital marketing conference, but how do you justify the cost? SparkToro's VP of marketing, Amanda Natividad will join us in just a jiffy to help you decide if you should punch your conference ticket or not. Plus, the founder of Brighton SEO's conference series, Kelvin Newman stops by the chat about how to pitch to be a speaker at a digital marketing conference. Plus, we have your Snappies of SEO News and who you should be following a social media for more SEO awesomeness. So join us as we help you summit the mountain that is deciding on the pros and cons of the digital marketing conference world as we expose you to a conference information fest on this, the 101st episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Did I miss any generic conference suffixes there? I got summit, con, world, expo and fest in there. Crystal Carter: I mean, you- Mordy Oberstein: That's a work or art, by the way. Crystal Carter: It was the kind of thing that a pundit on a panel might say. Mordy Oberstein: Well done. Well done. Okay. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much. Mordy Oberstein: So conferences are kind of costly, they can be. There's the trip itself, the flight, the hotel, the ticket for the actual conference, and does it actually make sense to go to a live conference? I don't pay for a webinar. I just kind of show up. What's the value of going to a conference? So please welcome to the show, the VP of Marketing over at SparkToro, which is a fabulous tool. I'm just going to say that I love that tool. Amanda Natividad, welcome to the SERP's Up podcast. Amanda Natividad: Hear ye, hear ye. I am here with my own cowbell of some sort. Crystal Carter: More cowbell. Mordy Oberstein: More cowbell. Crystal Carter: Always. Amanda Natividad: Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we're so happy you're here. Crystal Carter: So pleased to have you on the podcast. Honestly, a great person to talk to about this topic. Mordy Oberstein: Because full pitch, you are about to run your own conference. Amanda Natividad: Yes. Yeah, this is going to be SparkToro's first in-person conference, and we're really pumped about it. I mean, before I was marketing to marketers, I had some experience in running conferences for the HR and benefits space, and then of course my boss, Rand Fishkin, who people here might've heard have ... Obviously had built up MozCon and everything. So we have very strong opinions about conferences and we're really excited about it. I think we're really trying to do something different, something fresh, but we're also trying to figure out how to not market it that way because every conference organizer says, "No, we're different. We're fresh, we're exciting." And everyone is different in their own way. But we're going to try to figure out, well, we'll tell you what's different, and we'll position the conference around that. And then hopefully you will agree that it is different and that you will want to come. Mordy Oberstein: Where can people find it? Amanda Natividad: Oh, people can find it on the SparkToro website, sparktoro.com/sparktogether. This is the day long Spark Together summit. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Link in the show notes. Crystal Carter: And I think the thing that really makes the conference is really the vibe. That's really, really what makes the difference between one conference or another, because people will have ... A lot of conferences will have speakers and they'll have expos, and they'll have exhibitors and they'll have merch, and they'll have things like that. But really the difference is when you get there, how it feels, which is very, very tricky to, I don't know, quantify or whatever, but I certainly know that your team, the team at SparkToro, I don't think I would be wrong in describing you small but mighty. I think you've discussed that your team, you keep it tight for a reason. And I think that one of the things I'm really excited for about the event is I've met you in person. I know you energy. I've met Rand in person, I know his energy, and I know that the kinds of things that you as a team prioritize and I think it's going to be a great event because you'll be able to bring that emphasis, that energy into a real life space. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, that's absolutely the hope. I mean, so I have been toying with the idea of positioning it around, this is like an executive retreat except everyone's invited. Crystal Carter: Right. Amanda Natividad: That's kind of the vibe we want. And so by that, that means, I guess I haven't had a ton of experience with this, but I've gotten to go to a couple of events that were like founders retreats essentially, where various founders have spoken vulnerably about their stories. Like, "Here's where I got to where I am today." Or, "Here's about this time that I sold my business, and it actually went really well. But here are all the steps that we took to make sure that we were giving our employees great compensation." Things like that, that not everyone talks about at a conference. So we wanted to encapsulate that, which is why it's a storytelling conference. That's another thing we say, where each speaker is invited, speakers that we've invited, we've chosen and we've asked them to share a story that they've never told before. Something vulnerable, something really candid that has some kind of really transparent detail that they've never shared. Because our belief is that that's how we best learn. We best learn through stories and we learn through other people sharing their experiences, warts and all. So we have that. And then the other piece is, especially because it's our first event, we're keeping it relatively small. We have a goal of getting to 200 attendees. I think at the time of this recording, we have 30 or 40 tickets left and a couple months to go. So fingers crossed we get there. And the other thing we want to do is because it's going to be small enough, we're also hosting this sort of mini mastermind session where we'll put people into small groups. We'll have facilitators run the hour or so, and invite people to share a business problem that they have, a marketing problem they have, and have the group kind of workshop it together. So that's kind of the retreat sort of aspect. Mordy Oberstein: I really like that storytelling. That sounds really, really interesting because I'll say this, I don't want to sound like a snob when I say this. I've been to a lot of conferences before over the many, many years, and at this point, my conference journey, I don't really enjoy the session so much. That's not why I'm going to a conference at this point. So hearing something like it's someone sharing something they never really told before, it's a little more vulnerable. I would actually be interested in hearing that because I haven't experienced that. And I think that when you're deciding to go to a conference, I think that's one of the things you have to think about is, where are you on the spectrum right now? Because younger me would a million percent want to go do all of the sessions and would gain value from all the sessions. Whereas older me, because I'm an old person ... I'm actually middle age, which is ... My back hurts, which freaks me out. Crystal Carter: You are lucky if it's just your back. I'm just saying. Mordy Oberstein: It's not just my back. Older me doesn't find that same value anymore. So if you think, "Should I go to a conference or should I not go to a conference?" I think that's the wrong question. It's like, where are you right now? What will you get out of a conference at this point in your career? Amanda Natividad: Yeah. You know what, added to that, you also mentioned this at the intro of the show about where we may be as an industry, or maybe not industry, but the average attendee is at is, there's a lot of great content on YouTube, a lot of really good webinars where people are sharing playbooks, tactics, and those are great. But I guess what I as an organizer think about are, well, you can get all that already on YouTube, other webinars, and I don't know if people are going to come to our conference because they want the best tactics. I feel like it's because of the experience as a whole. And the experience as a whole is going to sessions that you wouldn't see otherwise online. So that's the other thing. At Spark Together, we're asking speakers to share a story but only tell that story at our conference. And that's kind of it. And it's not going to be recorded. And we are also going to foster the networking aspects so that it's going to be a little bit easier for people to meet people. We're going to have it at a nice venue. All the things that you can't really do online. So I actually feel like it's more important than ever that conference organizers really try to double down on the experience as a whole or on the networking aspect. Or it could be anything, right? Maybe it's food, maybe it's like this is a luxury kind of conference, you're going to get like multi-course meals. I don't know. But I just made that up obviously. Crystal Carter: I think also one of the things that I really value, I go to a lot of conferences, I speak at a lot of conferences. I volunteer at the Women in Tech SEO conferences. I've spoken at those as well. We've exhibited at Brighton SEO on a few occasions. So I do a lot of conference stuff. The thing that I really enjoy about the in-person aspect of it is being surrounded by your peers I think is super, super important. I went to a conference right after the Content Goblins Verge article came out, and it was so much fun seeing people wearing Content Goblins and somebody with an inflatable alligator and that sort of stuff. That's great. And it makes you feel, I think a lot of times marketers can very often be the only one. They are the head marketer and they're the only marketer at their company. And even in larger companies, you might be the SEO or you might be the one person who's handling that particular aspect in there and you're not able to bounce things off. So even being in the audience and hearing the questions that other people are asking, you can go, "Oh, yes, I have been wondering about that, and I'm not the only, that's great." And so that feeling of connecting with your peers I think is really, really valuable. So I think you mastermind bringing people together for networking, that's a great aspect of it. I think it's really, really important to facilitate and make spaces for that. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, I'm excited about it. And Crystal, now I'm very curious to hear from you, since you go to so many conferences and in different capacities, I imagine you have a top three or five that you really, really like for various reasons. So maybe of three, let's say random, because I don't want to say, hey, force rank all of them, but what are some of the things that you love about some of your favorite conferences? Crystal Carter: So first of all, Amanda, this is my podcast and I asked the questions. Second of all, thank you. So yeah, so one of the things I like, I remember being at Brighton SEO San Diego for the first one and Mordy was there as well, and we had a great time. One of the things that I found that was so much fun was that I literally met people, I was walking by and I looked at somebody's lanyard and we had him on the podcast, Will was on the podcast. And I was like, "You're the SEO from the Mayo Clinic." And it was literally, I had a full fan girl experience because I am fascinated by the SEO of the Mayo Clinic. And I walked by and I was like, "Oh my God, you work on the Mayo Clinic. That's amazing." Similarly, when I was at MozCon last time, I was sharing data from Rick Steve's community blog, and I was like, "Yeah, the Rick Steve community blog, they've seen loads of this massive hockey stick from the discussions and forums feature on Google." And I heard a whoop from the crowd. And then in lunchtime, the community blog SEO from Rick Steve's was like, "That's my blog. That was me whooping." I got a picture with them. Do you know what I mean? Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Crystal Carter: You're making the face that I was making, which was like, "Oh my God." So I think that, and that's what I mean with that peer thing is that you meet people. I met the SEO team from Suzuki, and I have a Suzuki and I love my car. And I was like, "Oh my God." And they were like, "We told our boss that you were so excited about it…" So I think it's really fun to find those moments of connectivity within your industry. And I think that that can really help invigorate how you feel about what you do and help you to keep going with learning. You meet people who you've only met online and things like that. And Mordy, I can see you want to jump in as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You sit here, I work remotely. So you sit here, you think, I am this weirdo who's doing SEO stuff and there's no one else out there. I mean, you see people on social media, whatever, but that connection of like, "Oh, there are other people who are like me," does motivate you, and I wouldn't sell that short. It is a really, really, really important thing. I'm not saying that's going to be the thing that you're going to say to your boss like, "Hey, I'm going to go so I feel like emotionally reinvigorated." That's probably not what's going to sell them on spending all that money to send you. But for yourself, it's really important you come back, you're motivated, you feel connected to a whole community, and that has a lot of psychological value that I wouldn't discount. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you're also able to ask people, like whenever I speak, people come up to me and they're like, "Well, how did you do that? Tell me more about this." Or I have people who are like, "Yeah, I'm running..." So I talked about forums at my last MozCon. The guys from Houzz, which is a design website, they came and talked to me about their thing and what they're experiencing and lots of great stuff. I know people go and talk to Lily Rae about all the different things that she's doing. As a speaker, honestly, I got to chat to Britney Muller for ages at MozCon. Fan girl me was losing her mind, I'm not going to lie. And so I think that there are incredible opportunities to connect with people in a way that you cannot do online when you join an in-person event, and there's plenty of time to do that as well. And you're focused because you're there. You're not being distracted by additional activities and things like that. So yeah, I think that in-person conferences are really, really super valuable. Mordy Oberstein: Amanda, you were just at MozCon, right? Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so- Amanda Natividad: What was it like? Mordy Oberstein: I missed it. A little bit of a FOMO, but we were talking about it before we started recording, it was a great event. What for you made that an event that worked for you? Amanda Natividad: The experience as a whole was great. What were some of the highlights? The food was really good. They had some good treats. They had mochi donuts. I can't say that first. Crystal Carter: The donuts were phenomenal. Amanda Natividad: They were so good. Crystal Carter: I had four of those donuts. They were delicious. Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Oh, they were so good. Honestly, really not just saying this, but the photo booth that you guys had set up for headshots was such a standout for me because I was like, "Oh, I haven't taken a headshot in six years." And it's not something I'm going to pay for just because I don't know, I'm cheap or whatever. I guess personally, I don't think to like, "Oh, I'm going to get a professional photo of myself." I just don't think that way. So when I saw it, I was like, "I need to do this." And then the photographer that you had was so mindful about each person. He took his time with each person. He showed me how to fix my hair, which no one had ever showed me how to do because I get these flyaways, right? He was like, "Smooth them out." He was like, "Smooth out your hair." He's like, "Pull it into two sections, smooth it out, and then smooth it out again." I was like, "Oh, oh, the flyaway is gone." But no one had ever taught me that before. But that's a small thing. Those things matter because I, as an attendee, felt really special for five to 10 minutes. And I'm not a speaker there. I was there to just hang out. I felt so special, got to cross something off my to-do list. But the other thing that was really special for me was, well, meeting a bunch of speakers who I was previously friendly with, who I was finally meeting in person. That was great. But one key moment for me was I met someone who was a big fan of Rand Fishkin, and he was like, "Oh, I'm a fan of you too," or, "I like you," or whatever it was. We had a nice conversation and he mentioned, he was like, "Do you know if Rand is going to stay?" He's like, "It would mean the world to me to meet him, because he's the reason I got into SEO and stayed." And I was like, my heart. I was like, oh. I was like, "He's not staying after. I will make sure that you meet him." And this person was like, "Okay. And I'm like, "No, we'll find him." And then Rand came by eventually, and I was like, "Rand, come here. You have to meet this person." He came over and this guy was so sweet. He was like, "Could you sign my book?" And he came from, I think he traveled from Nicaragua and he brought his book with... His Lost and Founder book. And I was like, "Oh my gosh. He traveled with that for this in case he got to meet Rand." So of course Rand signed it. And then I was like, wait, I got to get into full.... I don't know what this is, like momager mode maybe. But I was like, "You guys should also take a picture." And I saw his soul leave his body. He was like... I think he even made that sound… Mordy Oberstein: Like that aura sound, the heavens have opened. Nice. Amanda Natividad: I took a picture. Let's take a couple. So I took a couple and he was shaking and it was the sweetest thing ever. And then at some point I could sense that he was blacking out and not saying anything. So then I was just like, "Rand, you are the reason he got into SEO and stayed." And then he finally snapped in. He was like, "Yes," and then was able to talk again. But it was the most adorable thing. And I started to cry because, just to see somebody who was also just so influenced by Rand and to finally to see on his face, "Holy crap, one of my professional dreams is coming true right now," to be able to witness that for someone else was incredible. I was crying. I was like, "Don't look at me." It was a whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: So super hard contrast because that's a great story. That person didn't sell their boss on, I really want to get my book signed by Rand because I got inspired by Rand. There's no boss, unfortunately, who's going to say, "You know what? I'm going to fly from Nicaragua to Seattle. I'm going to put you at a hotel, pay for the conference. You got it." How would that person sell the conference? How do you sell it? Because all the things we're talking about are things, unfortunately, and I say unfortunately, that your boss probably doesn't care about. Crystal Carter: Dude, you're killing the buzz. Mordy Oberstein: I told you hard contrast. First off, you're expecting something different from me other than killing the vibe? Crystal Carter: This is our hundredth and one podcast, Mordy. No, I'm not expecting anything different. Amanda Natividad: Well, now, it's like, oh, the rain cloud just came on this beautiful story. But you're right. No, you are right. You can't tell your boss, "Oh, it would mean the world to me to maybe meet this one speaker who's been formative in my career." Sure, any decent boss would be like, "Oh, that's really cool." That's not a reason to expense this. I think that's when people say, right, because we... Rand did this survey several weeks ago maybe about why people choose an event, and the number one reason was the content, because I think it goes back to when you go to your boss and you're like, "Hey, I need to buy a plane ticket, get a hotel, but I can get a discount or I'll stay at a cheap hotel. I need to buy this ticket." Then it's like, okay, why are you going? And then you as an attendee, a person who wants to expense it, ultimately what you have to lean on is, well, the content's going to be really great. And I think it's figuring out what's unique about the content or speakers that you can position to your boss. So for SparkTogether, I might say, look, these are brand new talks of all these... Here's a speaker list. Look, some of these people are agency founders like us, or they are people who've built their audiences from scratch, and I really want to learn from them. But here are the people that are relevant to us and our business needs. Here's why I think they're relevant. They're also going to tell stories or give presentations. If your boss doesn't care about stories, they're going to give presentations they've never given before, and it's only for this audience and it's not going to be recorded, so I have to be there in person to learn all this. And they're going to tell all these stories and here's some examples. Someone once told a story about this multi-million dollar or million dollar content project that failed or near failed, and they had to fix it two days prior. I want to learn from that story. Or I'm going to learn from this person who they are an agency founder who had to meet some ridiculous, lofty revenue goal of, I think going from five figure ARR to going to over... or was it AR... Yeah, no, I think it was five figure ARR because it was small to get it to over 200K in three months. That's a ridiculous goal. So I want to learn from these people, and this is the only way that I can do it. I think that's one case you can make. Crystal Carter: I think also it can be extremely good value for money. If you think about an all day conference and you're going to all the sessions and you're hearing about all those different things, if you go to a good conference with good speakers, every single speaker is going to be giving you resources, links, stuff that you may not have considered. I'm thinking of, I watched Talia Wolf's talk at MozCon this year, for instance, and she was just like resource after resource after resource, link, link, link, link, link. And I was like, oh my God, if you've ever watched Aleyda Solis speak, she's like this one and that one and that one, and she'll give you a full play by play. Similarly, I think people underestimate the value of the exhibitors, but I've been to conferences, like MarTech conferences where I've seen stuff that I didn't even know existed. There were exhibitors there who were... And they're like, "This is my new stuff. This is my best thing." Because they spent money on the booth, they're doing the thing. So they're like, "This is my best thing that I have to show." And I remember seeing heat maps, but this is way, way, way, way, way back in the day. But I was stood there and they were like, "Yeah, we can track your eyeballs." I was like, "You can track my eyeballs?" I remember being blown away by this. I'm dating myself. But the exhibitors are able to show you stuff that you might not have even considered. They'll be giving away discounts on things, they'll be giving away things like that. And I think that if you were to think about how long it would take you to do CPD, that same kind of CPD over the course of a year or something, whereas how much you can get done in two days of all of those resources, all of that learning, all of that knowledge, those mastermind sessions you're talking about, the networking where you can meet other people who are connected to you, it can be very good value for money if you're thinking about it in that way. Mordy Oberstein: And just find that pain point. Every company is dealing with something. I don't know, AI overviews. How do we going to handle AI overviews? Well, so-and-so is speaking at whatever conference, and they wrote a whole bunch of articles about AI overviews. I would like to pick that... Mike King and Rand are going to be at the conference. I would like to pick their brains about AI overviews. So it's the sessions and who's going to be there that can help you solve business problems that you're currently facing because you're always facing some kind of thing. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, as you were saying that, I had an idea for marketing our conference. It's like, oh, I got to put a pin in that for later, because this is a really good idea because you called out Mike King and Rand Fishkin. And Mike King is speaking at SparkTogether. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Amanda Natividad: I was like, "Oh gosh, I need to write specific value props for each session and speaker, and then somehow send them to people." Anyway, sorry. That was weird. Mordy Oberstein: That's what we're here for. This is a brainstorm session. Crystal Carter: Yeah, anytime. Anytime you want to kick the tires. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, this is like a public brainstorm, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We should totally record actual brainstorm sessions. Then we would have the pinata idea for the conference, which is brilliant. Anyway, I'll tell you about that after the recording though. After the recording, Amanda Natividad: What comes out of the pinata? Is it going to be with stickers? Crystal Carter: Moving on. Mordy Oberstein: I think we have to move on. Amanda, where can people find you? Amanda Natividad: Oh, they can find me... Well, let's see. I'm mostly on LinkedIn nowadays. My personal site is amandanat.com, but mostly really go to Sparktoro.com, try out our audio research tool and consider coming to SparkTogether. We would love to have you. And I'll hug you in person if you're the hugging type. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. We'll put all the links in the show notes. Check out Amanda's and Rand's content on social media. It's really, really good. Those videos are great. I really enjoy them, the little ones that Rand's putting on LinkedIn. I even comment sometimes. I never comment on LinkedIn stuff. So big shout out for that, and thank you so much for joining us. Amanda Natividad: Thank you for having me. This so fun. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. So sometimes you don't want to attend a digital marketing conference. No, no, no. You want to speak at a digital marketing conference. But before that happens, you have to pitch to the conference and get that pitch accepted. And there's no one I can think of more qualified than the founder of brightonSEO himself to help you understand the best way to do that. So here's Kelvin Newman as he joins us for a little segment that we call Across the Wixverse. Oh, so before I get to Kelvin's little tips here, why am I calling it across the Wixverse because usually we talk to Wix folks about across the Wixverse? But in case you were wondering, we have been headlining brightonSEO for a good while now, the UK and- Yeah. And San Diego. So I kind feel like we're one big happy family. So it's across the Wixverse. Crystal Carter: There we go. There we go. Yeah, it's such a brilliant experience working with the brightonSEO team. Shout out to Kelvin and shout out to Andrea as well, and everybody there who does great work. Mordy Oberstein: They're really great to work with. So if you want to work with them and sponsor them as well, I'd recommend it. How's that for an endorsement? Okay. Anyway, enough of that. Here's Kelvin Newman on how to pitch to a digital marketing conference. Voiceover: Three, two, one, ignition. Liftoff. Liftoff. Kelvin Newman: Want to become a speaker at one of our events? Well, I wanted to share some practical advice on what we look for in speaker pitches. Now, first up, it's good to know that we get tons of speaker interest in brightonSEO. We could program a hundred tracks and still have more pitches than we have available slots, so it's quite competitive in that selection process. When we're choosing the talks, we tend to focus on speakers with advanced and practical knowledge that they're putting into their pitch. We also love working with new people too, so don't let a lack of experience put you off. In fact, actually sometimes being a first-time speaker can sometimes aid and help your application. We handle all of our pitches via a form that's up at brightonseo.com/pitch. We don't take pitches via LinkedIn or email. And by filling in that form, we get to know you a bit better, your background, your interests, and what we're most interested in, the potential topics for future events. So do spend some time thinking about that topic title as it's one of the key elements that we use when assessing pitches. We don't have a formal pitch timeline. If we like your submission, we'll reach out when we're planning the next event. We normally start planning about six months before the conference and invite people in waves as well. It's worth saying we only get back to successful speakers and we never fully decline a talk. So when we're inviting those speakers in waves, we like to have options if speaking starts to open up because people do and often have to drop out of events. And sometimes we can have people changing topics and all that kind of thing, so we like to have a bit of flexibility there. So we never formally decline a talk because a talk's always in consideration. We may indeed even roll your pitch forward to a future event as well. But if you don't hear back from us at that moment in time, you haven't been selected. Here's some practical advice as well in terms of what we're looking for in the talk topics themselves. We like them to be actionable. Our audience loves practical how-to information. So aim for takeaways like tasks, tools or recommendations that people can go and immediately put on their to-do list. Also try and make you talk specific. So the more specific the topic is the more likely it is to be chosen and reflect that in your pitch as well. So detailed titles and descriptions tend to win us over, so we like those. It's very clear what it's talking about rather than a big, broad topic. And usually the more detail there, the easier it is for us to understand what you're going to be talking about. And we also suggest that you avoid the basics. Our audience generally is not new to digital marketing. It's not new to search marketing measurement, web analytics and paid search and all that kind of thing as well. So generally speaking, aiming your talks at intermediate or maybe even advanced audience members is a good way of getting your talk selected. Yeah, no self-promotion. We avoid pitches that focus too much on your tool or your clients. A case study can occasionally be good, but make it about the audience, not you. Again, if you've done some particular research or it's a new piece of information or a research project, that can often be a nice thing to have in your pitch. And also be authoritative. It is really, really good if you know your subject inside and out. If you can demonstrate that here's a blog post I've written about it, here's a video, here's a previous talk I've done around that, that can often help you as well. And also keep the topic tight. Most of our talks are 20 minutes long. That is not a lot of time. We'll often get many pitches that look very good and potentially could be very, very good talks, but just the scope of what they're intending to cover is too broad for our particular program. So keep it tight, keep it the kind of thing that would definitely work in 10 to 15 minutes. Even though you've probably got 20, that will give you a bit more space to play with. And also, if you've spoken at lots of events before, rather than pitching again, I'd really encourage you to try and find a friend or a colleague, someone you know who's not spoken at an event before and mentor or encourage them to put themselves forward rather than applying for your 25th speaking slot. That's good karma as well. So yeah, if you've got an idea for a pitch, we will very soon be looking at the pitch ideas for our 2025 conferences. Go to brightonseo.com/pitch and get that submission in. Voiceover: 3, 2, 1, ignition, lift off. Crystal Carter: He's got some great insights there on first-time speakers. And I think that brightonSEO in particular, the UK edition is literally the biggest SEO conference in the world, and they are incredibly welcoming to first-time speakers. I remember the first time I spoke at brightonSEO, and they were really friendly. They have a whole program that supports first-time speakers. So not only are they welcoming to people, but also they have a presentation support. So they have a day in London where you can go and you can practice with somebody if you're not used to presenting. They also have a little group chat so that you can talk to other first-time presenters, and they also help you figure out your accommodation, all that sort of stuff. So they're really, really supportive. And I think that it's really, if you're looking to be a first-time speaker, it's good to look at conferences that welcome first-time speakers because they tend to also have that kind of support, which is really, really valuable and can help you move forward if that is a thing that you want to do. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's one of the great things about brightonSEO is their speaker line-up really is diverse and they do really have people you never really heard of before, which is I think unique for a digital marketing conference in general. I found it interesting, by the way, the focus on the title that he mentioned because you would think like, no, I'm going to have a description in there and it's really purposeful and it'll be really impactful and meaningful and yada, yada, and it might be. But I think you have to realize, maybe I'm reading between the lines here, Kelvin, by the way, thank you Kelvin for that submission. We shouldn't thank you yet. I would read between the lines of what he's saying. They're getting probably hundreds, maybe more of pitches and sifting through them as difficult. And having a headline like an article you're writing on your website, having a catchy headline is a way to pull that reader in, in this case the founder or the review board of the conference. You might think don't put such emphasis on the catchy title. I'll catchify it later once I get the pitch accepted, but maybe do it now so that you get their attention, and then have the very meaningful and prolific substantial description of what you want to talk about. Crystal Carter: And I think the other thing is so have a look at the, brightonSEO has their pitch form available all year round. It's really, really useful to give you the kind of idea for what somebody is looking for from any conference speaking pitch. So they ask you to send in your pitch title, the information. They also ask you to send in links to your social media profile. They also ask you to send in links to any talks that you've done or any articles that you've written, which basically helps them to realize how... Because it may be that you're a great SEO, you're a great marketer, you're a great agency owner, but maybe you're not big, maybe you don't have a huge following just yet, for instance. That doesn't mean that you don't have information to give. That doesn't mean that you don't have value to add. But if you've written an article somewhere, if you've done a webinar that you can share, if you've done a podcast that you can share, that's show don't tell, which is really, really, really valuable. And I think that sometimes with people who are like, "Oh, I want to do speaking." I'm like, "Cool. You don't necessarily have to go straight in on stage. You can demonstrate your expertise in a few other ways." And the blog could be on your own blog. The blog could be on LinkedIn. The blog could be wherever. It could even be a really good LinkedIn post. Let's say you write a really good LinkedIn post. Some people write whole essays on LinkedIn and let's say it went viral, or let's say you did one of those little carousel things. I know people who do really well with those as well. You can share those, for instance, to give people the kind of idea of how you do what you do, and that helps people to qualify you as a speaker, even if you haven't done speaking before. And if you can show that people are interested in what you're talking about, let's say a viral post or something that's got a little bit of, not necessarily attitude, but I guess personality can be really, really useful. Mordy Oberstein: I'll say also if you pitch and you don't get accepted, it's a numbers game to a certain extent. It's par for the course to not get accepted to multiple conferences. It's probably expected that you're going to pitch to 100 and get accepted to one kind of thing, so don't be too hard on yourself. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I think also in terms of the numbers game, supply and demand. For SEO for instance, there's a lot of people that are going to be talking about keyword research. How are you talking about it in a different way, for instance? Almost every year, almost every time before brightonSEO Kelvin puts out a shout saying, "We need more technical SEO talks." So for instance, if you are somebody who is able to talk about technical SEO, you're probably more likely to get through than somebody who's talking about say content marketing because there's a lot of content marketing folks. And I think also the personality type of content marketers tends to be more like, "Yeah, let's talk about all the things," and technical SEO folks tend to be more like head down looking at a million spreadsheets, that sort of thing. So I think that when you're thinking about it, and this is I think what he was talking about with the talk title, try to find an angle that's unique. That if there's something that you feel that people aren't talking about, try to find that to talk about. It's certainly something that I try to do when I'm pitching, and it's certainly something that I think I've seen be really effective. Now, you don't want to go too far out in the weeds. You don't want to be pitching, I don't know, a JavaScript deep dive talk to a content marketing thing. If it's not positioned for content marketers, you don't want to be like, "Oh yeah, here's how you do Ruby on Rails." They're not going to care. But you want to make sure that maybe it's a unique angle on something that appeals to that audience, and that'll make a big difference. Mordy Oberstein: And again, build that out beforehand. I think a lot of the work that you're going to do for the pitch is done beforehand. So write an article, not about that exact topic, but adjacent to that topic. Build up that brand, your personal branding around that area in whatever topic you want to talk about so then when you go to pitch it, you have that cache of like, "Okay, I've done this before around this topic. I did an article here. I did an article there. I did an article here. Here's the next evolution of this topic that I'm going to do uniquely for you," but you have something you can kind of grab onto. Crystal Carter: Definitely make sure you have things that are adjace. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, that's my new word, by the way. I use it all the time. Crystal Carter: I noticed this. Mordy Oberstein: It's because there's a podcast that I listen to. This is great. It's going off-topic for a second. There's a sports podcast that I listen to, and it's the announcer for the New York Yankees is a sports nut, okay? And I don't know, 10 years ago, they brought in a guy who does a hip-hop show on another radio station in the morning to do the afternoon show that they do, the sports show, to get the younger audience. And it's a whole big audience fight because the real sports nuts don't like him because he's not a real sports guy. It's great. Sal from Staten Island does not like Peter. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay. Mordy Oberstein: But he uses that word all the time, and I stole it from him. Crystal Carter: Right, okay, okay. So you're picking up the lingo. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, from the cool people who happens to be another forty-year-old Jewish guy, so whatever. Crystal Carter: Hello, fellow kids. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Welcome to our podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Then there was another forty-year-old Jewish guy, Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry has a million years experience or whatever. He started when he was 14. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Crystal Carter: It's crazy. Barry, what? 14 years old, Fourteen-year-old Barry was like, "You need a website." Mordy Oberstein: Can I develop an app for you? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Here's some news about SEO. Crystal Carter: Right, straight in there. Straight in there, no flies on him. Mordy Oberstein: So by the way, in case you're new to our podcast, which, hi and welcome, this is the part we pivot into the SEO news by waxing poetic and/or trolling Barry Schwartz who does all the SEO news. Crystal Carter: And who is our co-host on It's New, which is a daily dose of little tidbits, little snippets of information on the latest SEO News. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. If you love SEO news, if you love this segment of the podcast, check out It's New on the Wix SEO Learning Hub. It's right there. You show up, you see Barry's face, see our faces, Greg Finn. Just click on that, get some daily news. Anyway, it's time for the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, one article for you this week, just one because it is a mouthful. This from Barry Schwartz over on seoroundtable.com, my interview with Google search liaison on the August 2024 core update. My interview not being my interview, but Barry's interview with Google search liaison, Danny Sullivan. I'm going to go into sports radio host announcer mode here with this. I have a bunch of comments to make. It's a great interview. There's a lot in there. There's way more than the true one that I can possibly put into the Snappy News, and I already feel like this section is not going to be so snappy at all. I'll link to the article in the show notes. Have a look at it. I'm pulling out some random quotes from Danny throughout the article. I'm just going to comment on them and try to be as forthright with my thoughts as possible in a productive way. Okay, where do I want to start? Let's see. Okay, Danny said, "Yes, we have increased the amount of social content that appears in search." He's talking about Reddit. "The social content is indeed helpful for many queries. It's not perfect, but we continue to improve on it, but it can be very helpful. It can be very helpful in some cases to hear from other people who are encountering health issues that are looking for support." So this obviously is a response to the whole Reddit's, I'll call it a snafu like Reddit here, Reddit there, Reddit everywhere. Danny said afterwards, "When Reddit is actually outranking the content that actually produced the original thought," which has happened. There's been a whole, I don't know, hoopla about that, and that's not good, but social content is great. I am somewhere in between on this. Yes, there are a lot of things where the social content can be really good. I think it's not diverse enough, meaning you don't have enough diversity in the forums, the diversity type of content. And as you'll see later, Danny does talk about more firsthand experience content that's not actually social. So I think the reality is somewhere in the middle there. So on the whole social thing, Danny was talking about, or Barry asked Danny about the hidden gems update, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and Danny was talking about they want a little bit more content that's not just social, that takes things from a authentic human voice point of view, beyond social. So for example, Danny said, "One of the sites I saw on the feedback, I'm referring to the feedback form they sent out with the March update, it helps you understand if something was in a movie or a TV show that you want to buy, that's amazing," he told me. Sullivan added, "I would like to see us do better by them, and it's where we're trying to find a way to do better surface this kind of authentic human voice type of content." So Google is looking to move past pure social media for human voice, human experience content. I've talked about that a lot. The Reddit is a default. They don't have anything better. They are looking for actual longer form web content that is human voice or human experience-centric. I don't think it exists. Here's my sports radio critic voice coming in, to me, part of the problem with that is Google. I don't think Google is rewarding that kind of content enough. Meaning content creators are just going to follow what Google is rewarding. That's how the incentive cycle works. So if Google's not rewarding that kind of content, what incentive are you creating to produce that kind of content? And on the same front, I don't think Google's doing enough to actually explain what that means. And this is where I feel like there's a little bit too much of a critique about Google and what's going on with the algorithm, yada, yada, yada. I think Google is trying to get it right. I don't think they're trying to mess things over, like Danny said, because our goal is if you're doing good content, we wanted you to be successful. I think it's a hundred percent true. They want the best content to rank. It's in their best interest. It's in their best bottom line interest. So I think a lot of the narrative like Google's just nefarious, they're not. Getting this algorithm right is complicated. I'll get into it in a little bit in a second, because I have another quote that I want to get into. I'm actually going to end on that quote. They're not trying to get this wrong. They are trying to reward the best content. Part of the problem is si that I don't think people really understand what they're talking about. Danny said, as I've said several times on social elsewhere, if you know you're producing great content for your readers, that's your touchstone, your North Star, whatever you want to call it, if you're feeling confused about what to do in terms of rankings. Again, Google has been saying over and over again, do what's good for your readers. Do what's good for your audience. Maybe it's a little bit of a hot take. I don't think the vast majority of the web understands what it means to create good content. What does that mean? As a former teacher, someone with a master's degree in education, the pedagogical approach Google has here is non-existent. It's basically Danny, and I don't think it's Danny's job. Okay, I'm ranting now. I don't think it's Danny's job. Danny's job isn't to be a teacher about content on the web. You need to have some kind of content liaison to basically show you what does it mean to create really good content. Because what you basically have is insanity. You have basically people going through the quality readers guidelines and trying to reverse engineer that to get an understanding of what quality content is. That's not going to be successful. And at a certain point, what happens is when Google goes out there... And I think their intentions are good here. I think Danny is doing a great job with this. I just think it's not his job. But he goes out there and starts talking about create good content for your users, yada, yada, yada, it falls on deaf ears at this point because there's not enough context behind it. What does that mean pedagogically? What does it mean to create good content? And Danny has done, I think, a good job trying to show the best that he can in his limited scope there. He gives a couple of examples of some sites who requested," Hey, here's some feedback on the March update. Why did we lose rankings?" And he's offering, "Hey, well, maybe you should have because you didn't do this," or, "Your content is not as good because of X, Y, and Z." And that's really good stuff, but it's a little bit here, it's a little bit there, and it's just pedagogically you're not creating a knowledge scheme. So I think there needs to be a little bit of a shift. If Google's really serious about getting that content created that really has a human voice to it, they need to, A, incentivize the content by ranking such content, but they also need to actually show you what that actually means and what that actually looks like a little bit more in depth. And I don't think this Danny's job. I don't think it's fair for anybody to think that's Danny's job. That was a mouthful. Okay. One of the things Danny said I wanted to also talk about really, really quick is basically says if you move from first to second on the SERP and you lost traffic because of that, and you can lose traffic because of that, it doesn't mean we don't like you, meaning Google doesn't like you. You're ranking number two. That's great. But you might just not have the ability to earn as much traffic as you did before. I want to touch on that point because I think sometimes as SEOs we're like, "Oh, we'll get you ranking number one and we'll get you the traffic," and Google could just move you to number two and it's impossible to know why they moved you to number two. And it can mean a significant traffic loss and there could be nothing to do about it. So sometimes we think we have control over the system or it's clearly mapped out. It's not always like that. I just wanted to make that point. Okay. The last thing, I have a bunch of other ones. I feel like I've gone on too long a little bit already, but I just wanted to end off on this one. Danny was talking about some of the sites. Obviously the big narrative with this whole update was the recovery from the helpful content update in September 2023, yada, yada, yada. So Danny said, "I do think that some of those sites will continue to see good gains if they're good sites," meaning some of the sites that saw a bit of a rebound will continue to see good gains, if they're good sites and if they're "producing good content for people." "I hope that they continue to go that way," Sullivan told me. So I'm a little bit confused about that. If, and maybe again here, I'm sports analytics talk show host too much of a hot take mode right now, so maybe I'm reading too much into this. I just want to be forthright in saying that. Maybe I am reading too much into this. But if the website Danny is saying is good, they're doing a good job, then why weren't they already rewarded? Now, I do want to say that if Danny would've said, and he does say later on in the interview that it's a constant process. You can't get this right in just one update. We're going to work towards it, make continual improvements and we'll eventually get there. That, I buy. It is really hard to get an algorithm exactly where you want it to go with a super complicated algorithm obviously. And getting it exactly where you want to go is going to be super, super complicated. And I think as hard as it is, and if you lost rankings and you lost business, I don't blame you for feeling angry and I don't even blame you for screaming at me for saying this right now, because I can't imagine what you're going through. But I do think there was a little bit too much anger at Google for not just getting it right. It's not easy to get it right. It is easier said than done. That's said, that wasn't what Danny was really saying here. You're saying, "Yeah, I think they'll continue to get good gains." But look at the quote in the actual full context of the interview. It made me walking away feeling like, and this is again my speculation, Google is trying to do something with the algorithm. That to me is very clear. They have a very purposeful thing that they're trying to do. I don't know what it is, but it seems big. What it seems like to me is that Google realizes the web is undergoing a paradigm shift in ways that I'm not sure we even understand yet. And they're trying to align the algorithm to that shift, or they're trying to engineer the shift. Either one of those two options. Getting these sites that Danny's talking about up and ranking to the levels that they're "supposed to be" perhaps contradicts or is in conflict with the overall shift that Google's trying to make. And what it seemed like to me, and again, I'm really reading into this, what it seemed like to me Danny was saying was he wants those sites to improve. He thinks those sites should improve. He hopes they will improve. But there's something else in the algorithm that's currently going on that would preclude them from getting that full boost right now, because Google's got other goals in mind and it can't just engineer the algorithm to focus on improving these websites. So that I thought was interesting. Again, I thought it was a little bit of an internal contradiction. If you think these websites are great and then they're wonderful and they're writing the content that you're talking about, people should create and they should be ranking, which goes back to my earlier point. If you can't get those websites ranking the way that they should be ranking, you're fundamentally not creating the incentive cycle you need for what Danny was talking about, the hidden gems, that experience-based content, yada, yada, yada. And I see it in the algorithm updates. You'll see a couple of sites that do that kind of thing, and they do get rewarded. There are cases like that. But then you also see a ton of not like that. And it's like, okay, how do I create an SEO strategy, or a content strategy rather, where I don't know what it's going to be? Could be Google gets rewarded, Google doesn't get rewarded. It's hard to create a strategy based on something that's so not concrete. But again, kudos to Danny for talking with Barry. There's a lot of good stuff in there. The truth I think is always somewhere in the middle with all these things. Is Google getting it totally wrong? No. Is Google getting it totally right. No. Are there major problems? Yes. Have a look at the article. I've gone way too long for the Snappy News. I apologize for my speculation, but I'm going to call it the way I see it and offer my take. This is a podcast and that's what we do. And that's this week's Snappy News, or Not So Snappy News. Again, if you're looking for more news, check out It's New. It's not new anymore. It's been around for a little bit, but the news is new, so that's why it's It's New. Crystal Carter: I like it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a good name. Anyway, which brings us to a new follower or rather a new person that you should be following on social media to get some more SEO and marketing awesomeness. This time we have Cheryl Draper for you. She used to be over at Moz and running MozCon, and now it looks like she's partnering up with Noah Lerner on a little SEO conference thingamajigger that's pending and forthcoming. That should be exciting. Crystal Carter: That should be really exciting. And she has so much experience. She recently posted that she's going to be collaborating with Noah Lerner, Sean Huber, Nick Leroy, to bring the SEO community together in San Diego around the Brighton SEO for a fringe event. And it should be really, really good. It's an SEO community bash called Brighton SEO Boardwalk Bash, which should be super cool. Cheryl is such a fantastic person. I was talking about conferences that nurture new speakers, and Cheryl and the team that she had there did some incredible work there. And I think that that's just part of the core of who she is, seeing someone who nurtures new talent and encourages people to do great things. And so I am under no doubt that she will be able to do some incredible things with her next endeavor and that the upcoming event will be really awesome. And it'll be great to see her because she brings such incredible energy to everything she does. Mordy Oberstein: So look for Cheryl on LinkedIn, and on X @CherylDraper. Link in the show notes. Yeah. Okay. So when's our flight to the next SEO conference now that we've clearly advocated that you should be going to SEO conferences? Crystal Carter: I'm just there for the swag. I'll be completely honest. Mordy Oberstein: Can I tell you one, time I showed up to a conference, it was Brighton SEO in the UK, and I didn't have enough room in my suitcase for swag. I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to go buy another bag to put all my swag." Is that wrong and silly? I don't care. Crystal Carter: Honestly. My recent one was the MozCon hat that I have, which a lot of people are like, "Oh my God, I love the hat. Mordy Oberstein: I love that hat. I'm jealous. Crystal Carter: Everybody loves that hat. People are like, "Where'd you get it?" I'm like, "Yeah, I know. It's a good hat." Mordy Oberstein: Yo, Moz people. Send me that hat. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I got it from the stat booth. I was like, "Yo, hook it up. But yeah, and we also have great swag. If you come and see us at Brighton SEO, we will be at Brighton SEO in the UK in Autumn. We will also be at Brighton SEO in San Diego in Autumn, and we will be at a number of other events with incredibly juicy, incredible, fantastic swag. So do come and check that out if you're in the vicinity. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we do a lot of live events, so come find us and take our swag. Crystal Carter: Yes. Yes. Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well that'll do it. Thank you for joining the The SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. Back next week with a new episode as we go into BotLogs, the Transformers Chronicle. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and resource on the Wix Studio Learning up at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. 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

Eyal Aftabi is the founder & CEO of Pro Rank Tracker, a specialized rank tracking and reporting solution for SEO agencies and in-house teams that recently launched RankiX for Wix. Eyal Aftabi Founder and CEO of Pro Rank Tracker Eyal Aftabi is the founder & CEO of Pro Rank Tracker , a specialized rank tracking and reporting solution for SEO agencies and in-house teams that recently launched RankiX for Wix. Articles & Resources 26 Dec 2024 Multi-channel rank tracking on Wix: Compare your business’s visibility on Google, YouTube & Amazon 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

You’ve done all the hard SEO work on a project and now you need to hand it off to the client - what should you consider when you do? Don’t fumble the handoff and let all that great SEO work you did hit the ground. What are effective strategies for transferring SEO work to clients? What should you consider when handing back an SEO project? How might client handoffs vary from one situation to the next? In this episode, Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter guide you through the most effective ways to hand off your SEO work to your clients. Discover strategies to ensure each team member has the resources to deliver an effective handoff properly. Understand how to identify your client’s specific delivery expectations to maintain a lasting relationship. Listen in as SEO agency owner, Nitin Manchanda, talks about what his handover kit looks like as he shares a comprehensive guide of everything you should include to create a holistic SEO picture for your clients. Be sure to put this one in your SEO playbook as we’re teaching you how to seamlessly hand off SEO projects to clients this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Handing SEO off to your clients You’ve done all the hard SEO work on a project and now you need to hand it off to the client - what should you consider when you do? Don’t fumble the handoff and let all that great SEO work you did hit the ground. What are effective strategies for transferring SEO work to clients? What should you consider when handing back an SEO project? How might client handoffs vary from one situation to the next? In this episode, Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter guide you through the most effective ways to hand off your SEO work to your clients. Discover strategies to ensure each team member has the resources to deliver an effective handoff properly. Understand how to identify your client’s specific delivery expectations to maintain a lasting relationship. Listen in as SEO agency owner, Nitin Manchanda, talks about what his handover kit looks like as he shares a comprehensive guide of everything you should include to create a holistic SEO picture for your clients. Be sure to put this one in your SEO playbook as we’re teaching you how to seamlessly hand off SEO projects to clients this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 67 | December 20, 2023 | 38 MIN 00:00 / 38:18 This week’s guests Nitin Manchanda Nitin is the Founder and Chief SEO Consultant at Botpresso. He led SEO for international brands like trivago and Omio in the past. Currently, he is helping businesses grow organically through his consultancy. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights on what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix Center, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, the spectacular, the unparalleled Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hey, internet people. I'm here on your podcast in your earbuds where you listen to podcast things. Probably on Spotify. Most people do, right? Mordy Oberstein: Or other, like iTunes. Crystal Carter: iTunes! That's true. People also do that sometimes, people in their cars? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm a weirdo. I like Google Podcasts. Crystal Carter: You like Google Podcasts? Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I love Google. Yeah, but they're getting rid of it. Crystal Carter: Oh, are they? Oh, another one for the Google graveyard. Google Podcasts, Google Plus. I used to like Hangouts. I'm not going to lie, Hangouts was pretty good. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I liked Hangouts. I don't know what was wrong with that. But yeah, I like Google Podcasts. I like it because I Google it. I can Google a podcast and the carousel would show up. I would just click on the SERP. It was just easier than going to Spotify, finding the podcast. That's why, yeah. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of steps and you lose me at, "And then." People will be like, "You have to do this and then this and then this." It's like, "Nope, that's too many and thens." Somebody gives you just instructions on how to get from one place to another and they're like, "Oh yeah, you take this turn and then that turn and then that turn." I'm like, "I'm sorry. If there's a route where I can take one turn and ride on that street for 12 blocks, I'm doing that." That's what I'm doing because I don't want to get lost. Mordy Oberstein: I'm the person where you ask me for directions, they say, "Oh, so turn left here," and after the second step I'm like, "uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh," and then I ask somebody else because I didn't hear a word you said really. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I don't know now. I'm done. My brain. Mordy Oberstein: I'd rather get lost than pay attention to all those steps, to be honest. Crystal Carter: Right, honestly. And then there's people who live in the countryside and they're like, "Yeah. So then you get to a tree that looks a little bit..." And you're like, "That's not directions, sir." Mordy Oberstein: Does the tree have leaves? Yeah, that's the one. Like, whoa. Okay, thanks, bud. Crystal Carter: But if somebody's giving you those kind of directions to lead you to some place, it's really important. It's really important and you've got to pay attention. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And then the SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight, which comes out each and every month, over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also hand off sites to clients like a beast with Wix Studio, but more on that later as this show is about something else entirely. It's about how to hand off SEO work to clients, which, wait, that's kind of the exact same thing. What a coincidence. That's why this week we're taking up how to make sure all the SEO work you did actually pays off by talking about how you hand off your work to clients, how client handoffs differ depending on the SEO project, what to think about when handing an SEO project back to a client, and why you actually might want to use the handoff as a way to challenge your clients. Agency-side SEO phenom and Founder of Botpresso Nitin Manchanda will join us in just a bit as he stops by to share what works for him when he hands off his SEO work to the clients and what it looks like. Plus, we'll take a look at a new tool to help you hand off your work the clients like a pro as we go tool time, and of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news that you should be following for more SEO awesomeness over on social media. So whether you prefer to spit and juke like Barry Sanders or just plow over everyone like "The Bus, Jerome Bettis, episode number 67 of the SERP's Up Podcast shows how you can help your clients take the handoff and run with the ball. Crystal Carter: It's a lot of sports references there. Mordy Oberstein: You're right. If you're wondering what that was, Barry Sanders and Jerome Bettis are running backs and they take the handoff from the quarterback. Get it? So handoff to the clients, handoff to the running back. Crystal Carter: I thought you were going to throw in something about The Fridge. That's my favorite football nickname. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, The Fridge is great. The Fridge did take a hand and yeah. Crystal Carter: We did good. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry for the sports ball. Sorry for the sports ball. Crystal Carter: It's okay. Mordy Oberstein: But handing off sites to your clients, doing it properly, handing off that SEO work properly, does a lot of things. It helps protect your work from being abused and destroyed and not lasting the test of time. It helps protect your reputation because if your clients then make a mistake and don't take what you said and handle that properly, they're not going to blame themselves. They're going to blame you. Crystal Carter: Right, this is true. And I think that it's important because sometimes the SEO projects roll in different ways. So sometimes you are somebody who is advising, and then again, you're handing off to the client. You're saying, "Okay, these are the recommendations that I have for you. Take this to your devs and do this, this, and this." And again, if you are not handing off well, if you're not able to connect with the devs, if you're not able to maintain lines of communications, then maybe they aren't able to implement it in the best way possible. And then maybe they go around, like you said, protecting your reputation, they go around and say, "Oh, we spoke with this SEO person and they actually weren't able to help us at all. This didn't work or we didn't see the good results." And that could be because of the handoff, because you weren't able to give them good instructions. The other thing that- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, don't fumble. Don't fumble the handoff. Crystal Carter: Don't fumble, don't drop the ball. It's also important to think about making sure that the clients get the best out of it. So one of the things that's important, even before you do the handoff, is making sure who's on your team. So if you've got Barry Sanders on your team, then you know what he does. You know what he can do if you give him the ball, that he's got those tools. If you've got a team that... If your recommendation involves a dev and they don't have access to a developer, then that's not going to be a great client handoff. If your recommendations involve people writing content and they don't have someone to write the content for them or they don't have the ability to write the content, then that's not going to be a great handoff. You need to understand who's on your team before you hand anything over to anyone. So when you're thinking about your SEO projects or even web design projects, you need to understand who's on the team before you start making recommendations, what their capabilities are before you start making recommendations. Mordy Oberstein: It's simply like targeting an audience. You have to understand who your audience is. Are they very detail-oriented or do they just want a top-level summary or some main things to work on first, then send them a second round later? Do they want it all at one time? Whatever it is, you have to understand who the client is, what they want, and how they best handle information. And unless you do that, unless you're thinking about that, the handoff will get dropped. It will be a fumble and the other team will win for a recovery for a touchdown. I don't know who the other team is by the way. I have no idea. Crystal Carter: Sports ball! Mordy Oberstein: Sports ball! Crystal Carter: So generally speaking, if I'm working on a project basis, let's say I've done an audit for someone, and I've done audits for folks. I worked on a project where we were doing some audits for smaller businesses and so I did a few of these all at once. And essentially what I did was I'd go through and I give them, because I knew it was very often the person who was the site owner who was going to be implementing it or one other person on their team, I'd give them 10 recommendations because I know for a fact that site owners will get distracted, confused, discouraged if you give them too many recommendations. So that's important to remember is how much you're handing over. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Because remember, they're not SEOs. It's very simple for you, as an SEO, but as a site owner, a business owner, you need to give that context and really walk people through it. Crystal Carter: Right, precisely. And bearing in mind that once they finish that list, they could come back and get another list, for instance. And the other thing that you add that I would always include in this handover would be resources. So maybe I don't have the time to explain to them every single thing, especially if you're doing a charity project or a smaller project or something. So maybe I don't have the resources to explain to them exactly how to add their meta descriptions onto their website, for instance, etc. However, I can refer them to the support documentation for the CMS. For instance, Wix has fantastic support documentation for things like that. So you could say, "Okay, what you need to do is you need to update your meta descriptions. Here's the link to the support documentation. It shows you exactly how to do that." Or maybe I have a video that I've made and I can add them a link to that video that I made, that sort of thing. And if you've written maybe more cerebral documentation or maybe more theoretical stuff, you can also link them to that. So every recommendation, particularly every recommendation should have a resource attached to it so that somebody can learn more, grow their skills base, and maybe not have to call you for every single thing that they need. That helps a lot in terms of client handoff. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I've done that a gazillion times. Not even just actual technical documentation. If I want to say, "Hey, I think you should do X, Y, and Z, and here's why," I'm not going to explain why right there. "Here's an article. If you want to learn more about this, why this concept in SEO, here's a link to it." And also think about the other people that the site owner is going to have to work with to implement. So if there's a dev involved or if there's a designer involved, I've put it into my report saying, "Hey, if you're going to send this to a dev, here's some documentation from Google that they might need to consider." Crystal Carter: Right, right. Similarly, so speaking with devs, I worked on bigger projects, for instance, where they had a dev who was building the whole thing and they were building it from scratch, and they needed the SEO all the way through. And I did the strategy beforehand and they did all the things afterwards. And then we have the meeting with the devs. And that's really important. The meeting is extremely important, and I highly recommend that when you're doing client handovers, and if you are getting somebody who's handing over and they're having a meeting, record the meeting. Record the meeting and use a tool that does the transcript for you. Zoom, I think, does transcripts for you. Google Meets I'm pretty sure it does transcripts for you. Both of those have recording facilities and both of those will allow you to record and save those things. And even if you don't reference it straight away, you might need it later. So absolutely record that for yourself. And if the person you're working with, the SEO or the advisor or the consultant or whatever, doesn't offer to record it, tell them you want to record it because that's super useful for everyone so that you can refer back to that and for any training purposes. Mordy Oberstein: And to that pro tip, I like to send my report and client handoff before the meeting. This way, they can look at it, they can review it, they can assimilate it. It's going to be a... Because again, the site owner, the business owner are well smart, they're super smart, but they might not be SEOs, so it might take them a little bit of time to sort of assimilate the information that you're sharing. If they can have a look at it first, they can have questions for the meeting, but also when you're actually meeting with them, it won't feel overwhelming. They'll have some kind of a familiarity. They'll kind of understand what you're talking about, and then they'll walk away feeling like I really got something helpful out of that meeting. Crystal Carter: Right, precisely. And I think you can also add and in your documentation where you're handing over, so you hand it over beforehand and say, "So here's the things we're going to discuss on Tuesday," and you send it to them on the Thursday or the Friday, or maybe even well before that. And then they show up on Tuesday. And sometimes in the things that I'm sending over, I will also send smaller videos of what is included in there. So Loom, again, is another tool that's really, really useful for this. So you can do quick videos, a few minutes long. Try not to make your Looms too long unless it's something super technical. And I tend to make them sort of like, "Here's a three-minute video that explains what this is or shows you exactly the part that I'm talking about." And those are useful, particularly if you're working with a site owner or you're working with an SEO, say, and they need to talk to their dev team. If you can do a video of whatever the technical issue is that you've identified, or the glitch or whatever it may be, or the bug that you found, if you can show them the video there, then you can give them the tools to talk to their devs. Another thing that's useful is to try to get people as far as you possibly can before you hand over. So I very often am working with people who aren't super techie, but need to talk to techies. So very often I'll say, "This is the stuff that you need in the appendix." So I'll explain the value of, I don't know, structured data or the sitemap refit that we need to do, or whatever it may be, or the code that we need to update. And I'll say, "This is the value of this code. And in the appendix, here is the code. Here are the dev instructions that you probably won't understand, but the devs should understand. Okay? So you don't worry about what that says." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, don't worry about it. Yes. Crystal Carter: Right. "Don't worry about that. Give this to those folks. Here's the video of me explaining it for them. If they would like to talk to me, I can talk to them and CC you and all of that sort of stuff." But try to get people as far as you can, and especially with client handoff, don't assume that the client you're speaking with now is the only client that will ever be involved in this project because people within the team change, people will need to send whatever you send to them up to higher-ups, and they will need to hear information as well. But managing that handoff is so important because it's advertising how you work as a team, and it's demonstrating how you will work going forward. So let's say you get one project with a company. If you manage the handoff well, and they know they can come back to you if they need anything, or you give them enough where they can get going forward really, really well, then they'll come back to you the next time because you managed the handoff so well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. No, it's a lot of trust-building that goes on with the handoff. And I'll say two things by the way, one to that point in specific. If you're a business owner or a team leader or whatever listening to this podcast and not an SEO, push back. If you think that the reporting is not or the handoff is not being done rather in a way that works for you, push back because it's not always perfect. It's not always easy for the SEO team to really understand exactly what you need and how you want it and how you need it. So be communicative. It's a two-way street. Definitely give that feedback. As an SEO, I will love that feedback. If you're listening and you're not an SEO, do that. The second thing I want to bring up is I think the client handoff is a good time for both sides, but particularly on the SEO side, to challenge the client. And I don't mean that in an aggressive way. I think a lot of times when I'm working with a site, there's things that I really want to do, and I'm not always sure the client's ready to do them, but they're not there yet. And I think as you hand off, I think it's a good opportunity to present those, "Hey, let's take this to the next level," next steps to the client in a natural way. It's like you're not calling them and saying, "Hey, you know what? I think you're really botching this thing up. I think you really need to focus on X, Y, and Z, and you're not." Don't do that. What you should do though is in the handoff, it's a natural place to list next steps or discuss next steps or to talk about what the next stage of evolution of the website is, and there's a natural way to challenge the client to take things in a little bit of a different direction that you might want to see. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that those stretch goals, that ambition, the potential that you see for that website is absolutely, absolutely brilliant. So I think that for instance, you might have a client that has no content whatsoever, and maybe their initial goal is to get some content going, for instance. So we just need to start getting some content going, and then you can say, "Well, hey, you've got these other things or you've got these other topics. You could actually create a fantastic topic cluster around this whole thing, and then this would do this and this and this, and then you'd have that and that and that," and if they can see that, then that will help. It's really important, I think, when people do that, and I'm sure that you do this as well because I've worked with you obviously, but it's also important to make sure that you get the need-to-haves covered, and they can see that you can get them from A to B because everybody's got ideas. If they come to you for one thing, yes, of course you might be able to see that they can get to the promised land, they can get all the way to this wonderful place, but they also need to get off the starting blocks first. So make sure that you, as a consultant, are able to deliver on the initial request and complete those initial requests first. Don't forget those. I think I've seen that so many times where people are like, "Yeah, but you should be doing this and this and this," and it's like, "yeah, true, but let's do this one thing first." Because sometimes as a team, it's a question of making sure that you're handing over with a team that has the ability to complete digital tasks, digital projects, etc, etc. for growth. And I think that one of the things that's really important for a client handoff, I'm going to give a shout-out to Dan White, who's someone who I've worked with directly and also somebody who's in charge of the Digital Marketing Collective, I think it is. He runs a group network for digital marketers. We'll link it to the show notes. I'm sorry, I mispronounced it there. But Dan White is fantastic at client handoff, and one of the things that's core to his client handoff is training. So we recently- Mordy Oberstein: We spoke about it with Colan. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we spoke with Colan Nielsen at Sterling Sky about training an SEO team. And so have a listen to that podcast, but training is absolutely core to your handoffs. And so if your handoff doesn't include direct training, maybe you're not leading, maybe you're not like, "Oh, let's have a training session next week," maybe you might include videos, for instance, which can also work as training for now, for next week, for next year. Mordy Oberstein: So with that, let's help you get an actual look at what a handover of your SEO work might actually look like by asking Botpresso's own chief SEO consultant and Founder, Nitin Manchanda, what his handover kit looks like. Nitin Manchanda: Well, for me, ideally, a handover kit should be a good collection of documents, resources, and information that you provide to your client once your SEO collaboration ends with them. It should be a comprehensive guide for your client to understand where they are in terms of SEO and the open items, their status, reference documents, and the download of the tools that you're using to ensure their SEO works nice. Talking about the ingredients for a good handover kit, I would definitely have the following: An SEO tracker where we have all the identified opportunities with the current status. Each item in the list should have reference material, a summary of what has already been discussed and done with the team, and the next steps, if any. This list should also cover everything from on-page to off-page to technical SEO, whatever was the scope of the project. You should also have all the parameters which can help them prioritize these elements internally if they want to proceed with them. And then the second one would be all the documents that are carrying details about the demand analysis, which is keyword research, and intent clustering, content calendar, and everything around that. So they can refer to these documents while continuing with the SEO efforts at their end. Then if applicable, you would also be attaching more details about backlink profile analysis, so how the backlink profile looks, list of high-quality or toxic backlinks that you have identified. So you would also be adding that. And then because technical SEO is usually very complex, so you would also be considering sharing documents about complicated projects like website speed optimization, mobile responsiveness, log analysis, structured data implementation, internal linking, and so on. So a good documentation on these topics would help them proceed further with these topics. And then the fifth would be my list of SEO tools and resources. You might be using a lot of tools. At the time of handover, you also want to tell them which tools you are using and for what purposes. So a good list of tools which covers, let's say, keyword research tools, SEO plugins, analytics platforms you must be using, and even like SEO monitoring tools like the one we are building, which is Quicklink. Check it out. So you would want to cover these tools as well. And then if the client is using any CMS, so the sixth thing in my handover list would be a detailed guide for them to understand how, for example, WordPress or Wix or these amazing platforms work, and how you can optimize content on these CMSs. And then the seventh in the list would be a SEO best practices document. So you would also be linking some of the SEO best practices references and keep them in very simple, easy-to-understand language for them so that they can understand the meaning of the best practices you have there, and then they can make the most out of it even in your absence. And then what we also do is we also provide, as I would say the last element in the handover kit, our contact information. So if they have any confusion about any of the topics, we offer ongoing support as well. So they can reach out to us and then we can help them with anything that was mentioned in the handover report or the project you were working with. So the goal of this handover kit is to empower your client to take ownership of the website's SEO and continue to improve its performance, and it's essential to communicate the importance of ongoing SEO efforts in monitoring to ensure long-term success. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Nitin. Some amazing points there. One of the points that resonated with me was sharing the tools. Clients always ask, what is this data? What is this? Where is this from? And you need to differentiate when it's third-party data and it's Google data. I think that'll help you advance your case. You say, "This is third-party data, and this case, this is actual Google data, so make sure that you are paying extra careful attention to this because that's actually the way Google's looking at you." Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think the data is really useful and making sure that people have access to things like Google Search Console and stuff like that. One of the things I think is, shout out to Wix, but one of the things that's great about the Wix CMS is that clients, everybody, anybody on the website can see Google Search Console data. And so one of the reasons why we built that was to make it a little bit less of a mystery for clients. I think sometimes clients think, "Oh, no, if I go in there, I might break it," and that's not the case. So if you're able to talk to people about which metrics mean what, that can make a really big difference. And I think in terms of tools, one of the tools... I mention Kristina Azarenko's Chrome extension a lot. That's a great tool for helping people to understand things as well. And when people have tools, they can see the value of the work that you've done more clearly. So it's really, really useful. And yeah, Nitin's got some great insights there. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of tools, by the way, so with all this talk of handing off and handing this off and handing that up, which makes me just want to watch a football game, you also need a good tool to help you with the handoff. I did not plan that. I did not plan going that well. Oh, by the way, sorry. Make sure you follow Nitin over on X, Twitter, whatever, @_Nitman, N-I-T-M-A-N. He's fantastic. It's @_Nitman. Big shout out. Thank you, Nitin, again. Now to the pivot, since we're talking about tools and now I totally botched a great pivot. Crystal Carter: This is how handovers can go. Mordy Oberstein: Serves me right. Crystal Carter: Sometimes you make the pass, sometimes it lands, sometimes it goes somewhere else. You never know. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, okay, so we all agree you need a tool to help you with the handoff. So that's why in this week, we're going Tool Time to share with you a tool that puts all the handoff stuff, from SEO to design to whatever, in one place, which is super important. Here's a look at Wix Studio's own Client Kit as we go Tool Time. So if you're handing things off to a client, the thing you don't want to do is overwhelm them. I think it's number one because you've lost a battle before it's even started. You have to put things in a format and in a way that the data can be digested, the information can be digested. And part of that is don't send them a million reports from a million different platforms. Try to consolidate as much as possible, which brings us to the Wix Studio Client Kit. Crystal Carter: I love the Client Kit so much. Mordy Oberstein: I know you actually use it. Crystal Carter: I love it so, so much. Basically, essentially, so in Wix Studio, there's lots of tools that help people who are helping clients to help them better. And there's that section called Client Success, and in the section called Client Success, there's a section called Client Kits. And what you can do is you can create a client kit, and what that is is all of your juicy, fantastic, wonderful resources per client, and you can add it onto inside of the CMS of the web page. So for instance, I've made a test site, and in my test site, I have a kit, and it can include a PDF, say, of your keyword cluster structure. You can include a video, you can include a JPEG that maybe shows a diagram of who's on your team or wherever, whatever. You can include links to other things. You can include links to other videos maybe that aren't even the ones that you made, maybe that are videos that somebody else made. You can include all different things from all over to make sure that the clients can get the best out of their resource. And one of the things that I think is so great about the Client Kit is that it lives on the website, so anybody going into the website can see the Client Kit. Mordy Oberstein: It's right there. You don't have to send them something separate. It's like they just access log in, it takes away... Before we were talking about podcasts and steps, it removes one of the steps. Crystal Carter: It removes a step. It also removes the like, "Did you get it? I don't know where it is. What's the file called? Oh, I don't have access to that email address anymore." Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the running through the email to try to find a file. Crystal Carter: Right, right. You don't have to do that. It's just there. And you can also continually edit it. So for instance, I used to have sometimes where a client would be like, "Oh, can you show me how to do this thing?" And I'd be like, "Look at here. You're not going to get it the first time. Me trying to explain it to you and trying to do it's going to take ages. How about this? I will do this for you the first time. I will record it while I do it, and then I will upload the video for you." Now, if I add that onto the Client Kit, then that stays with the website forever. So let's say I started the website, I launched the website, I do the things, then later on we add in a new feature. Let's say we add in a podcast and they need to know how to optimize the podcast pages or how to update this or that or the other on the podcast page. Well, guess what? I can just add in a new resource in the Client Kit about the podcast pages. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's the greatest part. That's the part I like the most about it because again, as I mentioned before, you as a client should give feedback to the SEO and say, "I'm missing this. I really could use this." And now the SEO can say, "Okay, I won't get it right for next time. I'll get it right for this time," and just add it to the Client Kit. Crystal Carter: So you can add it to the Client Kit. The other thing about the Client Kits is that these are reusable resources. So for instance, if you have... And you can see all your client kits together. So if you have a great set of keyword research resources that you give to all your clients, you can just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and add them all in for everyone, and you can make sure that every single client has the same level of resources every time they join you or whatever. Let's say you have a beginner's SEO setup and you give them their beginner's SEO setup so that they can do the sort of little things while you can think of the more sort of top-level strategic SEO tasks, for instance. It's a great resource. Mordy Oberstein: It really kind of formalizes the entire handoff process, kind of centralizes it, puts it in one place, and really gives you a home for your client handoff, reporting, everything, communications, all of it in one place. And that's why it is a really powerful tool if you use it the right way, which now you know how to use it the right way because Crystal told you how to use it the right way. Crystal Carter: We love the Client Kit! Mordy Oberstein: We do. No, we also love Barry's. We spoke about Barry Sanders. From Barry to Barry, let's have a look at all the news from Barry and some other people, whoever, on this. This, by the way, not whoever, I'm just making a joke because we love Barry, but we love all the other people covering the SEO news as well. But we just love Barry special. Here's this week's version of the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. This week's news really drives home the age-old adage that you need to know what side of the bread is buttered, or take it this way, what does your accountant and 7-Eleven now have in common? They're both about to be open 24/7. If you recall last week, we covered Barry Schwartz covering Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky, saying local hours seemed to be a factor when the business listing does and doesn't appear in a local pack. So for example, if a business closes at seven o'clock in the evening and someone's searching for that type of business at eight o'clock in the evening, they won't appear and the business that is open at 8:00 PM will appear. Well, per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, Google has confirmed this with Danny Sullivan of Google saying, "We've long used openness as part of our local ranking systems, and it recently became a stronger signal for non-navigational queries." Of course he said, "Don't change your hours to compensate," to which all SEOs said, "Hell we won't." I'm dumbfounded. I don't usually rant here on this particular podcast, but color me confused because SEOs have been asking Google for clarification around quality content and how they can go about creating better experiences on their websites with their content for users and how that plays into the algorithm. And Google's like, "Well, we're not telling you. We don't want you to manipulate the algorithm, but we will tell you that openness is a very strong factor for the local pack." So it's a little bit inconsistent. I don't know what the right word is, but it's a little bit confusing to me. Also, I understand how the openness being a strong signal might be useful for pizza. I search for pizza near me at 2:00 AM, I usually want pizza near me at 2:00 AM, so show me a place that's open. But if I Google lawyer near me at 3:00 AM, I'm going to give you some advice. Don't use the lawyer that's open right then at 3:00 AM. You do not want to use a lawyer that's open at 3:00 AM. So I think that sometimes it doesn't make sense. For example, if I'm looking for something that, hey, it's 3:00 AM, I can't sleep, I need a lawyer for whatever reason, and I look for a lawyer near me and I get the lawyers, I'm not looking to call a lawyer in that moment most likely. I mean, maybe if I'm stuck in jail somewhere. Its a different case. Maybe for a criminal lawyer near me, that should be a lawyer that's open right now at 3:00 AM, but in general, I'm just doing some research for the next day. So I'm not sure how that helps. Currently, I need to get my computer fixed. I'm looking for a computer fix near me. I was looking for it at 11 o'clock last night. Actually I wasn't looking for a place that was open. I was looking for a place I can go to today during the daytime. So I'm not sure exactly how this helps in certain cases. I'm going to be honest with you, from a pure ranking point of view, why wouldn't you list your locations being open 24/7 if it means that it'll now mean that you appear in the local pack 24/7? Don't do that. Don't do that because if you're not actually open and people do contact you, you will lose trust with your consumer base, which is far more vital than the rankings, per se. But I do think Google has to fix this, and I don't put my thumb on the scale very often, if ever, in this segment, but I'm putting my thumb on the scale here. I don't think this is good for the web. I think it needs to be fixed. All right, again, from the great Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable this time, "Google Video is not the main content of the page error spike." Let me translate that to English. Folks are seeing tons of videos no longer in Google's Index with the error in Search Console saying, "A video is not the main content of the page." This goes back to Google saying earlier in December that pages where the video is not the main content, maybe you have a whole blog post and you insert a little video, it's very ancillary, it's accentual, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that those pages are not going to appear in the video SERP. So you know you go search for something and it's a little filter or a bubble filter for videos. Those aren't going to appear there. The video has to be the main content of the page, which goes back to Google saying even earlier that on the regular main SERP, that if the video is not the main content of the page, you will no longer get a video thumbnail. But now we're seeing huge spikes in all sorts of pages with videos on them where the video is no longer being indexed with the error saying that the reason why it's not in the Index is that video is not the main content of the page. This is a way bigger deal than it seems and that it's being talked about unless you're like in the nitty-gritty and nooks and crannies of SEO social media. Essentially here's why. Now only YouTube videos themselves appear on the video SERP. And I'm talking about cases where I would say personally, the main content is a video. I'm talking about, let's say, you hosted a webinar and you put that video, the YouTube video where the webinar was on a blog post, and you have a little summary there. But really, the main thing is the video. It's a previous webinar that you hosted, and now you want to have it there forever on your website, and people can search and find it. Even those pages are not showing up in the video results on the SERP. The YouTube video itself might be, so this is a win for YouTube creators theoretically, but if you want to get folks coming to watch your videos on your website, now they're most likely going to go to your YouTube channel instead. I'll say it's a little bit peculiar. And before I say anything else, I'm just going to end it here. This is week's Snappy News. Thanks again for all of the great news coverage, everyone, and Barry, I guess. Provides for us each and every week. Check out all of the news resources that are out there for you because covering, watching rather, not covering, watching, listening, watching the SEO? You don't watch the SEO news. Reading, that's the word I'm looking for. Reading. Although wouldn't it be fascinating if every night at six o'clock, you turn on the TV and got the SEO news? Crystal Carter: Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Mordy Oberstein: Hey, Sue. Did you hear what Google updated today? No, Bob. I love that. Crystal Carter: Over here to the weather tools. Mordy Oberstein: Well done, Crystal! Well done. The Doppler 500 says it's going to be stormy tonight on the SERP. Crystal Carter: We're here on the SERP, and it's very, very windy! Mordy Oberstein: And the wind's blowing in the background. Ugh. We should totally do this, by the way. Barry, if you're down... Crystal Carter: It's flying everywhere! Mordy Oberstein: On a serious note before we wind this down, here's who you should be following a social media for more SEO awesomeness as Andrew Shotland is our follow of the week. Andrew Shotland's @LocalSEOGuide, Local SEO Guide over on Twitter, X, whatever we're calling it these days. Andrew is an SEO OG. He's the founder of Local SEO Guide, which is a SEO entity focused on local SEO, and he puts out some really great tidbits of information about SEO, not just on Twitter/X, but also on LinkedIn. You can get some great tidbits around whatever he's thinking about around SEO, which is a lot. He's one of the few people who really shares SEO stuff on a consistent basis on their feeds. Not like me, who's sharing shenanigans. Crystal Carter: He's super outspoken. I've been on a couple of podcasts, webinars, etc. So I've done a webinar with him with BrightLocal that was really interesting, and I also recently did the Local SEO Guide Podcast as well. And yeah, he's got so much experience working with clients big and small and working across the local space. So he really is a fountain of knowledge and he also has a very cheeky sense of humor, as they say in England. So yeah, he's a great follow and super knowledgeable and a good guy. Mordy Oberstein: So that's Andrew Shotland over at Local SEO Guide over on Twitter/X. And that's it for us. Hope we didn't fumble anything along the way here. Let me hand it off, the information to you, with precision. Crystal Carter: I feel like it was nothing but no-look passes over here. I feel like we were just going over full AI, Alan Iverson, Magic Johnson, all of the... We're only doing good passes. I did different sports ball. Can I do that? Can I just more sports balls? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No we're calling all sports ball a sports ball. Crystal Carter: Okay, there we go. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. 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 emerging content trends and why SEOs resist. By the way, resistance is futile. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars we have over 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 Dan White Nitin Manchada Andrew Shotland Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube How to Train Your SEO Team Botpresso Wix Studio Client News: Google local search ranking algorithm strengthens “openness” signal Google: Video Is Not The Main Content Of The Page Error Spike Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Dan White Nitin Manchada Andrew Shotland Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube How to Train Your SEO Team Botpresso Wix Studio Client News: Google local search ranking algorithm strengthens “openness” signal Google: Video Is Not The Main Content Of The Page Error Spike Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights on what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix Center, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, the spectacular, the unparalleled Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hey, internet people. I'm here on your podcast in your earbuds where you listen to podcast things. Probably on Spotify. Most people do, right? Mordy Oberstein: Or other, like iTunes. Crystal Carter: iTunes! That's true. People also do that sometimes, people in their cars? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm a weirdo. I like Google Podcasts. Crystal Carter: You like Google Podcasts? Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I love Google. Yeah, but they're getting rid of it. Crystal Carter: Oh, are they? Oh, another one for the Google graveyard. Google Podcasts, Google Plus. I used to like Hangouts. I'm not going to lie, Hangouts was pretty good. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I liked Hangouts. I don't know what was wrong with that. But yeah, I like Google Podcasts. I like it because I Google it. I can Google a podcast and the carousel would show up. I would just click on the SERP. It was just easier than going to Spotify, finding the podcast. That's why, yeah. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of steps and you lose me at, "And then." People will be like, "You have to do this and then this and then this." It's like, "Nope, that's too many and thens." Somebody gives you just instructions on how to get from one place to another and they're like, "Oh yeah, you take this turn and then that turn and then that turn." I'm like, "I'm sorry. If there's a route where I can take one turn and ride on that street for 12 blocks, I'm doing that." That's what I'm doing because I don't want to get lost. Mordy Oberstein: I'm the person where you ask me for directions, they say, "Oh, so turn left here," and after the second step I'm like, "uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh," and then I ask somebody else because I didn't hear a word you said really. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I don't know now. I'm done. My brain. Mordy Oberstein: I'd rather get lost than pay attention to all those steps, to be honest. Crystal Carter: Right, honestly. And then there's people who live in the countryside and they're like, "Yeah. So then you get to a tree that looks a little bit..." And you're like, "That's not directions, sir." Mordy Oberstein: Does the tree have leaves? Yeah, that's the one. Like, whoa. Okay, thanks, bud. Crystal Carter: But if somebody's giving you those kind of directions to lead you to some place, it's really important. It's really important and you've got to pay attention. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And then the SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight, which comes out each and every month, over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also hand off sites to clients like a beast with Wix Studio, but more on that later as this show is about something else entirely. It's about how to hand off SEO work to clients, which, wait, that's kind of the exact same thing. What a coincidence. That's why this week we're taking up how to make sure all the SEO work you did actually pays off by talking about how you hand off your work to clients, how client handoffs differ depending on the SEO project, what to think about when handing an SEO project back to a client, and why you actually might want to use the handoff as a way to challenge your clients. Agency-side SEO phenom and Founder of Botpresso Nitin Manchanda will join us in just a bit as he stops by to share what works for him when he hands off his SEO work to the clients and what it looks like. Plus, we'll take a look at a new tool to help you hand off your work the clients like a pro as we go tool time, and of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news that you should be following for more SEO awesomeness over on social media. So whether you prefer to spit and juke like Barry Sanders or just plow over everyone like "The Bus, Jerome Bettis, episode number 67 of the SERP's Up Podcast shows how you can help your clients take the handoff and run with the ball. Crystal Carter: It's a lot of sports references there. Mordy Oberstein: You're right. If you're wondering what that was, Barry Sanders and Jerome Bettis are running backs and they take the handoff from the quarterback. Get it? So handoff to the clients, handoff to the running back. Crystal Carter: I thought you were going to throw in something about The Fridge. That's my favorite football nickname. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, The Fridge is great. The Fridge did take a hand and yeah. Crystal Carter: We did good. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry for the sports ball. Sorry for the sports ball. Crystal Carter: It's okay. Mordy Oberstein: But handing off sites to your clients, doing it properly, handing off that SEO work properly, does a lot of things. It helps protect your work from being abused and destroyed and not lasting the test of time. It helps protect your reputation because if your clients then make a mistake and don't take what you said and handle that properly, they're not going to blame themselves. They're going to blame you. Crystal Carter: Right, this is true. And I think that it's important because sometimes the SEO projects roll in different ways. So sometimes you are somebody who is advising, and then again, you're handing off to the client. You're saying, "Okay, these are the recommendations that I have for you. Take this to your devs and do this, this, and this." And again, if you are not handing off well, if you're not able to connect with the devs, if you're not able to maintain lines of communications, then maybe they aren't able to implement it in the best way possible. And then maybe they go around, like you said, protecting your reputation, they go around and say, "Oh, we spoke with this SEO person and they actually weren't able to help us at all. This didn't work or we didn't see the good results." And that could be because of the handoff, because you weren't able to give them good instructions. The other thing that- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, don't fumble. Don't fumble the handoff. Crystal Carter: Don't fumble, don't drop the ball. It's also important to think about making sure that the clients get the best out of it. So one of the things that's important, even before you do the handoff, is making sure who's on your team. So if you've got Barry Sanders on your team, then you know what he does. You know what he can do if you give him the ball, that he's got those tools. If you've got a team that... If your recommendation involves a dev and they don't have access to a developer, then that's not going to be a great client handoff. If your recommendations involve people writing content and they don't have someone to write the content for them or they don't have the ability to write the content, then that's not going to be a great handoff. You need to understand who's on your team before you hand anything over to anyone. So when you're thinking about your SEO projects or even web design projects, you need to understand who's on the team before you start making recommendations, what their capabilities are before you start making recommendations. Mordy Oberstein: It's simply like targeting an audience. You have to understand who your audience is. Are they very detail-oriented or do they just want a top-level summary or some main things to work on first, then send them a second round later? Do they want it all at one time? Whatever it is, you have to understand who the client is, what they want, and how they best handle information. And unless you do that, unless you're thinking about that, the handoff will get dropped. It will be a fumble and the other team will win for a recovery for a touchdown. I don't know who the other team is by the way. I have no idea. Crystal Carter: Sports ball! Mordy Oberstein: Sports ball! Crystal Carter: So generally speaking, if I'm working on a project basis, let's say I've done an audit for someone, and I've done audits for folks. I worked on a project where we were doing some audits for smaller businesses and so I did a few of these all at once. And essentially what I did was I'd go through and I give them, because I knew it was very often the person who was the site owner who was going to be implementing it or one other person on their team, I'd give them 10 recommendations because I know for a fact that site owners will get distracted, confused, discouraged if you give them too many recommendations. So that's important to remember is how much you're handing over. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Because remember, they're not SEOs. It's very simple for you, as an SEO, but as a site owner, a business owner, you need to give that context and really walk people through it. Crystal Carter: Right, precisely. And bearing in mind that once they finish that list, they could come back and get another list, for instance. And the other thing that you add that I would always include in this handover would be resources. So maybe I don't have the time to explain to them every single thing, especially if you're doing a charity project or a smaller project or something. So maybe I don't have the resources to explain to them exactly how to add their meta descriptions onto their website, for instance, etc. However, I can refer them to the support documentation for the CMS. For instance, Wix has fantastic support documentation for things like that. So you could say, "Okay, what you need to do is you need to update your meta descriptions. Here's the link to the support documentation. It shows you exactly how to do that." Or maybe I have a video that I've made and I can add them a link to that video that I made, that sort of thing. And if you've written maybe more cerebral documentation or maybe more theoretical stuff, you can also link them to that. So every recommendation, particularly every recommendation should have a resource attached to it so that somebody can learn more, grow their skills base, and maybe not have to call you for every single thing that they need. That helps a lot in terms of client handoff. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I've done that a gazillion times. Not even just actual technical documentation. If I want to say, "Hey, I think you should do X, Y, and Z, and here's why," I'm not going to explain why right there. "Here's an article. If you want to learn more about this, why this concept in SEO, here's a link to it." And also think about the other people that the site owner is going to have to work with to implement. So if there's a dev involved or if there's a designer involved, I've put it into my report saying, "Hey, if you're going to send this to a dev, here's some documentation from Google that they might need to consider." Crystal Carter: Right, right. Similarly, so speaking with devs, I worked on bigger projects, for instance, where they had a dev who was building the whole thing and they were building it from scratch, and they needed the SEO all the way through. And I did the strategy beforehand and they did all the things afterwards. And then we have the meeting with the devs. And that's really important. The meeting is extremely important, and I highly recommend that when you're doing client handovers, and if you are getting somebody who's handing over and they're having a meeting, record the meeting. Record the meeting and use a tool that does the transcript for you. Zoom, I think, does transcripts for you. Google Meets I'm pretty sure it does transcripts for you. Both of those have recording facilities and both of those will allow you to record and save those things. And even if you don't reference it straight away, you might need it later. So absolutely record that for yourself. And if the person you're working with, the SEO or the advisor or the consultant or whatever, doesn't offer to record it, tell them you want to record it because that's super useful for everyone so that you can refer back to that and for any training purposes. Mordy Oberstein: And to that pro tip, I like to send my report and client handoff before the meeting. This way, they can look at it, they can review it, they can assimilate it. It's going to be a... Because again, the site owner, the business owner are well smart, they're super smart, but they might not be SEOs, so it might take them a little bit of time to sort of assimilate the information that you're sharing. If they can have a look at it first, they can have questions for the meeting, but also when you're actually meeting with them, it won't feel overwhelming. They'll have some kind of a familiarity. They'll kind of understand what you're talking about, and then they'll walk away feeling like I really got something helpful out of that meeting. Crystal Carter: Right, precisely. And I think you can also add and in your documentation where you're handing over, so you hand it over beforehand and say, "So here's the things we're going to discuss on Tuesday," and you send it to them on the Thursday or the Friday, or maybe even well before that. And then they show up on Tuesday. And sometimes in the things that I'm sending over, I will also send smaller videos of what is included in there. So Loom, again, is another tool that's really, really useful for this. So you can do quick videos, a few minutes long. Try not to make your Looms too long unless it's something super technical. And I tend to make them sort of like, "Here's a three-minute video that explains what this is or shows you exactly the part that I'm talking about." And those are useful, particularly if you're working with a site owner or you're working with an SEO, say, and they need to talk to their dev team. If you can do a video of whatever the technical issue is that you've identified, or the glitch or whatever it may be, or the bug that you found, if you can show them the video there, then you can give them the tools to talk to their devs. Another thing that's useful is to try to get people as far as you possibly can before you hand over. So I very often am working with people who aren't super techie, but need to talk to techies. So very often I'll say, "This is the stuff that you need in the appendix." So I'll explain the value of, I don't know, structured data or the sitemap refit that we need to do, or whatever it may be, or the code that we need to update. And I'll say, "This is the value of this code. And in the appendix, here is the code. Here are the dev instructions that you probably won't understand, but the devs should understand. Okay? So you don't worry about what that says." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, don't worry about it. Yes. Crystal Carter: Right. "Don't worry about that. Give this to those folks. Here's the video of me explaining it for them. If they would like to talk to me, I can talk to them and CC you and all of that sort of stuff." But try to get people as far as you can, and especially with client handoff, don't assume that the client you're speaking with now is the only client that will ever be involved in this project because people within the team change, people will need to send whatever you send to them up to higher-ups, and they will need to hear information as well. But managing that handoff is so important because it's advertising how you work as a team, and it's demonstrating how you will work going forward. So let's say you get one project with a company. If you manage the handoff well, and they know they can come back to you if they need anything, or you give them enough where they can get going forward really, really well, then they'll come back to you the next time because you managed the handoff so well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. No, it's a lot of trust-building that goes on with the handoff. And I'll say two things by the way, one to that point in specific. If you're a business owner or a team leader or whatever listening to this podcast and not an SEO, push back. If you think that the reporting is not or the handoff is not being done rather in a way that works for you, push back because it's not always perfect. It's not always easy for the SEO team to really understand exactly what you need and how you want it and how you need it. So be communicative. It's a two-way street. Definitely give that feedback. As an SEO, I will love that feedback. If you're listening and you're not an SEO, do that. The second thing I want to bring up is I think the client handoff is a good time for both sides, but particularly on the SEO side, to challenge the client. And I don't mean that in an aggressive way. I think a lot of times when I'm working with a site, there's things that I really want to do, and I'm not always sure the client's ready to do them, but they're not there yet. And I think as you hand off, I think it's a good opportunity to present those, "Hey, let's take this to the next level," next steps to the client in a natural way. It's like you're not calling them and saying, "Hey, you know what? I think you're really botching this thing up. I think you really need to focus on X, Y, and Z, and you're not." Don't do that. What you should do though is in the handoff, it's a natural place to list next steps or discuss next steps or to talk about what the next stage of evolution of the website is, and there's a natural way to challenge the client to take things in a little bit of a different direction that you might want to see. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that those stretch goals, that ambition, the potential that you see for that website is absolutely, absolutely brilliant. So I think that for instance, you might have a client that has no content whatsoever, and maybe their initial goal is to get some content going, for instance. So we just need to start getting some content going, and then you can say, "Well, hey, you've got these other things or you've got these other topics. You could actually create a fantastic topic cluster around this whole thing, and then this would do this and this and this, and then you'd have that and that and that," and if they can see that, then that will help. It's really important, I think, when people do that, and I'm sure that you do this as well because I've worked with you obviously, but it's also important to make sure that you get the need-to-haves covered, and they can see that you can get them from A to B because everybody's got ideas. If they come to you for one thing, yes, of course you might be able to see that they can get to the promised land, they can get all the way to this wonderful place, but they also need to get off the starting blocks first. So make sure that you, as a consultant, are able to deliver on the initial request and complete those initial requests first. Don't forget those. I think I've seen that so many times where people are like, "Yeah, but you should be doing this and this and this," and it's like, "yeah, true, but let's do this one thing first." Because sometimes as a team, it's a question of making sure that you're handing over with a team that has the ability to complete digital tasks, digital projects, etc, etc. for growth. And I think that one of the things that's really important for a client handoff, I'm going to give a shout-out to Dan White, who's someone who I've worked with directly and also somebody who's in charge of the Digital Marketing Collective, I think it is. He runs a group network for digital marketers. We'll link it to the show notes. I'm sorry, I mispronounced it there. But Dan White is fantastic at client handoff, and one of the things that's core to his client handoff is training. So we recently- Mordy Oberstein: We spoke about it with Colan. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we spoke with Colan Nielsen at Sterling Sky about training an SEO team. And so have a listen to that podcast, but training is absolutely core to your handoffs. And so if your handoff doesn't include direct training, maybe you're not leading, maybe you're not like, "Oh, let's have a training session next week," maybe you might include videos, for instance, which can also work as training for now, for next week, for next year. Mordy Oberstein: So with that, let's help you get an actual look at what a handover of your SEO work might actually look like by asking Botpresso's own chief SEO consultant and Founder, Nitin Manchanda, what his handover kit looks like. Nitin Manchanda: Well, for me, ideally, a handover kit should be a good collection of documents, resources, and information that you provide to your client once your SEO collaboration ends with them. It should be a comprehensive guide for your client to understand where they are in terms of SEO and the open items, their status, reference documents, and the download of the tools that you're using to ensure their SEO works nice. Talking about the ingredients for a good handover kit, I would definitely have the following: An SEO tracker where we have all the identified opportunities with the current status. Each item in the list should have reference material, a summary of what has already been discussed and done with the team, and the next steps, if any. This list should also cover everything from on-page to off-page to technical SEO, whatever was the scope of the project. You should also have all the parameters which can help them prioritize these elements internally if they want to proceed with them. And then the second one would be all the documents that are carrying details about the demand analysis, which is keyword research, and intent clustering, content calendar, and everything around that. So they can refer to these documents while continuing with the SEO efforts at their end. Then if applicable, you would also be attaching more details about backlink profile analysis, so how the backlink profile looks, list of high-quality or toxic backlinks that you have identified. So you would also be adding that. And then because technical SEO is usually very complex, so you would also be considering sharing documents about complicated projects like website speed optimization, mobile responsiveness, log analysis, structured data implementation, internal linking, and so on. So a good documentation on these topics would help them proceed further with these topics. And then the fifth would be my list of SEO tools and resources. You might be using a lot of tools. At the time of handover, you also want to tell them which tools you are using and for what purposes. So a good list of tools which covers, let's say, keyword research tools, SEO plugins, analytics platforms you must be using, and even like SEO monitoring tools like the one we are building, which is Quicklink. Check it out. So you would want to cover these tools as well. And then if the client is using any CMS, so the sixth thing in my handover list would be a detailed guide for them to understand how, for example, WordPress or Wix or these amazing platforms work, and how you can optimize content on these CMSs. And then the seventh in the list would be a SEO best practices document. So you would also be linking some of the SEO best practices references and keep them in very simple, easy-to-understand language for them so that they can understand the meaning of the best practices you have there, and then they can make the most out of it even in your absence. And then what we also do is we also provide, as I would say the last element in the handover kit, our contact information. So if they have any confusion about any of the topics, we offer ongoing support as well. So they can reach out to us and then we can help them with anything that was mentioned in the handover report or the project you were working with. So the goal of this handover kit is to empower your client to take ownership of the website's SEO and continue to improve its performance, and it's essential to communicate the importance of ongoing SEO efforts in monitoring to ensure long-term success. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Nitin. Some amazing points there. One of the points that resonated with me was sharing the tools. Clients always ask, what is this data? What is this? Where is this from? And you need to differentiate when it's third-party data and it's Google data. I think that'll help you advance your case. You say, "This is third-party data, and this case, this is actual Google data, so make sure that you are paying extra careful attention to this because that's actually the way Google's looking at you." Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think the data is really useful and making sure that people have access to things like Google Search Console and stuff like that. One of the things I think is, shout out to Wix, but one of the things that's great about the Wix CMS is that clients, everybody, anybody on the website can see Google Search Console data. And so one of the reasons why we built that was to make it a little bit less of a mystery for clients. I think sometimes clients think, "Oh, no, if I go in there, I might break it," and that's not the case. So if you're able to talk to people about which metrics mean what, that can make a really big difference. And I think in terms of tools, one of the tools... I mention Kristina Azarenko's Chrome extension a lot. That's a great tool for helping people to understand things as well. And when people have tools, they can see the value of the work that you've done more clearly. So it's really, really useful. And yeah, Nitin's got some great insights there. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of tools, by the way, so with all this talk of handing off and handing this off and handing that up, which makes me just want to watch a football game, you also need a good tool to help you with the handoff. I did not plan that. I did not plan going that well. Oh, by the way, sorry. Make sure you follow Nitin over on X, Twitter, whatever, @_Nitman, N-I-T-M-A-N. He's fantastic. It's @_Nitman. Big shout out. Thank you, Nitin, again. Now to the pivot, since we're talking about tools and now I totally botched a great pivot. Crystal Carter: This is how handovers can go. Mordy Oberstein: Serves me right. Crystal Carter: Sometimes you make the pass, sometimes it lands, sometimes it goes somewhere else. You never know. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, okay, so we all agree you need a tool to help you with the handoff. So that's why in this week, we're going Tool Time to share with you a tool that puts all the handoff stuff, from SEO to design to whatever, in one place, which is super important. Here's a look at Wix Studio's own Client Kit as we go Tool Time. So if you're handing things off to a client, the thing you don't want to do is overwhelm them. I think it's number one because you've lost a battle before it's even started. You have to put things in a format and in a way that the data can be digested, the information can be digested. And part of that is don't send them a million reports from a million different platforms. Try to consolidate as much as possible, which brings us to the Wix Studio Client Kit. Crystal Carter: I love the Client Kit so much. Mordy Oberstein: I know you actually use it. Crystal Carter: I love it so, so much. Basically, essentially, so in Wix Studio, there's lots of tools that help people who are helping clients to help them better. And there's that section called Client Success, and in the section called Client Success, there's a section called Client Kits. And what you can do is you can create a client kit, and what that is is all of your juicy, fantastic, wonderful resources per client, and you can add it onto inside of the CMS of the web page. So for instance, I've made a test site, and in my test site, I have a kit, and it can include a PDF, say, of your keyword cluster structure. You can include a video, you can include a JPEG that maybe shows a diagram of who's on your team or wherever, whatever. You can include links to other things. You can include links to other videos maybe that aren't even the ones that you made, maybe that are videos that somebody else made. You can include all different things from all over to make sure that the clients can get the best out of their resource. And one of the things that I think is so great about the Client Kit is that it lives on the website, so anybody going into the website can see the Client Kit. Mordy Oberstein: It's right there. You don't have to send them something separate. It's like they just access log in, it takes away... Before we were talking about podcasts and steps, it removes one of the steps. Crystal Carter: It removes a step. It also removes the like, "Did you get it? I don't know where it is. What's the file called? Oh, I don't have access to that email address anymore." Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the running through the email to try to find a file. Crystal Carter: Right, right. You don't have to do that. It's just there. And you can also continually edit it. So for instance, I used to have sometimes where a client would be like, "Oh, can you show me how to do this thing?" And I'd be like, "Look at here. You're not going to get it the first time. Me trying to explain it to you and trying to do it's going to take ages. How about this? I will do this for you the first time. I will record it while I do it, and then I will upload the video for you." Now, if I add that onto the Client Kit, then that stays with the website forever. So let's say I started the website, I launched the website, I do the things, then later on we add in a new feature. Let's say we add in a podcast and they need to know how to optimize the podcast pages or how to update this or that or the other on the podcast page. Well, guess what? I can just add in a new resource in the Client Kit about the podcast pages. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's the greatest part. That's the part I like the most about it because again, as I mentioned before, you as a client should give feedback to the SEO and say, "I'm missing this. I really could use this." And now the SEO can say, "Okay, I won't get it right for next time. I'll get it right for this time," and just add it to the Client Kit. Crystal Carter: So you can add it to the Client Kit. The other thing about the Client Kits is that these are reusable resources. So for instance, if you have... And you can see all your client kits together. So if you have a great set of keyword research resources that you give to all your clients, you can just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and add them all in for everyone, and you can make sure that every single client has the same level of resources every time they join you or whatever. Let's say you have a beginner's SEO setup and you give them their beginner's SEO setup so that they can do the sort of little things while you can think of the more sort of top-level strategic SEO tasks, for instance. It's a great resource. Mordy Oberstein: It really kind of formalizes the entire handoff process, kind of centralizes it, puts it in one place, and really gives you a home for your client handoff, reporting, everything, communications, all of it in one place. And that's why it is a really powerful tool if you use it the right way, which now you know how to use it the right way because Crystal told you how to use it the right way. Crystal Carter: We love the Client Kit! Mordy Oberstein: We do. No, we also love Barry's. We spoke about Barry Sanders. From Barry to Barry, let's have a look at all the news from Barry and some other people, whoever, on this. This, by the way, not whoever, I'm just making a joke because we love Barry, but we love all the other people covering the SEO news as well. But we just love Barry special. Here's this week's version of the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. This week's news really drives home the age-old adage that you need to know what side of the bread is buttered, or take it this way, what does your accountant and 7-Eleven now have in common? They're both about to be open 24/7. If you recall last week, we covered Barry Schwartz covering Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky, saying local hours seemed to be a factor when the business listing does and doesn't appear in a local pack. So for example, if a business closes at seven o'clock in the evening and someone's searching for that type of business at eight o'clock in the evening, they won't appear and the business that is open at 8:00 PM will appear. Well, per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, Google has confirmed this with Danny Sullivan of Google saying, "We've long used openness as part of our local ranking systems, and it recently became a stronger signal for non-navigational queries." Of course he said, "Don't change your hours to compensate," to which all SEOs said, "Hell we won't." I'm dumbfounded. I don't usually rant here on this particular podcast, but color me confused because SEOs have been asking Google for clarification around quality content and how they can go about creating better experiences on their websites with their content for users and how that plays into the algorithm. And Google's like, "Well, we're not telling you. We don't want you to manipulate the algorithm, but we will tell you that openness is a very strong factor for the local pack." So it's a little bit inconsistent. I don't know what the right word is, but it's a little bit confusing to me. Also, I understand how the openness being a strong signal might be useful for pizza. I search for pizza near me at 2:00 AM, I usually want pizza near me at 2:00 AM, so show me a place that's open. But if I Google lawyer near me at 3:00 AM, I'm going to give you some advice. Don't use the lawyer that's open right then at 3:00 AM. You do not want to use a lawyer that's open at 3:00 AM. So I think that sometimes it doesn't make sense. For example, if I'm looking for something that, hey, it's 3:00 AM, I can't sleep, I need a lawyer for whatever reason, and I look for a lawyer near me and I get the lawyers, I'm not looking to call a lawyer in that moment most likely. I mean, maybe if I'm stuck in jail somewhere. Its a different case. Maybe for a criminal lawyer near me, that should be a lawyer that's open right now at 3:00 AM, but in general, I'm just doing some research for the next day. So I'm not sure how that helps. Currently, I need to get my computer fixed. I'm looking for a computer fix near me. I was looking for it at 11 o'clock last night. Actually I wasn't looking for a place that was open. I was looking for a place I can go to today during the daytime. So I'm not sure exactly how this helps in certain cases. I'm going to be honest with you, from a pure ranking point of view, why wouldn't you list your locations being open 24/7 if it means that it'll now mean that you appear in the local pack 24/7? Don't do that. Don't do that because if you're not actually open and people do contact you, you will lose trust with your consumer base, which is far more vital than the rankings, per se. But I do think Google has to fix this, and I don't put my thumb on the scale very often, if ever, in this segment, but I'm putting my thumb on the scale here. I don't think this is good for the web. I think it needs to be fixed. All right, again, from the great Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable this time, "Google Video is not the main content of the page error spike." Let me translate that to English. Folks are seeing tons of videos no longer in Google's Index with the error in Search Console saying, "A video is not the main content of the page." This goes back to Google saying earlier in December that pages where the video is not the main content, maybe you have a whole blog post and you insert a little video, it's very ancillary, it's accentual, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that those pages are not going to appear in the video SERP. So you know you go search for something and it's a little filter or a bubble filter for videos. Those aren't going to appear there. The video has to be the main content of the page, which goes back to Google saying even earlier that on the regular main SERP, that if the video is not the main content of the page, you will no longer get a video thumbnail. But now we're seeing huge spikes in all sorts of pages with videos on them where the video is no longer being indexed with the error saying that the reason why it's not in the Index is that video is not the main content of the page. This is a way bigger deal than it seems and that it's being talked about unless you're like in the nitty-gritty and nooks and crannies of SEO social media. Essentially here's why. Now only YouTube videos themselves appear on the video SERP. And I'm talking about cases where I would say personally, the main content is a video. I'm talking about, let's say, you hosted a webinar and you put that video, the YouTube video where the webinar was on a blog post, and you have a little summary there. But really, the main thing is the video. It's a previous webinar that you hosted, and now you want to have it there forever on your website, and people can search and find it. Even those pages are not showing up in the video results on the SERP. The YouTube video itself might be, so this is a win for YouTube creators theoretically, but if you want to get folks coming to watch your videos on your website, now they're most likely going to go to your YouTube channel instead. I'll say it's a little bit peculiar. And before I say anything else, I'm just going to end it here. This is week's Snappy News. Thanks again for all of the great news coverage, everyone, and Barry, I guess. Provides for us each and every week. Check out all of the news resources that are out there for you because covering, watching rather, not covering, watching, listening, watching the SEO? You don't watch the SEO news. Reading, that's the word I'm looking for. Reading. Although wouldn't it be fascinating if every night at six o'clock, you turn on the TV and got the SEO news? Crystal Carter: Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Mordy Oberstein: Hey, Sue. Did you hear what Google updated today? No, Bob. I love that. Crystal Carter: Over here to the weather tools. Mordy Oberstein: Well done, Crystal! Well done. The Doppler 500 says it's going to be stormy tonight on the SERP. Crystal Carter: We're here on the SERP, and it's very, very windy! Mordy Oberstein: And the wind's blowing in the background. Ugh. We should totally do this, by the way. Barry, if you're down... Crystal Carter: It's flying everywhere! Mordy Oberstein: On a serious note before we wind this down, here's who you should be following a social media for more SEO awesomeness as Andrew Shotland is our follow of the week. Andrew Shotland's @LocalSEOGuide, Local SEO Guide over on Twitter, X, whatever we're calling it these days. Andrew is an SEO OG. He's the founder of Local SEO Guide, which is a SEO entity focused on local SEO, and he puts out some really great tidbits of information about SEO, not just on Twitter/X, but also on LinkedIn. You can get some great tidbits around whatever he's thinking about around SEO, which is a lot. He's one of the few people who really shares SEO stuff on a consistent basis on their feeds. Not like me, who's sharing shenanigans. Crystal Carter: He's super outspoken. I've been on a couple of podcasts, webinars, etc. So I've done a webinar with him with BrightLocal that was really interesting, and I also recently did the Local SEO Guide Podcast as well. And yeah, he's got so much experience working with clients big and small and working across the local space. So he really is a fountain of knowledge and he also has a very cheeky sense of humor, as they say in England. So yeah, he's a great follow and super knowledgeable and a good guy. Mordy Oberstein: So that's Andrew Shotland over at Local SEO Guide over on Twitter/X. And that's it for us. Hope we didn't fumble anything along the way here. Let me hand it off, the information to you, with precision. Crystal Carter: I feel like it was nothing but no-look passes over here. I feel like we were just going over full AI, Alan Iverson, Magic Johnson, all of the... We're only doing good passes. I did different sports ball. Can I do that? Can I just more sports balls? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No we're calling all sports ball a sports ball. Crystal Carter: Okay, there we go. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. 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 emerging content trends and why SEOs resist. By the way, resistance is futile. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars we have over 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

When are best SEO practices not the best SEO strategy? As with everything in SEO, even following best practices all depends. Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back to discuss the pros and cons of following the best practices of SEO. Find out when to and when not to adhere to best SEO practices as the duo explores real cases when following best SEO practices may not be ideal! SEO Consultant, Jono Alderson, shares scenarios where you should take off your SEO hat and alter certain best practices by not necessarily ignoring them but reshaping them to differentiate yourself from competitors. Plus, see how best practices relate to actual consumer expectations. Practice doesn’t always make perfect on this week’s SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back When to throw SEO best practices out the window When are best SEO practices not the best SEO strategy? As with everything in SEO, even following best practices all depends. Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back to discuss the pros and cons of following the best practices of SEO. Find out when to and when not to adhere to best SEO practices as the duo explores real cases when following best SEO practices may not be ideal! SEO Consultant, Jono Alderson, shares scenarios where you should take off your SEO hat and alter certain best practices by not necessarily ignoring them but reshaping them to differentiate yourself from competitors. Plus, see how best practices relate to actual consumer expectations. Practice doesn’t always make perfect on this week’s SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 83 | April 17, 2024 | 47 MIN 00:00 / 46:34 This week’s guests Jono Alderson Jono Alderson is an award-winning SEO consultant. He helps brands to compete on technical SEO, performance, and structured data. He’s worked with startups, agencies, and enterprise brands to turbo-charge websites, implement growth strategies, prepare for the future, and win markets. Jono is happiest when neck-deep in code, presenting on stage, sightseeing, or reading a good book. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the best-in-class, the class of not telling you, Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much. I was wondering what the intro would be on this particular episode of SERP's Up podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Well, I pivoted the last second. We were talking right before we started recording this. Crystal Carter: That's because you're a gentleman. That's why. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. I try. Crystal Carter: But yeah, I think- Mordy Oberstein: By the way, I totally botched it. I didn't say you were the head of SEO Communications at Wix. You are just the head of all SEO communications. Crystal Carter: You darn straight. That's right. That's right. People want to talk about SEO. You come through me. No, I'm kidding. No, you probably don't. There's other people, there are other people that you could talk to that we've mentioned them and they've been on the podcast before, so talk to those people. I do my best. Mordy Oberstein: I try. Or maybe Scott would say somehow I manage. Crystal Carter: All good, all good, all good. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our newsletter, our monthly newsletter, Search Light over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, where you can also manage your team and their clients with Wix Studio. From advanced team permission settings to customizable client resources, check out what Wix Studio can offer for your agency at wix.com/studio for all the things that keep your client and team management up to best practice and best standard. Because today we're talking about best practices for SEO, when to throw them out of the damn window. Crystal Carter: And when not to as well. Mordy Oberstein: And when not to, right. Also, very important. Crystal Carter: We're going to talk about both. Use your noggin, people. Mordy Oberstein: But it's better for Google Discover if we talk about how to throw them out of the damn window. Crystal Carter: That's right. That's right. Just like it's that meme of the girl throwing the money out the window or sometimes I feel like I want to throw my laptop out the window. Sometimes I have that feeling. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes I want to open up the window and just yell out of it like, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." Crystal Carter: That's normally when the algorithms updates have come in and then come in again and then come in again and you're like, "Why aren't there 12 at once?" Mordy Oberstein: Because we're integrating into our systems, our ranking systems, and we're recording this right smack in the middle of the March 2024 core update. Anyway, we're talking about throwing best practices out of the damn window when we're not to do that from scenarios when best practices work and when they don't work best for rankings, to when best SEO practices don't work for your team and when best SEO practice might actually harm your relationship with your clients. Absolute SEO legend, Jono Alderson chimes in on a really, really, really interesting outlook on the value of SEO best practices as a concept these days. Plus we take a deep look at what the heck a best practice actually is to begin with. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So forget everything you know about SEO. Well, not everything, as episode 83 of the SERP's Up podcast, Lee's Best SEO practices aside because at the end of the day, we talking about practice. We talking about practice, not the game we go out there and die for, not the game. We're talking about practice. How silly is that? Practice? Crystal Carter: I am loving the DeepCut AI throwback quote there. We're talking about the original AI. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Crystal Carter: Right. The original AI. Mordy Oberstein: Those who are not old school basketball fans. Allen Iverson, who's an OG of basketball, I love Allen Iverson, got called out. He's one of the greatest stars in NBA history, got called out for not showing up on time for practice. Crystal Carter: And he'd had some personal situations. I've seen the documentary about it. He'd had a bereavement or something like that and they were like, "You didn't come to practice." And he was like, "Talk about practice. I'm Allen Iverson." And I was like, you know what? Yeah. But yeah, Allen's right. Allen's right. Sometimes people go on about best practices and they've read it somewhere, they've read it in a blog, they've seen it on a video, they've done things like that. And don't get me wrong, let's just clarify right now. Best practices are called best practices for reason. Best practices are generally seen as solid advice for most people, for most people. And that is important. And they tend to be the things that you should absolutely tick off before you start getting into more advanced, more nuanced, more complex activities. And it can be really, really useful, particularly when you're at the beginning of your SEO journey to pay very close attention to best practices. And when you're thinking about technical SEO, it is almost, it's very, very critical to pay attention to best practices because- Mordy Oberstein: There's no leeway with that. Crystal Carter: There's no leeway. You have to make sure your sitemap needs to be readable. It just has to be. And that is best practice. Your sitemap needs to be readable, your sitemap needs to be discoverable, et cetera, et cetera. If your sitemap isn't, if your code isn't parsable, yo, you're not in the game. So those best practices absolutely pay attention to, but I think it's a little bit, I think sometimes, particularly when you get more advanced, it's a little bit like driving. When I learned how to drive, they were like, "You keep your hands at 10 and two and you never take both hands off the steering wheel when you're turning the car. You have to squeeze them together and then pull them apart and then squeeze them together and pull them apart." And I have watched my mother drive. When I was learning to drive, I'd watched my mother drive for years. She didn't drive like that. My mom had one hand, she had a big gulp in one hand. She had one hand on the other one. She was telling us to be quiet. Mordy Oberstein: That's better than my mom who was driving with her fricking knees while she's eating a sandwich. Crystal Carter: Okay, right. Now, did we all get to where we needed to go? Yes. Was that necessarily the best way to drive a car? If anybody's listening to this- Mordy Oberstein: If you're trying to eat a sandwich while drinking a coke, it is. Crystal Carter: Okay. Exactly. So you would not pass your test, driving with a sandwich and telling your kids off in the back. You're not going to pass your test like that and you would never teach anyone to do that. But as people get more skilled, they can get more creative and that they can get down into some of those things and they can assess the situation and figure out, they can assess the risk of trying something a little bit different. They can assess how complicated the situation is and whether or not this might be a time to ignore the best practice necessarily. As I say, this is something that you will grow into. So if you're just starting out, I highly recommend yes, follow best practices. However, there's lots of discussion around this and Christina LeVasseur, who's a great SEO and talks a lot towards folks who are growing up in their SEO or developing their SEO careers talks about this as well. She said, "Early in my SEO career, I would say we should do X, Y, and Z because it's best practice. With more time and experience out there to say, we should do X, Y, and Z because it's worked based on my previous test, or we should do this because the data suggests that we should do this." And that's really important. That's a really big difference and that takes a lot of confidence and takes a lot of experience as you mentioned, to be able to make that assumption because the best practices are yes, you probably won't go wrong with this practice, but you also need to be able to qualify them. Particularly if you're working with a client or you're working on a project, just to say it's best practice isn't always enough and best practice doesn't necessarily give you prioritization. So it's best practice not to have loads of 404s on your website. That's absolutely true. It is best practice not to have lots of 404s on your website, but whether or not you get to those first when you have lots of other technical issues to address or whether or not those are even a big deal necessarily depending on where they are on the website, is something that you'd need to assess. So you do your crawl assessment and if it's the case that yeah, there's a bunch of 404s on pages that nobody ever goes to or a part of the website that is old or part of archived or something like that that's low priority from a commercial point of view, then maybe that might be a second task after sorting out your landing pages, after sorting out some of the other technical issues, after maybe updating your structured data markup or something like that. So it's not to say that you're ignoring them entirely, but you're prioritizing them differently. Mordy Oberstein: There's a ton of cases where that kind of comes into play. And I think you're right, it does happen as you get more seasoned-ish or as you see more things happening. I will give you my classic example. The algo is super advanced. Google's algorithm I think is very, very, very advanced. I know sometimes that you get articles written by whatever publication and it's not, blah, blah, blah, the results are worse. That's not true. That just has to do with our perception of things. The algorithm incorporates way more machine learning now than it ever did before. Things are pretty advanced. That doesn't mean that Google doesn't have gaps. There's gaps all the time. So for example, I run another podcast, my personal little podcast called the SCRN. It's just like a fun little thing I do on the side. It's not a real thing at all. And I noticed that for SEO podcast queries, if you have the word best scrawled in everywhere, there's a gap in the algorithm. Google overweighs the term best, like it's 1995, like it's 2005, and it ranks things with that word best for best SEO podcast because of the keyword match. So literally on my home page, I have the SCRN, the Best SEO podcast because Google has a gap in its algorithm and weighs the keyword best too heavily for this vertical. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: That's not a best, you should not write that on your podcast website. Crystal Carter: No, no. Mordy Oberstein: That is not a best practice, but it does work in this particular case of the gap. And most importantly, I don't have any real branding on this website. I can do whatever I want with it. The branding on the website is that there's no branding, so I can do whatever I want. I wouldn't do it on the SERP's Up podcast. That would be terrible. That would be a terrible idea. Crystal Carter: Right. This goes back to a couple of things you mentioned there. So first of all, experience. So your experience showed you that there was a little bit of a gap in the thing and also tests and also risk assessment. So if you're trying something that is outside of the best practice, another quote I want to bring up is one from Ross Simmons who's fantastic SEO and content distribution, like king. And he says, "Remember, best practices are only best practice until someone comes along and finds success trying something new. So when you're trying something that's a little bit outside of the mold, if you're going off-piste, if you are traveling the path less traveled, the road less traveled, if you're trying that, it's useful to try it on a test site, on a low risk site to see what's going on with that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm doing. That's my site. It's a low risk website. Crystal Carter: So you're testing this in that space before you try it on clients. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I would if I had a podcast client, I do a podcast client, I do not recommend they do that. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. So you wouldn't do that, but you would test it and you'd see where that is. And maybe you wouldn't put exactly that thing, but you might put somewhere on the page, let's just put best in there. Let's just put best podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, if I could fit it in organically ish, I would totally do that, but I wouldn't do it like that. I am blatantly being salty. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. So you wouldn't put it like 25 times. So that's something to think about. So yeah, and testing, iterating. We have a great article in the Wix SEO Hub that talks about testing and testing is so important to SEO and partially because we get so much data back on it and your data will tell you which best practices are most applicable to you and which things are most important. And I think that using the data that you have and using the iteration and the testing is really important. Nick Leroy, who's also a fantastic SEO, talks about what should you include on your SEO tech audit? And he's like an overview of what was reviewed, why it was a problem, how you can fix it and prioritizing the things. You shouldn't just include things that are best practice. You shouldn't just include things that are best practice. You should also include the why am I recommending this? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, if you're selling services, they're not hiring you for your best practice, they're hiring you to catch them when they haven't aligned with the best practice, do that and then take them to where they actually need to go, which is beyond the best practice. Crystal Carter: And this is the other thing is that best practices are established practices, a little bit like a historic keyword volume. So historic keyword volume is looking at keywords from the past. In the past, lots of people have searched for, I don't know, banana cream pies particularly in June. And so you can say, "Oh, if I'm writing about banana cream pie, la, la, la, I'll write about this or the other." But maybe there's pie talk, maybe there's a whole- Mordy Oberstein: There's a banana shortage. There are no more bananas. Crystal Carter: And so there's not a keyword search volume, historic search volume on the banana shortage or whatever. Maybe there's that sort of thing, that's new ground and you're going to be able to move people forward by going onto new ground, combining some of the best practices, some of the information. The other thing I also want to throw out here, particularly from the tech SEO audit standpoint, is if you are using an audit tool, and I know this is one of your favorite bug bears, but if you are using an audit tool and they have what they are purporting or showing to be best practice like, "Oh, there's low HTML." Mordy Oberstein: That's my favorite one, that's my favorite one. Crystal Carter: Don't just blindly follow what they're telling you is or isn't an error. Mordy Oberstein: That's not actually a best practice. Crystal Carter: So use your noggin, people, use your brain to prioritize what works with what the business can do. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, yes. Crystal Carter: And what works with what they are able to look at. One of the other folks who was talking about this, who I thought had a really, really good take on this was someone who was saying that it's also important to look at what they can do. It's not just- Mordy Oberstein: I was going to touch on that, I just want to talk about that. Yeah. Crystal Carter: So Usman Akram, who's from Triple Dart, he was saying that a lot of people fail because they focus on best practice of what they should do because best practice is you should do this. Mordy Oberstein: Right. But they're not there yet. Crystal Carter: They're not there yet. Mordy Oberstein: So many times. Crystal Carter: So you should do this because it's best practice and they're two different things. You need to think about what you can do with your situation because even though he says what's really achievable with the resources that you have. If the answer is no, you can't achieve it, then it's not best for you. Mordy Oberstein: Not best for the business, and by the way, not best for you because you'll lose that money, you'll lose that client money, and that's not good for you either. That's not good for anybody. Are they going to benefit by not having your services long-term? No. I'm assuming you're doing good work. I've had a site where they needed an absolute total restructure. The pages were all over the place. There was no really best practice site hierarchy and site structure, and they needed to start creating new pages and reshuffling pages and there was a lot of work and they were nowhere near being bothered enough on SEO to do something like that. So I didn't recommend that yet. I brought it up in a report. That's what you do. You bring it up at a meeting, you stick it in a report, you say for the future, but let's now focus on these quick things that you can do that are really easy and let's get some momentum going. Otherwise, I would've lost that. They would've lost all of the things that you eventually did for SEO because we started off with something that it's a best practice, but they were not ready for. Crystal Carter: They weren't ready for it. So you need to take that with you. Andy Crestodina, who's also a great SEO, he's saying that they're very often hypotheses because best practices tend to be, again, for the best thing for most people. So for instance, Google very often recommends responsive design. And responsive design is great, responsive design is great. Our new product, Wix Studio has responsive design built in. It's fantastic. Wix Classic doesn't have responsive design. It has an adaptive dynamic rendering situation going on. And do you know what people say, "Oh, Google says it's best practice." Google doesn't do responsive design. Google's web page is not responsive. Why? Because they have different needs. Amazon is not responsive either. They have different needs because you know what? Yes, responsive is great for most websites, but for some websites where they have a completely different mobile experience, they might have a different kind of situation because if you just did responsive, it wouldn't be great. Mordy Oberstein: That's the whole Core Web Vitals saga. That's literally the whole Core Web Vitals saga. Go find me an e-commerce website where the home page has the Core Web Vitals. Crystal Carter: And so the best practice is to be super, super fast, but then you have business needs, so sometimes- Mordy Oberstein: You have to take up all this stuff. They want all the stuff for conversions, not there. By the way, in the beginning, Google's website, the travel website took them a long time because of the same issue. They had to restructure things in a way because they wanted the conversion, so they didn't pass Core Vitals. Crystal Carter: Right. Now, at the same time, there are some best practices which are critical. So Joe Hall was saying, "Most people ignore best practice because it's not sexy, but crawl optimization is critical to tech SEO best practice in a way. And way too many websites are failing at it." And that's absolutely true. Crawl optimization should be really important. Another one that comes up to me with regards to best practice is around the whole AI discussion that we're having in the middle of this big old update right now. So best practice has historically been that you should make good content, right? Good content. Mordy Oberstein: And then as is all over X, formally Twitter, they're like, "Oh, just write good content, huh?" Crystal Carter: So Natalie Slater on TikTok was talking about this how in the last 18 months, SEOs who adhere to best practice of making good content that is prioritized for humans and is not spammy and is not doing all of this sort of stuff, have felt a little bit of a wobble, right? Because that's been their best practice and that's what they've been telling their clients and that's what they've been focusing on. But this update, and there have been other people who have not really been paying attention to that best practice and have been doing what has been historically seen as spammy techniques, this parasite SEO things, some programmatic SEO isn't inherently spammy at all. Mordy Oberstein: Not inherently, but I gets they're real quick if you're not careful. Crystal Carter: But some people can if you want, with great power comes great responsibility. And so people have been seeing people winning with some of these tactics and they've been like, "I don't know what's going on. What about these best practices" But with this update, Google- Mordy Oberstein: Manual action here, manual action there. Crystal Carter: Manual actions, de-indexation, like things like that. Google seems to be saying, "Yeah, I worked for a little while, but we're adjusting this because we want people to adhere to the best practices, which is to do authoritative, expert trustworthy content and put that out." Mordy Oberstein: It's like driving with your knees. You can do it from stoplight to stoplight, but you can't drive from New York to California. Crystal Carter: That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Mordy Oberstein: I would like to see you try. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of best practices, we asked SEO OG, Jono Alderson when he throws away best practices. So here's Jono on when he ignores some of SEO's better practices. Jono Alderson: I'm going to go broad. I think I'm increasingly ignoring the idea that our day-to-day activities as SEOs should involve producing content to target keywords. I think I'm going to ignore the idea that we should be doing some kind of keyword research to do some kind of opportunity model based on some kind of domain authority or rating and search volume and cost per click, et cetera, and then writing or more likely outsourcing or using ChatGPT to write a bunch of articles probably in some kind of blog or resource center. I think that's probably a lot of what a lot of us do, but I think that's no longer best practice. I think it generally works okay-ish most of the time, but it's going to get harder. A few things to consider one, your competitors and the people who work for them have people who look like you doing the same research and the same opportunity model. So we're all chasing each other's tails. Simultaneously, the internet is increasingly full of very similar or derivative content thanks to SEOs doing this, and thanks to ChatGPT and the infinite amounts of just derivative content soup. And then because of that, Google has less and less need for your content, specifically yours. They can synthesize results in any vertical where they understand the query space and the number of verticals where they can do that is going to increase. If all you are doing is writing obvious stuff that aligns with some kind of basic keyword research or rewriting other people's stuff in a slightly marginally better way using different phrasing or slightly more words, you're not going to be ranking for anything. Now, I'm not saying don't do keyword research and don't produce content, but do keyword research and use these tools and processes and metrics to understand your audience's problems, to identify the kinds of questions that they have that you are able to support them on way earlier in the buying cycle than most conventional SEO strategies will target. Those are probably zero volume or zero CPC terms, but that's fine because the objective is to produce content that actually helps users to solve their problems. Give them the information they need to educate themselves and to take action to overcome their challenges without needing to buy from your convert. And if you do that well enough, you become a household name. You need to prioritize and measure how well your content solves the problems of your audience by adding value to the internet and to their lives. Super hard. But then you give Google a reason to index and rank your content. Then you give users a reason to engage and convert, and you give journalists and influencers a reason to link or share or cite your content without you having to run massive email and LinkedIn spamming engines to promote your infographics and dog jumpers to journalists. Now, the best version of this is to actually become a publisher, and that's been a trendy thing to say for ages in SEO, but many people just interpreted it to mean write lots of blog posts. You see, the difference is that real publishers do original research. They have editorial standards and processes. They employ people and journalists who have opinions and reputations and expertise, and they do that not just to tick some kind of EEAT box. They're also picky about what they write. They don't try and write for everybody. They define their audiences and explore their problems. And sometimes they're divisive and even controversial. If you're not doing this, then maybe it's time to start asking what your website is for and why Google, which is a search engine whose primary leading metric on revenue is user satisfaction would send visitors to your derivative blog posts and keyword soup. So this essentially boils down to when it comes to content, stop thinking like an SEO, think like an editor, like a product manager, even like a CMO. Consider the needs of your audience and the needs of Google in parallel and wrangle or build your content resource to produce material that's beneficial to both. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Jono. That was fabulous. We'll get to that in a second. Make sure you follow Jono on X over at Jono Alderson, that's J-O-N-O, A-L-D-E-R-S-O-N. Link in the show notes. So much to dive into about that. Okay, first off, I think we're entering an era where brand differentiation and getting people to come to you and being top of mind I think is going to be very, very important. Not just for your overall marketing success, but also for your SEO success where you're going to want people to be searching for your brand name, which I think will be something that Google's going to label a little bit more heavily going forward. But that's my personal speculation. But I do think that in five years from now, I'm going to invent a new term on this podcast. I think there's going to be something called brand first SEO, which is basically what he's talking about where you're basically not looking at starting with the keywords, starting with the search volumes, where you're basically starting with what does my audience need? How am I going to differentiate myself from all the AI content that's out there or from the other brands that are also trying to differentiate themselves because of all the AI content out there? And starting with that and you're targeting what's based on, and I think it's not even the best way to do it, but I think it's just knowing where the web is going to go, targeting based on what will differentiate you, which is much more aligned with targeting what your audience actually interested in than starting with an SEO tool. And the way I do this is then refining with the SEO tool. I kind of know why audience wants and what they're interested in very broadly. Let me refine that by using AlsoAsked, getting some questions about what the audience might also be searching for, running it through SEMrush, seeing what comes back from there and getting a better sense of the topic and understanding what are the historical trends? But that's secondary. Crystal Carter: Right. This is something I've been talking about a while. This is something, what's it called? Michel Fortin has a great article on user first SEO, and if I'm going to use shout out myself, I also have an article on a resource on where you can get that stuff. So he talks about low search volume stuff, about actually being helpful, about actually being useful, about actually serving your clients, your potential clientele, and actually providing a solution. And one of the best ways that you can do that is to get them from your clientele and from your potential folks. I have one about where to get user first keywords and topics. I have a resource in our SEO resource that talks about this. Talk to your sales team. Your sales team will tell you, people keep asking me this question and I don't have an answer. So write the content and then not only will your sales team will be able to refer it to, but if anybody has that question, they'll be able to find it. Look at your customer care queries, look at their training gaps. When you're training, people are like, "But I don't understand what that means." Guess what? Customers probably don't understand it neither. The questions that come through Google Business profile, the questions that show up on Amazon, those questions they won't have, like he's saying, you're making keyword soup. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Crystal Carter: Those questions may not have any search volume, but that doesn't mean that they don't have value. And it's also the differentiation point. It's always been about differentiation. SEO has always been about differentiation and marketing has always been about, the textbook definition of marketing is delivering customer value, and that is what you should be doing. That's what you should be doing with your content. That's what you should be doing with your website. And I think he's also bringing up the point, what is your website for? When you're thinking about what do I expect people to do on this website? Do I expect them to be able to get to know me, to know what kind of content I have, to be able to answer questions they have about how to use this thing that they just bought or to be able to learn something? What are we actually trying to do? We were discussing today, we were discussing an LP, Morty, weren't we? And I was like, "What is this page supposed to do? What do we want people to do?" We were looking at this draft and I was like, "Why can't I find?" Mordy Oberstein: No, and that page in particular came about because it wasn't thinking about user first. It was thinking let's say design first or whatever it was. Crystal Carter: And we were just like, but it needs to be able to achieve this goal, and if people have to hunt around to achieve the goal, they will give up and they will go somewhere else. Mordy Oberstein: It looked good. But they don't want to use it. Crystal Carter: No, they won't use it. You want something that actually makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: Driving with your knees looks super cool, but you can't actually do it. Crystal Carter: Right. Are you really going to get where you need to go? Mordy Oberstein: On a sharp turn, like at a 90 degree turn, that's not going to work. I would like to see that. Crystal Carter: There be sandwich parts everywhere, lettuce on your elbows, it's going to be just chaos. Mordy Oberstein: Now what we should have done was gone in reverse order in this podcast episode. We want to talk about what are our best practices from a conceptual point of view, which probably would've made more logical sense to talk about that before we get into best practice about SEO. It's an SEO podcast? So we'll do the marketing, broader marketing stuff second and the SEO stuff first, even though that might not be best practice. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. I see what you did there. I see what you did there. Mordy Oberstein: For our audience, it makes much more sense. Crystal Carter: We're experimenting, we are iterating. Mordy Oberstein: Driving with the knees on the podcast. That's all we're basically doing. Crystal Carter: Until the wheels fall off. I don't know. It's fine. Mordy Oberstein: So we're taking a deeper look at what is a best practice with a deep thought with Crystal and Morty. Best practices, best practices, fundamentally just what are they? So you can basically apply, we're talking about in SEO to other areas of not just marketing, but your life. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I look at best practices, they're like the minimal. Two things. They're the minimal standard and they're also what keeps you in line from being too nuts. Crystal Carter: So some people say, or bare minimum, I think I've heard people say this. Taylor Merchinson quoted someone else saying the path to mediocrity is paved with best practices. Ouch. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great quote. Crystal Carter: Ouch. Now, don't get me wrong, like I said at the beginning, best practices can absolutely guide you, can keep you from going completely astray. Mordy Oberstein: That needs to be on a Hallmark card. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: You give them the card and it's all beautiful and it's like, yeah, the path to mediocrity is paved. Crystal Carter: It's a quote from Austin Knight apparently, who I don't follow on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: It's brilliant. It should be a Hallmark card, very sassy Hallmark card. Crystal Carter: The thing about it is what best practices tend to be is they tend to be what everybody agrees on. If you think about best practices for a sandwich, we all agree that a best practice for a sandwich is it should be two pieces of bread with some stuff in the middle. That's a best practice, right? Then KFC came out with a sandwich that had no bread, had two pieces of chicken and a piece of cheese in the middle of them. Now, I think the other thing that's interesting- Mordy Oberstein: That's where the best practices are there to keep you in check, like a check in a balance. Crystal Carter: And I think that the other thing that's interesting about that is best practices, if you know what the best practice is, it's like you need to know the rules in order to break them. So if you know what the rules are and you know what the best practices are and you've studied the best practices, then you know when you're disrupting them and when you're deviating, it's like a benchmark. It's a benchmark for what should be covered at all times. If you think about customer service, the best practice for customer service is to smile when you greet someone and that sort of thing. And that's definitely something that- Mordy Oberstein: Have a great day now. Crystal Carter: And somebody enters it into your shop and you say, "Good morning, how are you?" That sort of thing. And then there's some people, there's a restaurant that I'm aware of and they have a thing where they're mean to their customers. Mordy Oberstein: That's good. I like this. Crystal Carter: It's a fun thing that people- Mordy Oberstein: Where do I go for that? Crystal Carter: I can't remember exactly what it's called, but yeah, there's a restaurant- Mordy Oberstein: My kind of a restaurant. Crystal Carter: They're actively mean to their customers and it's disrupting, but they still know the rules of engagement. You still get your food and there's all that sort of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: They don't spit on your food or anything like that? Crystal Carter: No, no, no, no. But there's a whole shtick that they banter in a way. Mordy Oberstein: Got it. Crystal Carter: And I think that sometimes when you disrupt it, it can get you attention, it can disrupt what people are thinking about, and I think that that can sometimes cause a change. They say what's insanity is doing the same thing lots and lots of times and expecting results. Mordy Oberstein: And expecting different results. Crystal Carter: And sometimes you just need to shake it up and see what happens. And I think that best practices definitely they're the benchmark, the place where you return to, the place where you start from, and you definitely need to get yourself up to a best practice standard at bare minimum. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. The whole thing is basic best practices indicate basic best quality. It's a testimony to you know what you're doing, you offer a quality product. So for example, if you implement best, I don't know, like technical SEO practices, it is a testimony like you've said many times in this podcast that you know what you're doing with a website and you offer a quality website. Crystal Carter: Even if you were to say, let's just say for argument's sake, even if the average website had best practice, only the average website had best practice, that's still better than 50% of websites. I think that that's important to remember that your best practice will get you going, will make sure that you've covered all the bases and that all the boxes are ticked, everything is covered, and then you can add on the extra stuff. If we talk about your sandwich or whatever, it's like your best practice... If I said to you, "Morty, I'm going to make you a sandwich." You would be a lucky fellow because I make a sandwich. Anyway, if I said to you, "I'm just going to make you a sandwich." You would expect at least two pieces of bread and some stuff in the middle. Mordy Oberstein: No, I expect two pieces of chicken with a piece of cheese in the middle. Crystal Carter: No, we're not doing that sandwich. Mordy Oberstein: I want two hamburger patties with a piece of a pickle in the middle. Crystal Carter: I'm Kato. Anyway, so yeah, if I said that, that would be the thing. Now, if I showed up and I was like, "Oh, I got homemade mayonnaise and I got this special cheese from over here, and this bread has been toasted and it's got seeds and it's this and it's dah, dah, dah, dah, dah." Then you'd be like, "Oh, wow." You hit the best practice and then you can add all the other stuff onto it. But if I showed up and I just said like, "Oh yeah, I'm making you a sandwich." And I just show up with the heirloom mayonnaise that I made, you'd be like, "That's not a sandwich." Mordy Oberstein: You are exactly reading my mind. Get out of my mind, Carter. Sometimes the best practice helps you when you don't know what the impact of something's going to be, where people are expecting. So in your case, the sandwich, I'm making a sandwich, I have two pieces of bread, I got a piece of ham. Should I add the cheese? I don't know. I don't know what to do. Best practice, add the cheese, because that'll most likely align with what people are expecting from a ham and cheese sandwich. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Precisely. Mordy Oberstein: Best practices help you align to consumer expectations when you're not sure what the expectations actually are. Crystal Carter: And these are a great place to start, and they're a great place to make sure that you've checked everything off. It's a great place to just make sure that you've checked everything off. I don't know if you're thinking about a resume, for instance, a best practice on a resume, there's lots of best practices on resumes. I'm not a recruitment person or whatever. Mordy Oberstein: Four point font. Crystal Carter: And some people say it should be one page. Mordy Oberstein: Everything's squished together real. Crystal Carter: Right? Some people say you should put a picture on it, some people say you shouldn't. There's lots of best practices on a resume, but I'll tell you the bare minimum, no grammar or spelling mistakes, that's a best practice. If I'm looking at a resume and I see grammatical errors, spelling mistakes. No, we're done. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of bare minimums, we need to cover the SEO news, and Barry always at least covers the bare minimum of what's going on. Oh, he's Barry. He's Barry. When you're going to SEO round table or even searching the land where Barry also writes, you're getting the bare minimum. That didn't come out right. You are getting, let me rephrase this. You're definitely covering all of your bases. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. You're covering all of the bases of what you need and should be expecting to get in today's SEO news. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I'm trying to give a compliment. It's not coming out right. Crystal Carter: You're digging a hole over there. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not Barry good at this, which means that it's time for this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Two articles for you this week. One from Roger Montti over at Search Engine Journal. Google explains how it processes queries and ranks content. Gary from Google is doing a video series, and then this one, he talks about how Google goes about processing queries and ranking content from crawling and indexing to the ranking process. It's a short formative video. If you're not an SEO professional and you're looking to get a better understanding of how Google functions, this video can be helpful. If you are an SEO professional, you'll do what I did and watched it and instead of reading between the lines and started speculating about all sorts of things as you were listening to it. Some of which are tinfoil hat moments for me, some of which I think are actually legitimate. I'm not sure if I'll share them or not here, but I might on Twitter said Lloyd to get you to look at my Twitter account. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to share it, so don't bother. So I guess it's not a ploy. Anyway, article number two, this one from Barry Schwartz over at SCRoundtable.com. Reminder, Google's helpful content update is no more. It's core update. I feel like that should be read in movie voice. Anyway, this is courtesy of next week's guest. A little teaser for you there. Glenn Gabe, Google has talked about this multiple. I made this mistake. I will freely admit this. When Google first made the announcement about the helpful content update, it seemed to me like they were saying that they're going to be integrating the helpful content update into the core update. Danny Sullivan was very quick to correct me on that. Thank you Danny, by the way. I do actually appreciate that. And that's not exactly what's happening. It's an entirely new classifier. The helpful content update is gone. It's no more. It's not like there's the strain of the update in the core algorithm, it's a different classifiers. Glenn wrote on X, he wrote, "The old HCU classifiers going away completely. Now, multiple systems are assessing the helpfulness of content." So pause on Glenn's quote for a second. Before Google assessed helpful content by using the helpful content update. Now what Google is saying is we have a much more holistic system and a new way of assessing helpfulness, and that's now part of the core algorithm. Back to Glenn's quote, "I'm saying it looks like the old classifier is still applied as of now, so Google could remove it like it did when Penguin 4 rolled out and Penguin 4's suspension was removed." Glenn wrote that in parentheses. That's why I put the pause there. Anyway, so two thoughts here. One is in the documentation and some of the things that Danny Sullivan's been saying on X and in the documentation that Google has, it looks like one difference to me seems to be that the HCU was a domain level helpful content assessment, quality assessment. In the language that Danny's talking and in the documentation that Google has, they're now trying to assess helpfulness, not just on the domain level but also at the page level, which I think makes a lot of sense when you think about how websites are constructed and how the content on the website is constructed and the value of different types of pages on a website. It's a whole different conversation. I don't know what I mean by that exactly. Now ask me on Twitter. But I think it makes a lot of sense, so therefore it is a different beast altogether. And at the same time, I will say that don't throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one. Google invested a ton of time and technology, money, resources and whatever to create the technology that is or was the helpful content update. I don't think they just said, "Eh, that's going in the garbage can. Goodbye." I think they took the things they liked about the helpful content updates technology. I think they may be applying it in a different way and a different format and making that part of a much wider, more holistic way of assessing helpfulness. So I don't think you could say it's an entirely different paradigm shift. Exactly. I know Google has said that it is, and I think it actually might be, but I do suspect, and it just makes logical sense to me that some of the ways that the HCU looked at helpful content just didn't just disappear. Google perhaps rejiggered it, reformatted it, reconstructed it, whatever you want, however you want to describe it. I don't know. I don't work at Google, but to say they completely abandoned that technology after investing so much into it, I don't think makes entirely the most amount of sense. Again, I'm not arguing anything Google saying at all. I'm simply saying is that what Google may have done is borrowed some of the ways the HCU approached helpfulness, combined it, refigured it, reconstructed it, rebaked it so that it is an entirely different thing, but still baked in there or alluded to in the new system or in the core algorithm is the kernels of the HCU. I think I've said too much already. If you want more news each and every day, I'm going to do a little pitch here for you. Check out It's New. It's New is new and is a new daily series, actually Monday through Thursday series that we do, Crystal and myself, with Barry Schwartz Monday through Thursdays. We go through two or three stories in the SEO News, offer some commentary for them. You can find it on Barry's Rusty Bricks YouTube channel, and also syndicated right there for you on the Wix SEO Learning Hub. It's right on the home page of the SEO Learning Hub. So go to the SEO learning Hub, check out the daily videos, subscribe to Barry's YouTube channel, and if you love this snappy news once a week, then you'll probably enjoy those little clips that we do each and every day. And with that, that is this week's maybe not so snappy news. Thank you for bearing with me. Crystal Carter: You barely got through that. Mordy Oberstein: barely got through that. Thank you Barry for all of that. Speaking of Barry, this week's follow of the week is Barry. Crystal Carter: Is there really? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Go follow Barry and tell him that we sent you, and I hope you're all following him as well. Mordy Oberstein: Because there's a real reason why. He's at Rusty Brick on all the social media platforms from Macedon to Blue Sky to X. Crystal Carter: Is Barry on TikTok? Mordy Oberstein: I think on LinkedIn it's his actual name, Barry Schwartz. You can find him at BarryseoMemes.com. There's a lot of places you could follow Barry. The reason why Barry is our follow of the week is because Barry often covers SEO best practices periodically on SeRoundtable.com. So inevitably someone will ask John Mueller, "How many words do I need to rank?" And John will answer something very snarky back and Barry will cover that on SeRoundtable.com. But no, it's good. It's a good thing because people break into the SEO industry at all different times. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So you haven't seen that conversation from 10 years ago. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: So, oh, Barry's covering it again is actually incredibly helpful, which is why we're saying follow Barry. Crystal Carter: I would also say that it's an SEO best practice to follow Barry. Mordy Oberstein: It is absolutely. Crystal Carter: If you're planning to learn SEO, if you're planning to keep tracks of the algorithms, of updates, of announcements from Google, of various different things, I would say his best practice to follow Barry because he covers everything and Google have acknowledged him for this. He covers everything. I give a lot of talks. I talk about a lot of various different things, and I literally use Barry's articles as an archive of developments of different stuff. So I was looking at something around the helpful content update and around the Hidden Gems stuff, and I was literally going through Barry's- Mordy Oberstein: The timeline. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's like a timeline. I was like, "How many times did they mention Hidden Gems?" Because he would've covered it, but he hasn't covered it. It probably didn't happen. Mordy Oberstein: My online behavior each day basically consists of what happened in sports the previous evening and then going to check SeoRoundTable. Crystal Carter: Same. Mordy Oberstein: That's basically it. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Best practice. Crystal Carter: Yeah, definitely. So follow Barry and that will be best for you. Mordy Oberstein: It will be best. Barry is best. Crystal Carter: Pulling that back after the bare minimum there. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for saving me there. I was just digging a grave. Well, you're probably ready to write an obituary for me at that point. Crystal Carter: I went to a museum the other day and I was looking at this exhibition and this guy just was telling me about it, and he was telling me he worked there. He was telling me about this exhibit I was looking at, and I could have just read the thing on the side. They always put a thing on the side. Mordy Oberstein: I never read those things. Crystal Carter: This guy was telling me the thing, but he literally was just telling me wrong information. He said it was about World War II. It was about World War I. He said it was about, he couldn't remember where it was on loan from. He couldn't pronounce it, the person's artist's name. There was a bunch of stuff, and I just sat there going, "Uh huh." Mordy Oberstein: And it's right there on the placard. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's awesome. Crystal Carter: I just read it and you know what would've been best practice for him to say, "Would you like to know more about it? It's over there. Read the sign." Mordy Oberstein: My wife reads things at the museums. I never read them. I came here to look, not to read. Crystal Carter: What were you reading for? Mordy Oberstein: If I need to read, I would've stayed home and read a book. Crystal Carter: There you go. Mordy Oberstein: I want to see stuff. I'm at a museum. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with the new episodes we dive into is SEO for affiliate sites in some real trouble? Look for wherever you can consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO learning about you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content, webinars and resources we have to offer on the Wix SEO learning hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Jono Alderson Natalie Slater Barry Schwartz Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Jono Alderson SEO Consulting User first SEO News: Google Explains How It Processes Queries & Ranks Content Reminder: Google's Helpful Content Update Is No More - It's A Core Update Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Jono Alderson Natalie Slater Barry Schwartz Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Jono Alderson SEO Consulting User first SEO News: Google Explains How It Processes Queries & Ranks Content Reminder: Google's Helpful Content Update Is No More - It's A Core Update Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the best-in-class, the class of not telling you, Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much. I was wondering what the intro would be on this particular episode of SERP's Up podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Well, I pivoted the last second. We were talking right before we started recording this. Crystal Carter: That's because you're a gentleman. That's why. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. I try. Crystal Carter: But yeah, I think- Mordy Oberstein: By the way, I totally botched it. I didn't say you were the head of SEO Communications at Wix. You are just the head of all SEO communications. Crystal Carter: You darn straight. That's right. That's right. People want to talk about SEO. You come through me. No, I'm kidding. No, you probably don't. There's other people, there are other people that you could talk to that we've mentioned them and they've been on the podcast before, so talk to those people. I do my best. Mordy Oberstein: I try. Or maybe Scott would say somehow I manage. Crystal Carter: All good, all good, all good. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our newsletter, our monthly newsletter, Search Light over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, where you can also manage your team and their clients with Wix Studio. From advanced team permission settings to customizable client resources, check out what Wix Studio can offer for your agency at wix.com/studio for all the things that keep your client and team management up to best practice and best standard. Because today we're talking about best practices for SEO, when to throw them out of the damn window. Crystal Carter: And when not to as well. Mordy Oberstein: And when not to, right. Also, very important. Crystal Carter: We're going to talk about both. Use your noggin, people. Mordy Oberstein: But it's better for Google Discover if we talk about how to throw them out of the damn window. Crystal Carter: That's right. That's right. Just like it's that meme of the girl throwing the money out the window or sometimes I feel like I want to throw my laptop out the window. Sometimes I have that feeling. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes I want to open up the window and just yell out of it like, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." Crystal Carter: That's normally when the algorithms updates have come in and then come in again and then come in again and you're like, "Why aren't there 12 at once?" Mordy Oberstein: Because we're integrating into our systems, our ranking systems, and we're recording this right smack in the middle of the March 2024 core update. Anyway, we're talking about throwing best practices out of the damn window when we're not to do that from scenarios when best practices work and when they don't work best for rankings, to when best SEO practices don't work for your team and when best SEO practice might actually harm your relationship with your clients. Absolute SEO legend, Jono Alderson chimes in on a really, really, really interesting outlook on the value of SEO best practices as a concept these days. Plus we take a deep look at what the heck a best practice actually is to begin with. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So forget everything you know about SEO. Well, not everything, as episode 83 of the SERP's Up podcast, Lee's Best SEO practices aside because at the end of the day, we talking about practice. We talking about practice, not the game we go out there and die for, not the game. We're talking about practice. How silly is that? Practice? Crystal Carter: I am loving the DeepCut AI throwback quote there. We're talking about the original AI. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Crystal Carter: Right. The original AI. Mordy Oberstein: Those who are not old school basketball fans. Allen Iverson, who's an OG of basketball, I love Allen Iverson, got called out. He's one of the greatest stars in NBA history, got called out for not showing up on time for practice. Crystal Carter: And he'd had some personal situations. I've seen the documentary about it. He'd had a bereavement or something like that and they were like, "You didn't come to practice." And he was like, "Talk about practice. I'm Allen Iverson." And I was like, you know what? Yeah. But yeah, Allen's right. Allen's right. Sometimes people go on about best practices and they've read it somewhere, they've read it in a blog, they've seen it on a video, they've done things like that. And don't get me wrong, let's just clarify right now. Best practices are called best practices for reason. Best practices are generally seen as solid advice for most people, for most people. And that is important. And they tend to be the things that you should absolutely tick off before you start getting into more advanced, more nuanced, more complex activities. And it can be really, really useful, particularly when you're at the beginning of your SEO journey to pay very close attention to best practices. And when you're thinking about technical SEO, it is almost, it's very, very critical to pay attention to best practices because- Mordy Oberstein: There's no leeway with that. Crystal Carter: There's no leeway. You have to make sure your sitemap needs to be readable. It just has to be. And that is best practice. Your sitemap needs to be readable, your sitemap needs to be discoverable, et cetera, et cetera. If your sitemap isn't, if your code isn't parsable, yo, you're not in the game. So those best practices absolutely pay attention to, but I think it's a little bit, I think sometimes, particularly when you get more advanced, it's a little bit like driving. When I learned how to drive, they were like, "You keep your hands at 10 and two and you never take both hands off the steering wheel when you're turning the car. You have to squeeze them together and then pull them apart and then squeeze them together and pull them apart." And I have watched my mother drive. When I was learning to drive, I'd watched my mother drive for years. She didn't drive like that. My mom had one hand, she had a big gulp in one hand. She had one hand on the other one. She was telling us to be quiet. Mordy Oberstein: That's better than my mom who was driving with her fricking knees while she's eating a sandwich. Crystal Carter: Okay, right. Now, did we all get to where we needed to go? Yes. Was that necessarily the best way to drive a car? If anybody's listening to this- Mordy Oberstein: If you're trying to eat a sandwich while drinking a coke, it is. Crystal Carter: Okay. Exactly. So you would not pass your test, driving with a sandwich and telling your kids off in the back. You're not going to pass your test like that and you would never teach anyone to do that. But as people get more skilled, they can get more creative and that they can get down into some of those things and they can assess the situation and figure out, they can assess the risk of trying something a little bit different. They can assess how complicated the situation is and whether or not this might be a time to ignore the best practice necessarily. As I say, this is something that you will grow into. So if you're just starting out, I highly recommend yes, follow best practices. However, there's lots of discussion around this and Christina LeVasseur, who's a great SEO and talks a lot towards folks who are growing up in their SEO or developing their SEO careers talks about this as well. She said, "Early in my SEO career, I would say we should do X, Y, and Z because it's best practice. With more time and experience out there to say, we should do X, Y, and Z because it's worked based on my previous test, or we should do this because the data suggests that we should do this." And that's really important. That's a really big difference and that takes a lot of confidence and takes a lot of experience as you mentioned, to be able to make that assumption because the best practices are yes, you probably won't go wrong with this practice, but you also need to be able to qualify them. Particularly if you're working with a client or you're working on a project, just to say it's best practice isn't always enough and best practice doesn't necessarily give you prioritization. So it's best practice not to have loads of 404s on your website. That's absolutely true. It is best practice not to have lots of 404s on your website, but whether or not you get to those first when you have lots of other technical issues to address or whether or not those are even a big deal necessarily depending on where they are on the website, is something that you'd need to assess. So you do your crawl assessment and if it's the case that yeah, there's a bunch of 404s on pages that nobody ever goes to or a part of the website that is old or part of archived or something like that that's low priority from a commercial point of view, then maybe that might be a second task after sorting out your landing pages, after sorting out some of the other technical issues, after maybe updating your structured data markup or something like that. So it's not to say that you're ignoring them entirely, but you're prioritizing them differently. Mordy Oberstein: There's a ton of cases where that kind of comes into play. And I think you're right, it does happen as you get more seasoned-ish or as you see more things happening. I will give you my classic example. The algo is super advanced. Google's algorithm I think is very, very, very advanced. I know sometimes that you get articles written by whatever publication and it's not, blah, blah, blah, the results are worse. That's not true. That just has to do with our perception of things. The algorithm incorporates way more machine learning now than it ever did before. Things are pretty advanced. That doesn't mean that Google doesn't have gaps. There's gaps all the time. So for example, I run another podcast, my personal little podcast called the SCRN. It's just like a fun little thing I do on the side. It's not a real thing at all. And I noticed that for SEO podcast queries, if you have the word best scrawled in everywhere, there's a gap in the algorithm. Google overweighs the term best, like it's 1995, like it's 2005, and it ranks things with that word best for best SEO podcast because of the keyword match. So literally on my home page, I have the SCRN, the Best SEO podcast because Google has a gap in its algorithm and weighs the keyword best too heavily for this vertical. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: That's not a best, you should not write that on your podcast website. Crystal Carter: No, no. Mordy Oberstein: That is not a best practice, but it does work in this particular case of the gap. And most importantly, I don't have any real branding on this website. I can do whatever I want with it. The branding on the website is that there's no branding, so I can do whatever I want. I wouldn't do it on the SERP's Up podcast. That would be terrible. That would be a terrible idea. Crystal Carter: Right. This goes back to a couple of things you mentioned there. So first of all, experience. So your experience showed you that there was a little bit of a gap in the thing and also tests and also risk assessment. So if you're trying something that is outside of the best practice, another quote I want to bring up is one from Ross Simmons who's fantastic SEO and content distribution, like king. And he says, "Remember, best practices are only best practice until someone comes along and finds success trying something new. So when you're trying something that's a little bit outside of the mold, if you're going off-piste, if you are traveling the path less traveled, the road less traveled, if you're trying that, it's useful to try it on a test site, on a low risk site to see what's going on with that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm doing. That's my site. It's a low risk website. Crystal Carter: So you're testing this in that space before you try it on clients. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I would if I had a podcast client, I do a podcast client, I do not recommend they do that. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. So you wouldn't do that, but you would test it and you'd see where that is. And maybe you wouldn't put exactly that thing, but you might put somewhere on the page, let's just put best in there. Let's just put best podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, if I could fit it in organically ish, I would totally do that, but I wouldn't do it like that. I am blatantly being salty. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. So you wouldn't put it like 25 times. So that's something to think about. So yeah, and testing, iterating. We have a great article in the Wix SEO Hub that talks about testing and testing is so important to SEO and partially because we get so much data back on it and your data will tell you which best practices are most applicable to you and which things are most important. And I think that using the data that you have and using the iteration and the testing is really important. Nick Leroy, who's also a fantastic SEO, talks about what should you include on your SEO tech audit? And he's like an overview of what was reviewed, why it was a problem, how you can fix it and prioritizing the things. You shouldn't just include things that are best practice. You shouldn't just include things that are best practice. You should also include the why am I recommending this? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, if you're selling services, they're not hiring you for your best practice, they're hiring you to catch them when they haven't aligned with the best practice, do that and then take them to where they actually need to go, which is beyond the best practice. Crystal Carter: And this is the other thing is that best practices are established practices, a little bit like a historic keyword volume. So historic keyword volume is looking at keywords from the past. In the past, lots of people have searched for, I don't know, banana cream pies particularly in June. And so you can say, "Oh, if I'm writing about banana cream pie, la, la, la, I'll write about this or the other." But maybe there's pie talk, maybe there's a whole- Mordy Oberstein: There's a banana shortage. There are no more bananas. Crystal Carter: And so there's not a keyword search volume, historic search volume on the banana shortage or whatever. Maybe there's that sort of thing, that's new ground and you're going to be able to move people forward by going onto new ground, combining some of the best practices, some of the information. The other thing I also want to throw out here, particularly from the tech SEO audit standpoint, is if you are using an audit tool, and I know this is one of your favorite bug bears, but if you are using an audit tool and they have what they are purporting or showing to be best practice like, "Oh, there's low HTML." Mordy Oberstein: That's my favorite one, that's my favorite one. Crystal Carter: Don't just blindly follow what they're telling you is or isn't an error. Mordy Oberstein: That's not actually a best practice. Crystal Carter: So use your noggin, people, use your brain to prioritize what works with what the business can do. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, yes. Crystal Carter: And what works with what they are able to look at. One of the other folks who was talking about this, who I thought had a really, really good take on this was someone who was saying that it's also important to look at what they can do. It's not just- Mordy Oberstein: I was going to touch on that, I just want to talk about that. Yeah. Crystal Carter: So Usman Akram, who's from Triple Dart, he was saying that a lot of people fail because they focus on best practice of what they should do because best practice is you should do this. Mordy Oberstein: Right. But they're not there yet. Crystal Carter: They're not there yet. Mordy Oberstein: So many times. Crystal Carter: So you should do this because it's best practice and they're two different things. You need to think about what you can do with your situation because even though he says what's really achievable with the resources that you have. If the answer is no, you can't achieve it, then it's not best for you. Mordy Oberstein: Not best for the business, and by the way, not best for you because you'll lose that money, you'll lose that client money, and that's not good for you either. That's not good for anybody. Are they going to benefit by not having your services long-term? No. I'm assuming you're doing good work. I've had a site where they needed an absolute total restructure. The pages were all over the place. There was no really best practice site hierarchy and site structure, and they needed to start creating new pages and reshuffling pages and there was a lot of work and they were nowhere near being bothered enough on SEO to do something like that. So I didn't recommend that yet. I brought it up in a report. That's what you do. You bring it up at a meeting, you stick it in a report, you say for the future, but let's now focus on these quick things that you can do that are really easy and let's get some momentum going. Otherwise, I would've lost that. They would've lost all of the things that you eventually did for SEO because we started off with something that it's a best practice, but they were not ready for. Crystal Carter: They weren't ready for it. So you need to take that with you. Andy Crestodina, who's also a great SEO, he's saying that they're very often hypotheses because best practices tend to be, again, for the best thing for most people. So for instance, Google very often recommends responsive design. And responsive design is great, responsive design is great. Our new product, Wix Studio has responsive design built in. It's fantastic. Wix Classic doesn't have responsive design. It has an adaptive dynamic rendering situation going on. And do you know what people say, "Oh, Google says it's best practice." Google doesn't do responsive design. Google's web page is not responsive. Why? Because they have different needs. Amazon is not responsive either. They have different needs because you know what? Yes, responsive is great for most websites, but for some websites where they have a completely different mobile experience, they might have a different kind of situation because if you just did responsive, it wouldn't be great. Mordy Oberstein: That's the whole Core Web Vitals saga. That's literally the whole Core Web Vitals saga. Go find me an e-commerce website where the home page has the Core Web Vitals. Crystal Carter: And so the best practice is to be super, super fast, but then you have business needs, so sometimes- Mordy Oberstein: You have to take up all this stuff. They want all the stuff for conversions, not there. By the way, in the beginning, Google's website, the travel website took them a long time because of the same issue. They had to restructure things in a way because they wanted the conversion, so they didn't pass Core Vitals. Crystal Carter: Right. Now, at the same time, there are some best practices which are critical. So Joe Hall was saying, "Most people ignore best practice because it's not sexy, but crawl optimization is critical to tech SEO best practice in a way. And way too many websites are failing at it." And that's absolutely true. Crawl optimization should be really important. Another one that comes up to me with regards to best practice is around the whole AI discussion that we're having in the middle of this big old update right now. So best practice has historically been that you should make good content, right? Good content. Mordy Oberstein: And then as is all over X, formally Twitter, they're like, "Oh, just write good content, huh?" Crystal Carter: So Natalie Slater on TikTok was talking about this how in the last 18 months, SEOs who adhere to best practice of making good content that is prioritized for humans and is not spammy and is not doing all of this sort of stuff, have felt a little bit of a wobble, right? Because that's been their best practice and that's what they've been telling their clients and that's what they've been focusing on. But this update, and there have been other people who have not really been paying attention to that best practice and have been doing what has been historically seen as spammy techniques, this parasite SEO things, some programmatic SEO isn't inherently spammy at all. Mordy Oberstein: Not inherently, but I gets they're real quick if you're not careful. Crystal Carter: But some people can if you want, with great power comes great responsibility. And so people have been seeing people winning with some of these tactics and they've been like, "I don't know what's going on. What about these best practices" But with this update, Google- Mordy Oberstein: Manual action here, manual action there. Crystal Carter: Manual actions, de-indexation, like things like that. Google seems to be saying, "Yeah, I worked for a little while, but we're adjusting this because we want people to adhere to the best practices, which is to do authoritative, expert trustworthy content and put that out." Mordy Oberstein: It's like driving with your knees. You can do it from stoplight to stoplight, but you can't drive from New York to California. Crystal Carter: That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Mordy Oberstein: I would like to see you try. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of best practices, we asked SEO OG, Jono Alderson when he throws away best practices. So here's Jono on when he ignores some of SEO's better practices. Jono Alderson: I'm going to go broad. I think I'm increasingly ignoring the idea that our day-to-day activities as SEOs should involve producing content to target keywords. I think I'm going to ignore the idea that we should be doing some kind of keyword research to do some kind of opportunity model based on some kind of domain authority or rating and search volume and cost per click, et cetera, and then writing or more likely outsourcing or using ChatGPT to write a bunch of articles probably in some kind of blog or resource center. I think that's probably a lot of what a lot of us do, but I think that's no longer best practice. I think it generally works okay-ish most of the time, but it's going to get harder. A few things to consider one, your competitors and the people who work for them have people who look like you doing the same research and the same opportunity model. So we're all chasing each other's tails. Simultaneously, the internet is increasingly full of very similar or derivative content thanks to SEOs doing this, and thanks to ChatGPT and the infinite amounts of just derivative content soup. And then because of that, Google has less and less need for your content, specifically yours. They can synthesize results in any vertical where they understand the query space and the number of verticals where they can do that is going to increase. If all you are doing is writing obvious stuff that aligns with some kind of basic keyword research or rewriting other people's stuff in a slightly marginally better way using different phrasing or slightly more words, you're not going to be ranking for anything. Now, I'm not saying don't do keyword research and don't produce content, but do keyword research and use these tools and processes and metrics to understand your audience's problems, to identify the kinds of questions that they have that you are able to support them on way earlier in the buying cycle than most conventional SEO strategies will target. Those are probably zero volume or zero CPC terms, but that's fine because the objective is to produce content that actually helps users to solve their problems. Give them the information they need to educate themselves and to take action to overcome their challenges without needing to buy from your convert. And if you do that well enough, you become a household name. You need to prioritize and measure how well your content solves the problems of your audience by adding value to the internet and to their lives. Super hard. But then you give Google a reason to index and rank your content. Then you give users a reason to engage and convert, and you give journalists and influencers a reason to link or share or cite your content without you having to run massive email and LinkedIn spamming engines to promote your infographics and dog jumpers to journalists. Now, the best version of this is to actually become a publisher, and that's been a trendy thing to say for ages in SEO, but many people just interpreted it to mean write lots of blog posts. You see, the difference is that real publishers do original research. They have editorial standards and processes. They employ people and journalists who have opinions and reputations and expertise, and they do that not just to tick some kind of EEAT box. They're also picky about what they write. They don't try and write for everybody. They define their audiences and explore their problems. And sometimes they're divisive and even controversial. If you're not doing this, then maybe it's time to start asking what your website is for and why Google, which is a search engine whose primary leading metric on revenue is user satisfaction would send visitors to your derivative blog posts and keyword soup. So this essentially boils down to when it comes to content, stop thinking like an SEO, think like an editor, like a product manager, even like a CMO. Consider the needs of your audience and the needs of Google in parallel and wrangle or build your content resource to produce material that's beneficial to both. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Jono. That was fabulous. We'll get to that in a second. Make sure you follow Jono on X over at Jono Alderson, that's J-O-N-O, A-L-D-E-R-S-O-N. Link in the show notes. So much to dive into about that. Okay, first off, I think we're entering an era where brand differentiation and getting people to come to you and being top of mind I think is going to be very, very important. Not just for your overall marketing success, but also for your SEO success where you're going to want people to be searching for your brand name, which I think will be something that Google's going to label a little bit more heavily going forward. But that's my personal speculation. But I do think that in five years from now, I'm going to invent a new term on this podcast. I think there's going to be something called brand first SEO, which is basically what he's talking about where you're basically not looking at starting with the keywords, starting with the search volumes, where you're basically starting with what does my audience need? How am I going to differentiate myself from all the AI content that's out there or from the other brands that are also trying to differentiate themselves because of all the AI content out there? And starting with that and you're targeting what's based on, and I think it's not even the best way to do it, but I think it's just knowing where the web is going to go, targeting based on what will differentiate you, which is much more aligned with targeting what your audience actually interested in than starting with an SEO tool. And the way I do this is then refining with the SEO tool. I kind of know why audience wants and what they're interested in very broadly. Let me refine that by using AlsoAsked, getting some questions about what the audience might also be searching for, running it through SEMrush, seeing what comes back from there and getting a better sense of the topic and understanding what are the historical trends? But that's secondary. Crystal Carter: Right. This is something I've been talking about a while. This is something, what's it called? Michel Fortin has a great article on user first SEO, and if I'm going to use shout out myself, I also have an article on a resource on where you can get that stuff. So he talks about low search volume stuff, about actually being helpful, about actually being useful, about actually serving your clients, your potential clientele, and actually providing a solution. And one of the best ways that you can do that is to get them from your clientele and from your potential folks. I have one about where to get user first keywords and topics. I have a resource in our SEO resource that talks about this. Talk to your sales team. Your sales team will tell you, people keep asking me this question and I don't have an answer. So write the content and then not only will your sales team will be able to refer it to, but if anybody has that question, they'll be able to find it. Look at your customer care queries, look at their training gaps. When you're training, people are like, "But I don't understand what that means." Guess what? Customers probably don't understand it neither. The questions that come through Google Business profile, the questions that show up on Amazon, those questions they won't have, like he's saying, you're making keyword soup. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Crystal Carter: Those questions may not have any search volume, but that doesn't mean that they don't have value. And it's also the differentiation point. It's always been about differentiation. SEO has always been about differentiation and marketing has always been about, the textbook definition of marketing is delivering customer value, and that is what you should be doing. That's what you should be doing with your content. That's what you should be doing with your website. And I think he's also bringing up the point, what is your website for? When you're thinking about what do I expect people to do on this website? Do I expect them to be able to get to know me, to know what kind of content I have, to be able to answer questions they have about how to use this thing that they just bought or to be able to learn something? What are we actually trying to do? We were discussing today, we were discussing an LP, Morty, weren't we? And I was like, "What is this page supposed to do? What do we want people to do?" We were looking at this draft and I was like, "Why can't I find?" Mordy Oberstein: No, and that page in particular came about because it wasn't thinking about user first. It was thinking let's say design first or whatever it was. Crystal Carter: And we were just like, but it needs to be able to achieve this goal, and if people have to hunt around to achieve the goal, they will give up and they will go somewhere else. Mordy Oberstein: It looked good. But they don't want to use it. Crystal Carter: No, they won't use it. You want something that actually makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: Driving with your knees looks super cool, but you can't actually do it. Crystal Carter: Right. Are you really going to get where you need to go? Mordy Oberstein: On a sharp turn, like at a 90 degree turn, that's not going to work. I would like to see that. Crystal Carter: There be sandwich parts everywhere, lettuce on your elbows, it's going to be just chaos. Mordy Oberstein: Now what we should have done was gone in reverse order in this podcast episode. We want to talk about what are our best practices from a conceptual point of view, which probably would've made more logical sense to talk about that before we get into best practice about SEO. It's an SEO podcast? So we'll do the marketing, broader marketing stuff second and the SEO stuff first, even though that might not be best practice. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. I see what you did there. I see what you did there. Mordy Oberstein: For our audience, it makes much more sense. Crystal Carter: We're experimenting, we are iterating. Mordy Oberstein: Driving with the knees on the podcast. That's all we're basically doing. Crystal Carter: Until the wheels fall off. I don't know. It's fine. Mordy Oberstein: So we're taking a deeper look at what is a best practice with a deep thought with Crystal and Morty. Best practices, best practices, fundamentally just what are they? So you can basically apply, we're talking about in SEO to other areas of not just marketing, but your life. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I look at best practices, they're like the minimal. Two things. They're the minimal standard and they're also what keeps you in line from being too nuts. Crystal Carter: So some people say, or bare minimum, I think I've heard people say this. Taylor Merchinson quoted someone else saying the path to mediocrity is paved with best practices. Ouch. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great quote. Crystal Carter: Ouch. Now, don't get me wrong, like I said at the beginning, best practices can absolutely guide you, can keep you from going completely astray. Mordy Oberstein: That needs to be on a Hallmark card. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: You give them the card and it's all beautiful and it's like, yeah, the path to mediocrity is paved. Crystal Carter: It's a quote from Austin Knight apparently, who I don't follow on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: It's brilliant. It should be a Hallmark card, very sassy Hallmark card. Crystal Carter: The thing about it is what best practices tend to be is they tend to be what everybody agrees on. If you think about best practices for a sandwich, we all agree that a best practice for a sandwich is it should be two pieces of bread with some stuff in the middle. That's a best practice, right? Then KFC came out with a sandwich that had no bread, had two pieces of chicken and a piece of cheese in the middle of them. Now, I think the other thing that's interesting- Mordy Oberstein: That's where the best practices are there to keep you in check, like a check in a balance. Crystal Carter: And I think that the other thing that's interesting about that is best practices, if you know what the best practice is, it's like you need to know the rules in order to break them. So if you know what the rules are and you know what the best practices are and you've studied the best practices, then you know when you're disrupting them and when you're deviating, it's like a benchmark. It's a benchmark for what should be covered at all times. If you think about customer service, the best practice for customer service is to smile when you greet someone and that sort of thing. And that's definitely something that- Mordy Oberstein: Have a great day now. Crystal Carter: And somebody enters it into your shop and you say, "Good morning, how are you?" That sort of thing. And then there's some people, there's a restaurant that I'm aware of and they have a thing where they're mean to their customers. Mordy Oberstein: That's good. I like this. Crystal Carter: It's a fun thing that people- Mordy Oberstein: Where do I go for that? Crystal Carter: I can't remember exactly what it's called, but yeah, there's a restaurant- Mordy Oberstein: My kind of a restaurant. Crystal Carter: They're actively mean to their customers and it's disrupting, but they still know the rules of engagement. You still get your food and there's all that sort of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: They don't spit on your food or anything like that? Crystal Carter: No, no, no, no. But there's a whole shtick that they banter in a way. Mordy Oberstein: Got it. Crystal Carter: And I think that sometimes when you disrupt it, it can get you attention, it can disrupt what people are thinking about, and I think that that can sometimes cause a change. They say what's insanity is doing the same thing lots and lots of times and expecting results. Mordy Oberstein: And expecting different results. Crystal Carter: And sometimes you just need to shake it up and see what happens. And I think that best practices definitely they're the benchmark, the place where you return to, the place where you start from, and you definitely need to get yourself up to a best practice standard at bare minimum. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. The whole thing is basic best practices indicate basic best quality. It's a testimony to you know what you're doing, you offer a quality product. So for example, if you implement best, I don't know, like technical SEO practices, it is a testimony like you've said many times in this podcast that you know what you're doing with a website and you offer a quality website. Crystal Carter: Even if you were to say, let's just say for argument's sake, even if the average website had best practice, only the average website had best practice, that's still better than 50% of websites. I think that that's important to remember that your best practice will get you going, will make sure that you've covered all the bases and that all the boxes are ticked, everything is covered, and then you can add on the extra stuff. If we talk about your sandwich or whatever, it's like your best practice... If I said to you, "Morty, I'm going to make you a sandwich." You would be a lucky fellow because I make a sandwich. Anyway, if I said to you, "I'm just going to make you a sandwich." You would expect at least two pieces of bread and some stuff in the middle. Mordy Oberstein: No, I expect two pieces of chicken with a piece of cheese in the middle. Crystal Carter: No, we're not doing that sandwich. Mordy Oberstein: I want two hamburger patties with a piece of a pickle in the middle. Crystal Carter: I'm Kato. Anyway, so yeah, if I said that, that would be the thing. Now, if I showed up and I was like, "Oh, I got homemade mayonnaise and I got this special cheese from over here, and this bread has been toasted and it's got seeds and it's this and it's dah, dah, dah, dah, dah." Then you'd be like, "Oh, wow." You hit the best practice and then you can add all the other stuff onto it. But if I showed up and I just said like, "Oh yeah, I'm making you a sandwich." And I just show up with the heirloom mayonnaise that I made, you'd be like, "That's not a sandwich." Mordy Oberstein: You are exactly reading my mind. Get out of my mind, Carter. Sometimes the best practice helps you when you don't know what the impact of something's going to be, where people are expecting. So in your case, the sandwich, I'm making a sandwich, I have two pieces of bread, I got a piece of ham. Should I add the cheese? I don't know. I don't know what to do. Best practice, add the cheese, because that'll most likely align with what people are expecting from a ham and cheese sandwich. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Precisely. Mordy Oberstein: Best practices help you align to consumer expectations when you're not sure what the expectations actually are. Crystal Carter: And these are a great place to start, and they're a great place to make sure that you've checked everything off. It's a great place to just make sure that you've checked everything off. I don't know if you're thinking about a resume, for instance, a best practice on a resume, there's lots of best practices on resumes. I'm not a recruitment person or whatever. Mordy Oberstein: Four point font. Crystal Carter: And some people say it should be one page. Mordy Oberstein: Everything's squished together real. Crystal Carter: Right? Some people say you should put a picture on it, some people say you shouldn't. There's lots of best practices on a resume, but I'll tell you the bare minimum, no grammar or spelling mistakes, that's a best practice. If I'm looking at a resume and I see grammatical errors, spelling mistakes. No, we're done. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of bare minimums, we need to cover the SEO news, and Barry always at least covers the bare minimum of what's going on. Oh, he's Barry. He's Barry. When you're going to SEO round table or even searching the land where Barry also writes, you're getting the bare minimum. That didn't come out right. You are getting, let me rephrase this. You're definitely covering all of your bases. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. You're covering all of the bases of what you need and should be expecting to get in today's SEO news. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I'm trying to give a compliment. It's not coming out right. Crystal Carter: You're digging a hole over there. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not Barry good at this, which means that it's time for this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Two articles for you this week. One from Roger Montti over at Search Engine Journal. Google explains how it processes queries and ranks content. Gary from Google is doing a video series, and then this one, he talks about how Google goes about processing queries and ranking content from crawling and indexing to the ranking process. It's a short formative video. If you're not an SEO professional and you're looking to get a better understanding of how Google functions, this video can be helpful. If you are an SEO professional, you'll do what I did and watched it and instead of reading between the lines and started speculating about all sorts of things as you were listening to it. Some of which are tinfoil hat moments for me, some of which I think are actually legitimate. I'm not sure if I'll share them or not here, but I might on Twitter said Lloyd to get you to look at my Twitter account. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to share it, so don't bother. So I guess it's not a ploy. Anyway, article number two, this one from Barry Schwartz over at SCRoundtable.com. Reminder, Google's helpful content update is no more. It's core update. I feel like that should be read in movie voice. Anyway, this is courtesy of next week's guest. A little teaser for you there. Glenn Gabe, Google has talked about this multiple. I made this mistake. I will freely admit this. When Google first made the announcement about the helpful content update, it seemed to me like they were saying that they're going to be integrating the helpful content update into the core update. Danny Sullivan was very quick to correct me on that. Thank you Danny, by the way. I do actually appreciate that. And that's not exactly what's happening. It's an entirely new classifier. The helpful content update is gone. It's no more. It's not like there's the strain of the update in the core algorithm, it's a different classifiers. Glenn wrote on X, he wrote, "The old HCU classifiers going away completely. Now, multiple systems are assessing the helpfulness of content." So pause on Glenn's quote for a second. Before Google assessed helpful content by using the helpful content update. Now what Google is saying is we have a much more holistic system and a new way of assessing helpfulness, and that's now part of the core algorithm. Back to Glenn's quote, "I'm saying it looks like the old classifier is still applied as of now, so Google could remove it like it did when Penguin 4 rolled out and Penguin 4's suspension was removed." Glenn wrote that in parentheses. That's why I put the pause there. Anyway, so two thoughts here. One is in the documentation and some of the things that Danny Sullivan's been saying on X and in the documentation that Google has, it looks like one difference to me seems to be that the HCU was a domain level helpful content assessment, quality assessment. In the language that Danny's talking and in the documentation that Google has, they're now trying to assess helpfulness, not just on the domain level but also at the page level, which I think makes a lot of sense when you think about how websites are constructed and how the content on the website is constructed and the value of different types of pages on a website. It's a whole different conversation. I don't know what I mean by that exactly. Now ask me on Twitter. But I think it makes a lot of sense, so therefore it is a different beast altogether. And at the same time, I will say that don't throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one. Google invested a ton of time and technology, money, resources and whatever to create the technology that is or was the helpful content update. I don't think they just said, "Eh, that's going in the garbage can. Goodbye." I think they took the things they liked about the helpful content updates technology. I think they may be applying it in a different way and a different format and making that part of a much wider, more holistic way of assessing helpfulness. So I don't think you could say it's an entirely different paradigm shift. Exactly. I know Google has said that it is, and I think it actually might be, but I do suspect, and it just makes logical sense to me that some of the ways that the HCU looked at helpful content just didn't just disappear. Google perhaps rejiggered it, reformatted it, reconstructed it, whatever you want, however you want to describe it. I don't know. I don't work at Google, but to say they completely abandoned that technology after investing so much into it, I don't think makes entirely the most amount of sense. Again, I'm not arguing anything Google saying at all. I'm simply saying is that what Google may have done is borrowed some of the ways the HCU approached helpfulness, combined it, refigured it, reconstructed it, rebaked it so that it is an entirely different thing, but still baked in there or alluded to in the new system or in the core algorithm is the kernels of the HCU. I think I've said too much already. If you want more news each and every day, I'm going to do a little pitch here for you. Check out It's New. It's New is new and is a new daily series, actually Monday through Thursday series that we do, Crystal and myself, with Barry Schwartz Monday through Thursdays. We go through two or three stories in the SEO News, offer some commentary for them. You can find it on Barry's Rusty Bricks YouTube channel, and also syndicated right there for you on the Wix SEO Learning Hub. It's right on the home page of the SEO Learning Hub. So go to the SEO learning Hub, check out the daily videos, subscribe to Barry's YouTube channel, and if you love this snappy news once a week, then you'll probably enjoy those little clips that we do each and every day. And with that, that is this week's maybe not so snappy news. Thank you for bearing with me. Crystal Carter: You barely got through that. Mordy Oberstein: barely got through that. Thank you Barry for all of that. Speaking of Barry, this week's follow of the week is Barry. Crystal Carter: Is there really? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Go follow Barry and tell him that we sent you, and I hope you're all following him as well. Mordy Oberstein: Because there's a real reason why. He's at Rusty Brick on all the social media platforms from Macedon to Blue Sky to X. Crystal Carter: Is Barry on TikTok? Mordy Oberstein: I think on LinkedIn it's his actual name, Barry Schwartz. You can find him at BarryseoMemes.com. There's a lot of places you could follow Barry. The reason why Barry is our follow of the week is because Barry often covers SEO best practices periodically on SeRoundtable.com. So inevitably someone will ask John Mueller, "How many words do I need to rank?" And John will answer something very snarky back and Barry will cover that on SeRoundtable.com. But no, it's good. It's a good thing because people break into the SEO industry at all different times. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So you haven't seen that conversation from 10 years ago. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: So, oh, Barry's covering it again is actually incredibly helpful, which is why we're saying follow Barry. Crystal Carter: I would also say that it's an SEO best practice to follow Barry. Mordy Oberstein: It is absolutely. Crystal Carter: If you're planning to learn SEO, if you're planning to keep tracks of the algorithms, of updates, of announcements from Google, of various different things, I would say his best practice to follow Barry because he covers everything and Google have acknowledged him for this. He covers everything. I give a lot of talks. I talk about a lot of various different things, and I literally use Barry's articles as an archive of developments of different stuff. So I was looking at something around the helpful content update and around the Hidden Gems stuff, and I was literally going through Barry's- Mordy Oberstein: The timeline. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's like a timeline. I was like, "How many times did they mention Hidden Gems?" Because he would've covered it, but he hasn't covered it. It probably didn't happen. Mordy Oberstein: My online behavior each day basically consists of what happened in sports the previous evening and then going to check SeoRoundTable. Crystal Carter: Same. Mordy Oberstein: That's basically it. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Best practice. Crystal Carter: Yeah, definitely. So follow Barry and that will be best for you. Mordy Oberstein: It will be best. Barry is best. Crystal Carter: Pulling that back after the bare minimum there. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for saving me there. I was just digging a grave. Well, you're probably ready to write an obituary for me at that point. Crystal Carter: I went to a museum the other day and I was looking at this exhibition and this guy just was telling me about it, and he was telling me he worked there. He was telling me about this exhibit I was looking at, and I could have just read the thing on the side. They always put a thing on the side. Mordy Oberstein: I never read those things. Crystal Carter: This guy was telling me the thing, but he literally was just telling me wrong information. He said it was about World War II. It was about World War I. He said it was about, he couldn't remember where it was on loan from. He couldn't pronounce it, the person's artist's name. There was a bunch of stuff, and I just sat there going, "Uh huh." Mordy Oberstein: And it's right there on the placard. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's awesome. Crystal Carter: I just read it and you know what would've been best practice for him to say, "Would you like to know more about it? It's over there. Read the sign." Mordy Oberstein: My wife reads things at the museums. I never read them. I came here to look, not to read. Crystal Carter: What were you reading for? Mordy Oberstein: If I need to read, I would've stayed home and read a book. Crystal Carter: There you go. Mordy Oberstein: I want to see stuff. I'm at a museum. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with the new episodes we dive into is SEO for affiliate sites in some real trouble? Look for wherever you can consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO learning about you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content, webinars and resources we have to offer on the Wix SEO learning hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace 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 . 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Maddy Osman is the bestselling author of Writing for Humans and Robots: The New Rules of Content Style, and one of Semrush and BuzzSumo's Top 100 Content Marketers. She's also a digital native with a decade-long devotion to creating engaging SEO content and the founder of The Blogsmith content agency. Maddy Osman Founder, The Blogsmith Maddy Osman is the bestselling author of Writing for Humans and Robots: The New Rules of Content Style , and one of Semrush and BuzzSumo's Top 100 Content Marketers. She's also a digital native with a decade-long devotion to creating engaging SEO content and the founder of The Blogsmith content agency. Articles & Resources 19 Dec 2024 Your digital marketing agency sales process: How to craft a winning pipeline 20 Jul 2022 Everything you need to know about your robots.txt file 30 Jan 2022 What is a 301 redirect and how can you use it to improve your SEO? 27 Jan 2022 Everything you need to know about redirects for your Wix website 24 Jan 2022 9 steps to creating the best content strategy for SEO 24 Oct 2021 Why your Google Business Profile matters and how to set it up on Wix Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Google's recent updates to its algorithms have been about providing information that is user-friendly and trustworthy. They’re trying to think like a human user to give the best possible results. The algorithm aligns more closely with the user's intent more than ever. Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter, pilot this very helpful (get it?) conversation on providing content that the user needs to make decisions. Essentially, User-First SEO is like if you asked someone for advice, and they gave you sound advice based on their experience and qualifications. You would want to know that the person giving you the advice had your best interests at heart. User-first SEO is just that: focused on helping the user more than ranking. “Putting the user first, thinking about their pain points, and solving the user’s problem is the goal, ” says Michel Fortin, as he helps us understand the concept even further. Back First things first - User-first SEO Google's recent updates to its algorithms have been about providing information that is user-friendly and trustworthy. They’re trying to think like a human user to give the best possible results. The algorithm aligns more closely with the user's intent more than ever. Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter, pilot this very helpful (get it?) conversation on providing content that the user needs to make decisions. Essentially, User-First SEO is like if you asked someone for advice, and they gave you sound advice based on their experience and qualifications. You would want to know that the person giving you the advice had your best interests at heart. User-first SEO is just that: focused on helping the user more than ranking. “Putting the user first, thinking about their pain points, and solving the user’s problem is the goal, ” says Michel Fortin, as he helps us understand the concept even further. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 08 | October 12, 2022 | 41 MIN 00:00 / 41:26 This week’s guests Michel Fortin Michel Fortin is a marketing advisor, fractional CMO, and senior SEO consultant helping professionals and firms grow their visibility and their businesses. He’s an author, speaker, and consultant with 30 years of experience in digital marketing and marketing communications. Einat Hoobian-Seybold Einat has more than 8 years experience creating organic strategies for leading global brands. After a well-established career focused on SEO execution she fell in love with product development and management. Today Einat combines her love of product management with her experience in SEO as Wix’s SEO Product Manager where she works to build products that make SEO accessible and easy for over 200M users around the world. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP’s Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP’s Up podcast. We're pushing out groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding at Wix. And I'm joined by the one, the only, the head of SEO communications at Wix, Crystal Carter. What's up, Crystal? Crystal Carter: Hello, good people of the internet. Hello. Many things are up. Things are up. Mordy Oberstein: Hopefully your rankings are up. Dad joke/SEO joke. Crystal Carter: We want all green arrows, every time. Mordy Oberstein: Someone was telling me that, because we're in the middle of, as we're recording this, some fluctuations on the SERP, and their boss was asking about, "Oh, why did our rankings on page two go down?" And they're like, "Why do we care?" Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We went from page two to page three, whatever shall we do? Crystal Carter: How come no one's coming to my MySpace page? Because what? Mordy Oberstein: Oh boy. Crystal Carter: Don't worry. Pick your battles there. Mordy Oberstein: Bigger fish to fry. Or if you don't like frying fish, bigger fish to bake. Crystal Carter: This is true. You could bake it. Mordy Oberstein: I like fish baked more than I like it fried. Anyway, the SERP’s Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can empower your [SEO] content strategy with the power of Semrush directly inside of the Wix platform. It's all part of Wix's SEO set up checklist, research keywords and topics, along with metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and even user intent with our Semrush integration. It's like my two worlds combined with that one. So on today's show, geez, Crystal, we better make sure the bots are happy, happy, happy, right? Crystal Carter: S-bots must be very happy. Mordy Oberstein: But wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Crystal Carter: Bots have happy. Mordy Oberstein: Do bots, or search engines, do they pay you money? Crystal Carter: No. No. I've asked. Mordy Oberstein: But I do not get a positive response, because guess what? People, people pay you money. But if I worry about the people, who will worry about the bots? Don't worry, Optimus Prime will. He's their father. Anyway. But if you're worrying about not worrying about the bots, fear not fair SEO for thou art in great luck, for the days of user first SEO are not just nigh, they are upon thee. That is correct. Today we are talking about why worrying about the user and not the bot, believe it or not, is actually good for the bots. That was circular. But who would've thunk. From the research phase to how the Google algorithm is structured, we're diving into why user first SEO matters, with tips of the trade from SEO's own John Bonham, Little Zeppelin reference for you there. Michel Fortin will stop by and share some of his tips with you. We'll also sit down with Wix's own SEO product manager, Einat Hoobian-Seybold, to talk about her approach to putting users first and how that plays out in SEO product development. And of course, we have the snappiest of news for you and who you should be following. Actually a bonus, two people who you should be following on social for SEO awesomeness. Let's let the good times roll, as episode eight of the SERP’s Up podcast is on. Crystal Carter: It's on. Mordy Oberstein: It's on. I almost feel like breaking to song, let the good times roll. Crystal Carter: You bet. This is a very musical introduction there, Mordy, with the John Bonham there. Mordy Oberstein: Totally by accident. Totally by accident. Michel Fortin, by the way, plays the drums and he's awesome, and he's going to stop by. Crystal Carter: He's a really good drummer. He's got his drumming on his website and it's exceptional. He's a very funky drummer. He's a very good drummer. Mordy Oberstein: It's awesome. And he's an awesome SEO who talks a lot about user first SEO, so it's completely makes so much sense. Crystal Carter: I know. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of user first SEO, Crystal, what are we talking about, user first SEO? Crystal Carter: Yeah, so the thing about user first SEO, one of the reasons why we're talking about this, one of the reasons why it's a little bit of a hot topic is because with their recent algorithm update, Google's announced that they are sort of encouraging or incentivizing people to be creating content. Specifically, they said, "Create content for people, not search engines." Who'd have thunk it? Mordy Oberstein: Who would've thunk that? That's crazy talk. Crystal Carter: Right. In their documentation, they say that the goal is to make sure that when users visit the site, they can find original, helpful content written by people for people, and that it has a satisfying user experience for site visitors. Now, the thing about this is that this is essentially user first content. This is content that is thinking about what the user wants, not necessarily thinking about what hacks, what gimmicks you can use to get to the top of the SERP, but rather thinking about something that's actually made for humans. And this follows on from some of the updates that Google updated in the past, like the Panda update, which really rocked this SEO landscape because it was talking about reducing black hat SEO techniques and reducing the prevalence of that information in the SERP. And when I say SERP, I mean search engine result pages. And what that means is that when people go to Google, they can actually achieve their goals, because I think what people forget sometimes is we think that Google and SEO is about websites, and it pretty much is, but if you go to Google's page how Search works, they explained that their goal is to provide information. They don't say that their goal is to drive traffic to websites. They say their goal is to provide information. And so, this kind of algorithm update, like Panda before it, is the kind that makes sure that they're providing high quality information for people that visit Google. And in order to make it high quality, you need to put the user first. So content creators who do this, and you'll know these content creators when you find them, whether it's on a website or whether it's on YouTube or whether it's on any other platform, they're very clear to address their user's needs. So they'll say, "A lot of people have asked me about this topic and I want to talk about it now." Or they'll share content that people that users have requested. So this is something that Google themselves do. They have a series called Ask Google Bot. And John Mueller will say, "Mordy Oberstein asked me this question on Twitter and I'm answering it here." And there's YouTube channels that I follow where they'll say, "What do you want me to cover next?" And the users will say that and they will cover that for them. They'll test content with their users before publishing it. So Instagram, good Instagramers will do a story and they'll see who replies to it and what kinds of things people are interested in, and then they'll do a longer post later on. There's lots of different techniques that you could do, but putting your user first is really important. And it's something that Google's laid out in a lot of different documentation. The information about the helpful content update from Google is very, very clear with information around that. And also, if you want to do a really deep dive, you can have a look at something called the Quality Rater Guidelines, which is the documentation that Google gives to their team, to their humans and their team to help them determine what is a good quality website. Yeah, it's a really good idea. It gives you lots really good ideas of what makes good content that is made for users. Mordy Oberstein: And that's really the point. Back in the day with the algorithm, there was one way of running for humans and one way of running for bots, and even helpful content updates aside, what Google's been doing, I would say since circa 2018 with the new series of core algorithm updates... And if you look at their documentation around how should you respond to being hit by one of the core algorithm updates, it's very similar. It's all about writing really good content, really helpful content. And what they've been doing algorithmically is basically trying to think qualitatively the way a human could, and sort of mimicking that. And Danny Sullivan from Google's talking about, "Yeah, we look at quality," by the way, quality is for the entire site, a site wide metric, not a per page metric, "And we try to mimic through the algorithms how a person would qualitatively assess the quality of the webpage." So now the algorithm and the user have been synced up in a lot of ways. Is it a hundred percent perfect? Is it a hundred percent there? No. Will it every be? Probably not. But directionally, and way, way, way more than it ever was before. And if you look at people like, I'll say Glenn Gabe and Lily Ray, Marie Haynes, maybe myself, Dr. Pete from over at Moz, when they write about their analysis of the updates, so basically showing you, "Yeah, Google's looking at things like tone and looking at things like the quality in this way and the quality in that way," and now when you put the user first, at the same time, and this is a key point, you're also putting Google first. It's not different anymore. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think that what we're seeing is Google puts a lot of emphasis on EAT, which is expertise, authority, and trust. And that document that you mentioned, the one that they always put out whenever there's an algorithm, what SEO should know about or website owners should know about Google updates, talks about expertise, authority, and trust. And there's lots of different ways that you can demonstrate that on a website. And it's essentially like if you asked someone for advice and they gave you advice on something, you would want to know how they were qualified to give you that advice. So if you go and talk to a doctor and then they say, "Oh, I think it might be," I don't know, appendicitis or something like that, you assume that they know what they're talking about, because they're in a doctor's office, they've got their certificates up on the wall, you know who they are. Similarly, if you go to a website and they're giving you advice or they're giving you information about one topic or another, it's very important that you know who they are, that they have an about page that talks about who they are. We recently did a webinar with Semrush around about pages, to talk about some of those elements. But it's also important that you have an address if it's a place of business. I saw recently someone, there was somebody who got in touch or somebody who was online saying, "Oh, I don't know why my webpage for a hotel isn't ranking," and it was a hotel that didn't have an address. And I was like, "That is red flags." Mordy Oberstein: Conceptual hotel. Crystal Carter: That's red flags. Mordy Oberstein: It's where my mind stays. Crystal Carter: It's, "Oh, book, book where, where is this?" Mordy Oberstein: In the ether. It's in the ether. Crystal Carter: Right. And if you think about some of the websites that do really well, if you think about something, so Airbnb, for instance, is something like that, that they have doubled down. They have multiple layers of verifying who is who and trying to make sure that it's very clear, that you're talking to an actual person that's actually in a place and these people are... Then there's agreements and there's all this sort of stuff. Similarly, Google's trying to make sure that when somebody comes to their website and tries to find out, I don't know, how far it is from the earth to the moon or any kind of information, that they're able to get it from a valid source. Because if people are not getting good quality information from Google, then people won't come to Google. And Google wants to make sure that they're keeping their users happy by giving them good quality information. Mordy Oberstein: You make a great point where you're talking about how people are looking at a website, "Can I trust this website? Are they authoritative? They have expertise?" And that's really, if you want to talk about how you create user first content, that's kind of how you do it. You look at it from the lens of the user. One way, I call it the brand sniff test. You go to a webpage and you immediately, because you're a brand, they're going to realize it's, "Oh, machines and AI and Google's so smart and machines are so smart." Your brain is AI on steroids. It takes a look at something, and in three seconds or 0.3 seconds, it takes a million different signals. And without you consciously being aware of it, it's like, "Yeah, I've completely judged this already." You go to a webpage and it's an HTML table from 1999, you go, "I'm not trusting this thing." Even might have great content. If you think, "Okay, how do I know I've created user first content, outside the fact that you know where your heart is? Leaving that aside for a second, if you look at the page and you think, "Okay," from a branding point of view, "What are the latent signals that this page sends? Is the tone right, is the layout friendly? Is it digestible? Is it well structured? Does it give off a sense that this page is well intentioned, trustworthy, and has my best interest in mind?" And if you feel like you know it does, then you've probably created user first content. Crystal Carter: And I think, also, if you're getting good feedback from your users, then that will also tell you this. For instance, if you've got people coming to your Google business profile and they're asking the same questions over and over again, they probably can't find that information on your website. If you're having people calling you and asking you for the same information over and over again, they probably can't find that information on your website. You should probably make some information, that kind of information on your website. If you've got people who, "Oh, yeah. I saw this on your page and I thought it was great," or "This was really...", then that's information that you're providing that's clearly good for users. So there's lots of different signals that you can get around that. I know some people put reviews on their blog, just regular blogs, not necessarily a recipe blog, but just a regular blog, "Did you find this content helpful? What do you think of this content?" Three stars, five stars, whatever it is. And you can sort of understand, you can get actual direct feedback from people about whether or not it's helpful, whether or not it's useful. And there's lots of different elements and different factors that can help you to demonstrate that and help you to understand that. Mordy Oberstein: For sure. And it really all starts with your mindset. I know you have a whole article about this, I think, where if you're looking at it, I'm was going to go to a keyword research tool and I'm going to plug it in and whatever, and pull out the data and I'm going to... that's probably not the place to start, in my mind. When you're trying to start writing content for the web, for both bots and users, it starts with empathy and understanding your audience, and being able to tap into their mindset. Because now you're going to create content that actually helps them because you actually feel bad for them. Like, "Oh, you have a pain point here? I would love to help you with that." Crystal Carter: Right. I've sometimes written articles, so I remember writing a piece that was around different sources for structured data or something like that. And I use it myself. It was basically, it was a bookmark thing that I put together. And the reason why I put it together was because I couldn't find one. So I think that's one of the things, if you're trying to think about user first, try to be mindful of your experience as a user and the things that irritate you as a user, the content that you don't like as a user. It says something in the description and you get to the page and it's completely different. That can be annoying. Or Google in their helpful content notes talks about the kinds of things where they're saying, "Are you trying to give an answer to a question that doesn't have an answer?" Like when is this show coming out and they haven't announced it and you're just trying to get on the SERP or something, that sort of thing. If you find that irritating, don't make that content. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember that. When I was looking at this, a lot of the people that... I spoke to lots of different SEOs about how they create content for users, and they talk to users. And sometimes this can be interviews or sometimes this can be going through CRM information. So if you are using something like Salesforce or that sort of thing where people are raising tickets regularly or raising customer service queries, you can go through that information and see the ones that come up regularly, and you can help your customer service team by giving them the information that they need and help users at the same time. And with regards to the keywords, not to say that keywords and using keywords tools, not to say you shouldn't use them, but think of the user first and then use the keyword tools just to make sure that you're actually hitting some of the actual terms. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you're refining and gaps you haven't missed, those sort of things, because I've done this before myself. The questions you get from, actually, users are completely different. Crystal Carter: Right, completely. And especially if you're looking into a new space where you think about keyword tools, a lot of times they're using historical data. And it's fantastic. It's amazing to have that kind of data there. But Google said, I think, 15% of queries are new queries. So if you're going into a new space, you're launching a new product, then you're going to need to get new content for that and you're going to need to get that to users. And if you're not somebody who wants to do lots and lots of interviews and stuff, that's okay. There's lots of different things you can look- Mordy Oberstein: Forums and social. Crystal Carter: Forums. Yeah. Reviews. You can do a poll. I sometimes go through Slack channels, Slack messages. You can talk to juniors if you're trying to... Training juniors is incredibly useful because juniors will go, "What is a acronym? I don't know what that means." And they want to know. They want to know. So you can create something that's good for the juniors in your team and also is useful for users who are in the same place, where they want to know desperately, so they need it to be- Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: ... accessible. Mordy Oberstein: And if you're still doubting, well, doing all of this and putting the user first and, I want to say abandoning, slightly abandoning traditional, what you might think is traditional SEO, is that's not going to help me rank, think about what's coming down the pike. MUM is coming down the pike, it's Google's new AI 1000, machine learning rather, 1000 times more powerful than Byrd, it's previous most powerful machine learning property, blah blah blah. One of the things that MUM is doing, it's Google's own example, and they gave an example of something like, "I hiked Mount Adams, now I want to hike Mount Fiji in the fall. What do I need to do to prepare differently?" Something like that. Crystal Carter: That's so many words. That's got too many words, by the way. Mordy Oberstein: But the coolest part is that they show you how they parse the word prepare. Does it mean to equipment, I need to know what equipment I need, or training? Is that what you mean to prepare? And Google's like, "Now we're going to show results about both." And you could probably parse it a million times over. So if Google's going to be parsing topics into smaller subtopics like, "Oh, preparing for a hike." It means equipment. It could mean tips, it could mean food, it could mean trading. The only way that you are going to be able to parse a topic down the same way so that you have the opportunities to rank, that are afforded to you on what's going to be the new search results page is by identifying and empathizing with your audience. Like oh, if someone's going on a hike and they have to prepare, what do they really need? Well, they might need this, they might need that, they might need that. Let me create content about that. So we will most definitely help you rank to put the user first, because that's the only way you're going to be able to create the right content. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that if you're thinking about actually answering the question... Again talking to children is another good one. I have a kid and he asks me questions all the time and he's very capable of understanding if I explain it to him the way that he wants, but he wants a full answer. Kids will just keep asking why, so make sure that you give a full answer for whatever the question, and genuinely get involved. Mordy Oberstein: Like a real substance targeted, nuanced content. Now speaking of questions, we have a question for Michel Fortin, the director of search marketing over at seoplus+. Hey Michel, how do you check yourself to ensure you always keep the user first, not bots? Take it away. Michel Fortin: In SEO and in business, in general, many people tend to think the other way around. They think that we should focus on our product, it's the best things since sliced bread, and then we focus on our marketing because we think that people just need our product. The thing is, is actually the other way around, we should be solving a problem, we should be helping out our market. SEO is no different. We have to keep the user first in mind. Yes, we should be leading with our product, but we also are creating a solution to a problem. So it makes sense that we should focus on the problems that our users are experiencing and we help to solve them, in that case when they're making a search. So to keep the user first, you need to at least start with the user first. To borrow a quote from Steven Covey, "First things first is to put first things first." And it really does mean that in the case of SEO, as in any other form of marketing, because SEO is just a channel for marketing, it's really about putting the user first and thinking about their pain points. I always say this, that to really rank well, to be visible actually is a better way to say it, to really be visible in search engines, you need to do what Google really wants you to do. It's the same thing, we share the same goal, which is to create quality content and a quality user experience. So appeal to your market and optimize those things for their sake and you will naturally appeal to search engines too. In marketing, I think the single biggest challenge is to think like our audience. And I say it's a challenge because we tend to always think that our audience are like us or that we know what our audience wants or what they're thinking about or what their needs are. And there's a famous quote from a mentor of mine from many, many years ago who said, "You are never your own market." And in my previous life, I was a copywriter, we always focused on trying to tell our clients that they are never their own market. Well, SEO is the same. Either we think we know or we expect they know. And that's true also for research engines as it is for the audiences that we are trying to go after. And both are wrong. Both of those notions are wrong. We have to think of our market, we have to think like our market. Think about it this way, Google is always doing split tests all the time. It's always testing and changing and adding new search features. And if things don't work out, I mean how many products have we seen Google put out and it basically didn't last too too long because it just flopped or it didn't really do well or it wasn't... The man wasn't there. Remember Google+? But the thing is, with SEO is that we have to think like our market. We have to think for a market. We have to provide the solution that our market wants. I want to end with this, there's a book on marketing in general, but it's called Scientific Advertising. It was written in 1923 by Claude C. Hopkins. And he said something that was really interesting, "The product itself should be its own best salesman." But here's what he said next in his book that is the most important part, "Almost any question can be answered by a test campaign. The court of last resort is the buyers of your product. No one knows people's desires enough to get an average viewpoint. If you want to know whether your product will work, do a test campaign." Now, the reason why I mentioned this in the context of SEO is when we try to optimize something before we put it up, we are thinking about how Google will see it, but we are ignoring the users of our product. Don't think of the ranking factor or factors first and then create content and the user experience to match that. Think of the user first. Create great content, great experience for them. Then think how you can match that to the ranking factors. I think in SEO we tend to forget that there's a word in there called optimization. And optimization applies that it has to be done after something already exists. We optimize something like content or user experience. We optimize what we provide our users so that they're seen by or ranked by or indexed by search engines. Too often we create content and user experience that focuses on search engines, or we will focus on the user but the search engines are dictating the development, so that's why it's not really optimizing after the fact. We're doing it as we go along. Yes, there's always going to be a place for technical SEO. There's always going to be a place for things that we can apply and optimize that will be appealing to the search engines. But put the user first, then optimize. Mordy Oberstein: You know what? He's so right. And it really, as we spoke about, comes out to mindset. The way I put it is started thinking like a marketer almost, because marketers have been doing this for a long time. I know in SCL, "This is so new, think about the user," but marketer doing this forever. It's time to start thinking more like a traditional marketer in a lot of ways as part of your SEO process. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think so. And I think that when you do that it makes it more than just ranking. It actually means that you're actually connecting with the audience. So some of the YouTubers, for instance, that I really like, do this a lot. The last audience are together, and then it feels like it's a conversation. When you're literally user first, when a user says to you, "Oh, I don't understand this thing, can you help me?" And you write them a blog or you do the thing, and then you come back to them and you're like, "Hey, remember that thing you asked me about? Here it is." Do you know, they will go to you first the next time they need something that's in your niche, they will go to you first because they'll say, "Well, I trust this person. And if I get stuck, I trust that they'll help me in some way." So it's more than just ranking. It's also about building literal trust, building relationships with your audience. And I think that Google talks a lot about audiences. He was talking a lot about audiences there as well, and about making sure that you are thinking about something that is actually of value to the people that you're connecting with. Mordy Oberstein: Do you know who thinks of value with the people that they're connecting with and who always puts users first and not? Crystal Carter: Oh, yes, [inaudible 00:24:18] she absolutely does. Mordy Oberstein: Einat is a master at this. And she's a master of getting into the minds of the people that she's trying to help. Einat is also the product manager here at Wix for SEO tool set and development. So who would've thunk? What better person then to sit down and chat about how to put users first within an SEO context other than Einat? So join us now as we reach for the stars and go across the Wixverse with our own SEO product manager Einat Hoobian-Seybold. Audio: Three, two, one, ignition, lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: So we're here with Einat. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Hi. Mordy Oberstein: We've cornered you. We finally got you on the podcast. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: I'm happy to be here. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. We're really happy to have you because when we were sitting down, we were talking about doing an episode on user first SEO and how important that is. The person who immediately came to both of our minds was Einat, because your job is literally to put users first. And so many different kinds of users and it's so complicated. So we just wanted to pick your brain about how you put Wix's users first when developing our SEO product. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Well, that's an interesting questions because, first of all, what is Wix users, because we have a variety of users? We have the DIYs, the self-creators, the moms and pops, if you would like, which are just building their small business and they don't know much about SEO. And we have the professionals ones that are SEO professional, that are marketers. They need a lot more things and we need to dance in between. And every time I build a product, I don't build it for one of them, I build it for all of them. And that's the tricky part, because I need to take into consideration all their needs. I need to give the DIY users everything they need in order to have the best SEO without them understanding or without them knowing a lot. So that's why I will create lots of defaults and things that will be created for them with minimum effort or knowledge for their side. But in the same time, I will want to create full customization for the professional users. I want to allow them to have workflows. I want to allow them to have automation to save their time, that they will be able to do anything they want in the platform. I don't want the platform to minimize them in any way. Every time I build a product, I need to cater both of them. So I need to protect the DIYs and I need to give the full customization for our users. And it varies, so a lot of time I will give the basic information in the first view and then I will allow users, advanced users, to find what they can do more. Like I said, I will build a lot of defaults for the users, which is also beneficial for the professional one. For example, in Wix we create a lot of default structure data. I can recognize the page of the user, I know what it is. And for example, if you have a product page, I can already build you the structure data with all the information that you need. So it's, of course, extremely valuable for our DIYs, so they don't know structured data, they for sure don't know how to write it, so I already did it for them. And it's also extremely beneficial for the professional because I saved their time. It's automatically built to work in scale and, of course, they can customize it. If the default that I build is not enough for them, they want to change, they want to edit, they can do it as well. Crystal Carter: And I think this is a great example because one of the things I really like about the structure data customization options is that you have the default, which is great out of the box but, for instance, if you wanted to edit it, it also has a validator, so it tells you if you've misplaced your syntax and won't let you submit incorrect schema markup. The other thing I think is great about Wix is structured data customization options is there are variables, so variables already exist within the platform. I've previously had to build these myself and it can be very time consuming and sometimes inconsistent. So I think that's a great example of something that works for lots of different users. One of the things I also think is great, from observing you and the way that you roll out these products, is how you test them. Can you talk to us a little bit more about your testing process, about how you test to make sure that what you're building is good for your users? Einat Hoobian-Seybold: It's true that almost everything that we do in Wix, we test, because we don't know everything. Even if I know SEO and I know product and I know my users, still, reality is different and we really need to see how users behave and if users understand what they see and what they need to do, so we test everything. Every time I will make a major product or a major change, I will run an A/B test. I will start with 50% of the population. I will start with one market, because in Wix we have over 20 market. I will start with one dedicated one in order to really understand the effect of this new feature or this new tool. And I really will, I will run it 50% A/B test and I will see the effect, first of all, on the existing reality that we live in. We live in Wix in SEO, specifically in a very complex environment. We have lots of tools, again, we have lots of users, so I want to make sure that I didn't harm anything else, that by creating this new feature or by creating this new tool that everything else that our users are known and used to, stays the same and I didn't shake the boat too much. So I will test this and I will test also regarding the feature that I just launched. I will test the specific APIs that I want to reach with this tool, whether if there's usage in the tool, I will understand really how users behave in the tool. And I think one thing that is important to note, we don't only look on the quantitative data, we also look on the quality of data. I will see sometimes numbers and this is working well and this is not, but I want to understand why. For example, right now we ran a test, we added, we have the SEO wiz, we just added a new section GBP, the Google Business Profile to it, and it worked amazingly for Google Business Profile users, created extremely well, more locations as success verification. Was amazing. But it did affect the SEO with the checklist that we have. The KPIs of this affected it. I know that those KPIs, if you complete the checklist, if you move forward, it's improve your SEO, so I don't want to do that. I don't want to create any new feature, I will kind of sabotage the user success because this is really what lead us; user success, how we guide them to success. So what we did is we look at the data and we try to understand what's going on. And we understand that a lot of users, in order to create a Google Business Profile, they need to go out to Google Business Profile, which is in another place. And we participated this. We already added some CTAs to go back to the SEO wiz, to the checklist, but they weren't permanent enough and we saw that users are not seeing this. They are being sent out by me, but they don't come back. So what we did is, first of all, I looked at the full story, which is a tool that we use a lot to understand how user interact with our tools because sometimes just the data of the CTA is not enough. We need to know what he did before and if did he get lost or not. And we understand that they don't see the way to go back to where they were. So now we are improving it in terms of UI and in terms of content. And I will be glad to update you once the test will be done. Mordy Oberstein: We would love to be updated. So let me ask you real quick, because I know we're reaching the end of our allotted time together. Let's take it back a step. When you have so many things to develop, let's say, or multiple things you could be developing, how do you decide which one to do first? What goes through your thought process and how does the user factor into that and how do you really know which makes the most sense? Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Yeah, that's true. I think the most painful part of being a product manager that you have to prioritize is you have to decide what you do now and you won't do everything that you want. Because I have tons of plans, but I need to prioritize and I need to scale them down a lot of times. So I have lots of, I will say information sources that I use in order to decide what I do now. The bottom line is impact, is how do I help my users? What I do now is for my users. Will it, like I said, drive them towards success or not? So I have lots of information. I have, first of all, data. I look a lot of data of users and what they do and what they are missing and where they get stuck. And we have an SEO in Wix. We have a team, a dedicated team of SEO domain experts, data, the guys that are connected the most of the industry and they know what is needed, what are we lacking of, what do we need to do next. And so, I rely a lot of their recommendation. I do a lot of research and I really, really look at support information, support tickets, what our users are struggling with, what are coming to support. I talk a lot with the users and I really call our users and we talk about them. And all of this is driving me towards decision of what I need to do. That's the first step, what is missing. And then how do I prioritize this? It will be mainly on a impact. What will close a gap that I missing the most that will help our users? Or what will bring more value to my users? And this is what guides me when I prioritize the products. Crystal Carter: And I love these conversations because whenever we're like, "Oh, what about this?" you're like, "What about the users? How is this going to help the users?" Mordy Oberstein: Yep, so true. Crystal Carter: "How is this going to help the users? This is very interesting, Crystal, how are we going to help the users with this?" Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Einat, thank you so much for stopping by. It's really been a first class look into the mindset of putting a user first and what that looks take from a product point of view. And it really applies to anytime you put a user first, whether it be for a product or service or for a website itself. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Exactly. Thank you. I really enjoyed being with you. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: Well, we'll have to have you back again. Talk to you later. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Bye. Audio: Three, two, one, ignition, lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: She is so lovely. Always. Every time I speak with her, I always enjoy... Super calm under pressure too. Always pleasant. Everyone's like, "Oh no, what do we do?" She's always so calm. Crystal Carter: I am always in awe whenever I hear... Einat will give us presentations on all the different stuff that we do and she just. Yeah, exactly, always super calm, super organized, very committed to the project of making Wix SEO stack as best as it can possibly be for our users. It's phenomenal to work alongside Einat. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And it's great talking to her and being able to talk to her with our audience, because now you actually know one of the key people who has made our SEO product so evolved. And it's really, was a great pleasure to talk to Einat. Crystal Carter: And user first, just user first stuff, she constantly Slack messages, she's constantly, "Yeah, I'm just responding to questions that our users have about various different things." She's very much involved with making sure that things are user first. Mordy Oberstein: 1000%. Let's snap to it, because now it's time for the Snappy News. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Well, I guess the pandemic is behind us. I mean, Google did just announce that Google Business Profile health and safety attributes are being kicked to the curb. That's right. Per Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable, "Google Business Profile removes health and safety attributes." Google business profile attributes, by the way, are little tidbits of info that help users better understand services and structure of a business, for example, that are attributes that let you know of an establishment is wheelchair accessible or there are attributes that let you know that a business is owned by a woman, it's woman led or it's veteran led or so forth. During COVID, Google introduced the option to display health and safety attributes like a mask being required or staff gets temperature checks, et cetera. These are now gone. Why is that important? Well, less so for SEO or there's no ranking that's involved in it if it's gone from all business profiles and users won't expect it to be there at all, so if you don't have it, it's not like your competitors have it. This is more, in my mind, a general marketing point, as it's a strong statement of where the world is and where your potential customers might be currently at. And with that, this is the snappiest of Snappy News. Another wonderful week of SEO news. Crystal Carter: So newsy. Mordy Oberstein: So newsy. It's always newsy in the SEO world. All right, before we have to duly depart, it's really important that we share with you who we think you should be following for more SEO knowledge. And when it comes to being user first and user first friendly, we have two people for you, because it's such an important topic, we thought what person wasn't enough. And we couldn't decide on which person to showcase. So we're like, "Let's do both. Why not do both?" Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Two is better than one. When you have pie, they're like, "Oh, do you want the cherry pie and the blueberry pie?" Then they have a combination of it too. Oh, my god, I'll take that. Crystal Carter: Which pie do you want? Yes. Mordy Oberstein: All. Yes. I love pie, by the way. Crystal Carter: Pie's good. Mordy Oberstein: Here, by the way, is the cherry on your pie in the SEO industry when you're trying to think of being user first. I did it on the fly, I'm so proud of myself. What do we have? Who's your follow of the week or our follow week, but who are you going to showcase, Crystal? Crystal Carter: I would love to give a shoutout to Adriana Stein. She is a writer, she's in SEO and does some incredible user first content. One of the things that she does really often is she regularly speaks directly to people about how they approach content, how they approach different technical tactics, so she'll get on her Twitter account and she'll ask questions. She'll say, "How do you do this? What do you think of that?" And people respond to her and she uses that to help shape her content and how she makes content. And I think it's a great approach and I think she's really good at it. I think her content's really great. So she's someone who's really worth following. She does a lot of stuff with some of the industry's best publications, so it's really good to follow her for that advice and for just seeing how she works. Mordy Oberstein: And her Twitter account is so conversational and so engaging, so it's absolutely worth the follow. It's @adrianakstein, A-D-R-I-A-N-A-K-S-T-E-I-N. Of course, we'll link to her profile in the show notes. And bonus follow of the week- Crystal Carter: Bonus. Mordy Oberstein: ... the man who I will say is so dedicated and passionate to making sure the web actually has good content on there. He's Google's own John Mueller. Crystal Carter: John Mueller. Mordy Oberstein: Is a saint by the way, an absolute saint. I love John. He's hilarious as well. So it's a great follow for many reasons. But I remember when the product review update was first rolling out, maybe it was the second iteration of it, I can't remember which one it was. And people were saying, "Oh, why do we need this? Why is it there?" And John was just calling it as he saw it. No, because there's a lot of really not great content out there around product reviews. And it's so true. And John will literally just tell you like, "No, this is how it really is and this is why we needed improvement." I always say John Mueller is an advocate for Google, but he is also an advocate for a better web and a better web starter, I think, with better content. I think John is a prime example of someone who speaks of that. And I really do appreciate that. Crystal Carter: I think he's great. I think also the other thing that's great about John is that SEO, everyone's coming to SEO from different spaces. You might be an expert in one field and a beginner in another, and he speaks to everyone in the same way. So in his Webmaster Office Hours would very regularly speak to users from all different backgrounds, whatever questions they had. And he always did his best to answer every single question in those spaces. And it is something that is incredibly user first because that gives you a very clear finger on the pulse of the kinds of questions that people have. And he uses that to shape the content that he shares. I think that he's a pillar in that community. Mordy Oberstein: He's just simply wonderful. He's simply wonderful and- Crystal Carter: He's great. Mordy Oberstein: ... honestly, he brings joy to my day sometimes when you're on Twitter and is like things are not going great. John is wonderful. Anyway, it's @john, J-O-H-N-M-U, as in Mueller, John Mueller. And we'll link, of course, to John's profile in the show notes. And that's going to do it for us. Thank you for joining us on The SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with an all new episode as we dive into the controversy that is AI writers. AaaaaaaaaI writers, if you're Fonzie. Crystal Carter: Can we just call it AI the whole time? Mordy Oberstein: AI writers. Wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of the great content and webinars that we have on the Wix SEO Learning, I bet 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 Michel Fortin Einat Hoobian-Seybold Adrian Stein John Mueller Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub User-first SEO What creators should know about Google's helpful content update What site owners should know about Google's core updates How to source ideas for user-first content News: Google Business Profiles Removes Health & Safety Attributes Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Michel Fortin Einat Hoobian-Seybold Adrian Stein John Mueller Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub User-first SEO What creators should know about Google's helpful content update What site owners should know about Google's core updates How to source ideas for user-first content News: Google Business Profiles Removes Health & Safety Attributes Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP’s Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP’s Up podcast. We're pushing out groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding at Wix. And I'm joined by the one, the only, the head of SEO communications at Wix, Crystal Carter. What's up, Crystal? Crystal Carter: Hello, good people of the internet. Hello. Many things are up. Things are up. Mordy Oberstein: Hopefully your rankings are up. Dad joke/SEO joke. Crystal Carter: We want all green arrows, every time. Mordy Oberstein: Someone was telling me that, because we're in the middle of, as we're recording this, some fluctuations on the SERP, and their boss was asking about, "Oh, why did our rankings on page two go down?" And they're like, "Why do we care?" Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We went from page two to page three, whatever shall we do? Crystal Carter: How come no one's coming to my MySpace page? Because what? Mordy Oberstein: Oh boy. Crystal Carter: Don't worry. Pick your battles there. Mordy Oberstein: Bigger fish to fry. Or if you don't like frying fish, bigger fish to bake. Crystal Carter: This is true. You could bake it. Mordy Oberstein: I like fish baked more than I like it fried. Anyway, the SERP’s Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can empower your [SEO] content strategy with the power of Semrush directly inside of the Wix platform. It's all part of Wix's SEO set up checklist, research keywords and topics, along with metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and even user intent with our Semrush integration. It's like my two worlds combined with that one. So on today's show, geez, Crystal, we better make sure the bots are happy, happy, happy, right? Crystal Carter: S-bots must be very happy. Mordy Oberstein: But wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Crystal Carter: Bots have happy. Mordy Oberstein: Do bots, or search engines, do they pay you money? Crystal Carter: No. No. I've asked. Mordy Oberstein: But I do not get a positive response, because guess what? People, people pay you money. But if I worry about the people, who will worry about the bots? Don't worry, Optimus Prime will. He's their father. Anyway. But if you're worrying about not worrying about the bots, fear not fair SEO for thou art in great luck, for the days of user first SEO are not just nigh, they are upon thee. That is correct. Today we are talking about why worrying about the user and not the bot, believe it or not, is actually good for the bots. That was circular. But who would've thunk. From the research phase to how the Google algorithm is structured, we're diving into why user first SEO matters, with tips of the trade from SEO's own John Bonham, Little Zeppelin reference for you there. Michel Fortin will stop by and share some of his tips with you. We'll also sit down with Wix's own SEO product manager, Einat Hoobian-Seybold, to talk about her approach to putting users first and how that plays out in SEO product development. And of course, we have the snappiest of news for you and who you should be following. Actually a bonus, two people who you should be following on social for SEO awesomeness. Let's let the good times roll, as episode eight of the SERP’s Up podcast is on. Crystal Carter: It's on. Mordy Oberstein: It's on. I almost feel like breaking to song, let the good times roll. Crystal Carter: You bet. This is a very musical introduction there, Mordy, with the John Bonham there. Mordy Oberstein: Totally by accident. Totally by accident. Michel Fortin, by the way, plays the drums and he's awesome, and he's going to stop by. Crystal Carter: He's a really good drummer. He's got his drumming on his website and it's exceptional. He's a very funky drummer. He's a very good drummer. Mordy Oberstein: It's awesome. And he's an awesome SEO who talks a lot about user first SEO, so it's completely makes so much sense. Crystal Carter: I know. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of user first SEO, Crystal, what are we talking about, user first SEO? Crystal Carter: Yeah, so the thing about user first SEO, one of the reasons why we're talking about this, one of the reasons why it's a little bit of a hot topic is because with their recent algorithm update, Google's announced that they are sort of encouraging or incentivizing people to be creating content. Specifically, they said, "Create content for people, not search engines." Who'd have thunk it? Mordy Oberstein: Who would've thunk that? That's crazy talk. Crystal Carter: Right. In their documentation, they say that the goal is to make sure that when users visit the site, they can find original, helpful content written by people for people, and that it has a satisfying user experience for site visitors. Now, the thing about this is that this is essentially user first content. This is content that is thinking about what the user wants, not necessarily thinking about what hacks, what gimmicks you can use to get to the top of the SERP, but rather thinking about something that's actually made for humans. And this follows on from some of the updates that Google updated in the past, like the Panda update, which really rocked this SEO landscape because it was talking about reducing black hat SEO techniques and reducing the prevalence of that information in the SERP. And when I say SERP, I mean search engine result pages. And what that means is that when people go to Google, they can actually achieve their goals, because I think what people forget sometimes is we think that Google and SEO is about websites, and it pretty much is, but if you go to Google's page how Search works, they explained that their goal is to provide information. They don't say that their goal is to drive traffic to websites. They say their goal is to provide information. And so, this kind of algorithm update, like Panda before it, is the kind that makes sure that they're providing high quality information for people that visit Google. And in order to make it high quality, you need to put the user first. So content creators who do this, and you'll know these content creators when you find them, whether it's on a website or whether it's on YouTube or whether it's on any other platform, they're very clear to address their user's needs. So they'll say, "A lot of people have asked me about this topic and I want to talk about it now." Or they'll share content that people that users have requested. So this is something that Google themselves do. They have a series called Ask Google Bot. And John Mueller will say, "Mordy Oberstein asked me this question on Twitter and I'm answering it here." And there's YouTube channels that I follow where they'll say, "What do you want me to cover next?" And the users will say that and they will cover that for them. They'll test content with their users before publishing it. So Instagram, good Instagramers will do a story and they'll see who replies to it and what kinds of things people are interested in, and then they'll do a longer post later on. There's lots of different techniques that you could do, but putting your user first is really important. And it's something that Google's laid out in a lot of different documentation. The information about the helpful content update from Google is very, very clear with information around that. And also, if you want to do a really deep dive, you can have a look at something called the Quality Rater Guidelines, which is the documentation that Google gives to their team, to their humans and their team to help them determine what is a good quality website. Yeah, it's a really good idea. It gives you lots really good ideas of what makes good content that is made for users. Mordy Oberstein: And that's really the point. Back in the day with the algorithm, there was one way of running for humans and one way of running for bots, and even helpful content updates aside, what Google's been doing, I would say since circa 2018 with the new series of core algorithm updates... And if you look at their documentation around how should you respond to being hit by one of the core algorithm updates, it's very similar. It's all about writing really good content, really helpful content. And what they've been doing algorithmically is basically trying to think qualitatively the way a human could, and sort of mimicking that. And Danny Sullivan from Google's talking about, "Yeah, we look at quality," by the way, quality is for the entire site, a site wide metric, not a per page metric, "And we try to mimic through the algorithms how a person would qualitatively assess the quality of the webpage." So now the algorithm and the user have been synced up in a lot of ways. Is it a hundred percent perfect? Is it a hundred percent there? No. Will it every be? Probably not. But directionally, and way, way, way more than it ever was before. And if you look at people like, I'll say Glenn Gabe and Lily Ray, Marie Haynes, maybe myself, Dr. Pete from over at Moz, when they write about their analysis of the updates, so basically showing you, "Yeah, Google's looking at things like tone and looking at things like the quality in this way and the quality in that way," and now when you put the user first, at the same time, and this is a key point, you're also putting Google first. It's not different anymore. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think that what we're seeing is Google puts a lot of emphasis on EAT, which is expertise, authority, and trust. And that document that you mentioned, the one that they always put out whenever there's an algorithm, what SEO should know about or website owners should know about Google updates, talks about expertise, authority, and trust. And there's lots of different ways that you can demonstrate that on a website. And it's essentially like if you asked someone for advice and they gave you advice on something, you would want to know how they were qualified to give you that advice. So if you go and talk to a doctor and then they say, "Oh, I think it might be," I don't know, appendicitis or something like that, you assume that they know what they're talking about, because they're in a doctor's office, they've got their certificates up on the wall, you know who they are. Similarly, if you go to a website and they're giving you advice or they're giving you information about one topic or another, it's very important that you know who they are, that they have an about page that talks about who they are. We recently did a webinar with Semrush around about pages, to talk about some of those elements. But it's also important that you have an address if it's a place of business. I saw recently someone, there was somebody who got in touch or somebody who was online saying, "Oh, I don't know why my webpage for a hotel isn't ranking," and it was a hotel that didn't have an address. And I was like, "That is red flags." Mordy Oberstein: Conceptual hotel. Crystal Carter: That's red flags. Mordy Oberstein: It's where my mind stays. Crystal Carter: It's, "Oh, book, book where, where is this?" Mordy Oberstein: In the ether. It's in the ether. Crystal Carter: Right. And if you think about some of the websites that do really well, if you think about something, so Airbnb, for instance, is something like that, that they have doubled down. They have multiple layers of verifying who is who and trying to make sure that it's very clear, that you're talking to an actual person that's actually in a place and these people are... Then there's agreements and there's all this sort of stuff. Similarly, Google's trying to make sure that when somebody comes to their website and tries to find out, I don't know, how far it is from the earth to the moon or any kind of information, that they're able to get it from a valid source. Because if people are not getting good quality information from Google, then people won't come to Google. And Google wants to make sure that they're keeping their users happy by giving them good quality information. Mordy Oberstein: You make a great point where you're talking about how people are looking at a website, "Can I trust this website? Are they authoritative? They have expertise?" And that's really, if you want to talk about how you create user first content, that's kind of how you do it. You look at it from the lens of the user. One way, I call it the brand sniff test. You go to a webpage and you immediately, because you're a brand, they're going to realize it's, "Oh, machines and AI and Google's so smart and machines are so smart." Your brain is AI on steroids. It takes a look at something, and in three seconds or 0.3 seconds, it takes a million different signals. And without you consciously being aware of it, it's like, "Yeah, I've completely judged this already." You go to a webpage and it's an HTML table from 1999, you go, "I'm not trusting this thing." Even might have great content. If you think, "Okay, how do I know I've created user first content, outside the fact that you know where your heart is? Leaving that aside for a second, if you look at the page and you think, "Okay," from a branding point of view, "What are the latent signals that this page sends? Is the tone right, is the layout friendly? Is it digestible? Is it well structured? Does it give off a sense that this page is well intentioned, trustworthy, and has my best interest in mind?" And if you feel like you know it does, then you've probably created user first content. Crystal Carter: And I think, also, if you're getting good feedback from your users, then that will also tell you this. For instance, if you've got people coming to your Google business profile and they're asking the same questions over and over again, they probably can't find that information on your website. If you're having people calling you and asking you for the same information over and over again, they probably can't find that information on your website. You should probably make some information, that kind of information on your website. If you've got people who, "Oh, yeah. I saw this on your page and I thought it was great," or "This was really...", then that's information that you're providing that's clearly good for users. So there's lots of different signals that you can get around that. I know some people put reviews on their blog, just regular blogs, not necessarily a recipe blog, but just a regular blog, "Did you find this content helpful? What do you think of this content?" Three stars, five stars, whatever it is. And you can sort of understand, you can get actual direct feedback from people about whether or not it's helpful, whether or not it's useful. And there's lots of different elements and different factors that can help you to demonstrate that and help you to understand that. Mordy Oberstein: For sure. And it really all starts with your mindset. I know you have a whole article about this, I think, where if you're looking at it, I'm was going to go to a keyword research tool and I'm going to plug it in and whatever, and pull out the data and I'm going to... that's probably not the place to start, in my mind. When you're trying to start writing content for the web, for both bots and users, it starts with empathy and understanding your audience, and being able to tap into their mindset. Because now you're going to create content that actually helps them because you actually feel bad for them. Like, "Oh, you have a pain point here? I would love to help you with that." Crystal Carter: Right. I've sometimes written articles, so I remember writing a piece that was around different sources for structured data or something like that. And I use it myself. It was basically, it was a bookmark thing that I put together. And the reason why I put it together was because I couldn't find one. So I think that's one of the things, if you're trying to think about user first, try to be mindful of your experience as a user and the things that irritate you as a user, the content that you don't like as a user. It says something in the description and you get to the page and it's completely different. That can be annoying. Or Google in their helpful content notes talks about the kinds of things where they're saying, "Are you trying to give an answer to a question that doesn't have an answer?" Like when is this show coming out and they haven't announced it and you're just trying to get on the SERP or something, that sort of thing. If you find that irritating, don't make that content. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember that. When I was looking at this, a lot of the people that... I spoke to lots of different SEOs about how they create content for users, and they talk to users. And sometimes this can be interviews or sometimes this can be going through CRM information. So if you are using something like Salesforce or that sort of thing where people are raising tickets regularly or raising customer service queries, you can go through that information and see the ones that come up regularly, and you can help your customer service team by giving them the information that they need and help users at the same time. And with regards to the keywords, not to say that keywords and using keywords tools, not to say you shouldn't use them, but think of the user first and then use the keyword tools just to make sure that you're actually hitting some of the actual terms. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you're refining and gaps you haven't missed, those sort of things, because I've done this before myself. The questions you get from, actually, users are completely different. Crystal Carter: Right, completely. And especially if you're looking into a new space where you think about keyword tools, a lot of times they're using historical data. And it's fantastic. It's amazing to have that kind of data there. But Google said, I think, 15% of queries are new queries. So if you're going into a new space, you're launching a new product, then you're going to need to get new content for that and you're going to need to get that to users. And if you're not somebody who wants to do lots and lots of interviews and stuff, that's okay. There's lots of different things you can look- Mordy Oberstein: Forums and social. Crystal Carter: Forums. Yeah. Reviews. You can do a poll. I sometimes go through Slack channels, Slack messages. You can talk to juniors if you're trying to... Training juniors is incredibly useful because juniors will go, "What is a acronym? I don't know what that means." And they want to know. They want to know. So you can create something that's good for the juniors in your team and also is useful for users who are in the same place, where they want to know desperately, so they need it to be- Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: ... accessible. Mordy Oberstein: And if you're still doubting, well, doing all of this and putting the user first and, I want to say abandoning, slightly abandoning traditional, what you might think is traditional SEO, is that's not going to help me rank, think about what's coming down the pike. MUM is coming down the pike, it's Google's new AI 1000, machine learning rather, 1000 times more powerful than Byrd, it's previous most powerful machine learning property, blah blah blah. One of the things that MUM is doing, it's Google's own example, and they gave an example of something like, "I hiked Mount Adams, now I want to hike Mount Fiji in the fall. What do I need to do to prepare differently?" Something like that. Crystal Carter: That's so many words. That's got too many words, by the way. Mordy Oberstein: But the coolest part is that they show you how they parse the word prepare. Does it mean to equipment, I need to know what equipment I need, or training? Is that what you mean to prepare? And Google's like, "Now we're going to show results about both." And you could probably parse it a million times over. So if Google's going to be parsing topics into smaller subtopics like, "Oh, preparing for a hike." It means equipment. It could mean tips, it could mean food, it could mean trading. The only way that you are going to be able to parse a topic down the same way so that you have the opportunities to rank, that are afforded to you on what's going to be the new search results page is by identifying and empathizing with your audience. Like oh, if someone's going on a hike and they have to prepare, what do they really need? Well, they might need this, they might need that, they might need that. Let me create content about that. So we will most definitely help you rank to put the user first, because that's the only way you're going to be able to create the right content. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that if you're thinking about actually answering the question... Again talking to children is another good one. I have a kid and he asks me questions all the time and he's very capable of understanding if I explain it to him the way that he wants, but he wants a full answer. Kids will just keep asking why, so make sure that you give a full answer for whatever the question, and genuinely get involved. Mordy Oberstein: Like a real substance targeted, nuanced content. Now speaking of questions, we have a question for Michel Fortin, the director of search marketing over at seoplus+. Hey Michel, how do you check yourself to ensure you always keep the user first, not bots? Take it away. Michel Fortin: In SEO and in business, in general, many people tend to think the other way around. They think that we should focus on our product, it's the best things since sliced bread, and then we focus on our marketing because we think that people just need our product. The thing is, is actually the other way around, we should be solving a problem, we should be helping out our market. SEO is no different. We have to keep the user first in mind. Yes, we should be leading with our product, but we also are creating a solution to a problem. So it makes sense that we should focus on the problems that our users are experiencing and we help to solve them, in that case when they're making a search. So to keep the user first, you need to at least start with the user first. To borrow a quote from Steven Covey, "First things first is to put first things first." And it really does mean that in the case of SEO, as in any other form of marketing, because SEO is just a channel for marketing, it's really about putting the user first and thinking about their pain points. I always say this, that to really rank well, to be visible actually is a better way to say it, to really be visible in search engines, you need to do what Google really wants you to do. It's the same thing, we share the same goal, which is to create quality content and a quality user experience. So appeal to your market and optimize those things for their sake and you will naturally appeal to search engines too. In marketing, I think the single biggest challenge is to think like our audience. And I say it's a challenge because we tend to always think that our audience are like us or that we know what our audience wants or what they're thinking about or what their needs are. And there's a famous quote from a mentor of mine from many, many years ago who said, "You are never your own market." And in my previous life, I was a copywriter, we always focused on trying to tell our clients that they are never their own market. Well, SEO is the same. Either we think we know or we expect they know. And that's true also for research engines as it is for the audiences that we are trying to go after. And both are wrong. Both of those notions are wrong. We have to think of our market, we have to think like our market. Think about it this way, Google is always doing split tests all the time. It's always testing and changing and adding new search features. And if things don't work out, I mean how many products have we seen Google put out and it basically didn't last too too long because it just flopped or it didn't really do well or it wasn't... The man wasn't there. Remember Google+? But the thing is, with SEO is that we have to think like our market. We have to think for a market. We have to provide the solution that our market wants. I want to end with this, there's a book on marketing in general, but it's called Scientific Advertising. It was written in 1923 by Claude C. Hopkins. And he said something that was really interesting, "The product itself should be its own best salesman." But here's what he said next in his book that is the most important part, "Almost any question can be answered by a test campaign. The court of last resort is the buyers of your product. No one knows people's desires enough to get an average viewpoint. If you want to know whether your product will work, do a test campaign." Now, the reason why I mentioned this in the context of SEO is when we try to optimize something before we put it up, we are thinking about how Google will see it, but we are ignoring the users of our product. Don't think of the ranking factor or factors first and then create content and the user experience to match that. Think of the user first. Create great content, great experience for them. Then think how you can match that to the ranking factors. I think in SEO we tend to forget that there's a word in there called optimization. And optimization applies that it has to be done after something already exists. We optimize something like content or user experience. We optimize what we provide our users so that they're seen by or ranked by or indexed by search engines. Too often we create content and user experience that focuses on search engines, or we will focus on the user but the search engines are dictating the development, so that's why it's not really optimizing after the fact. We're doing it as we go along. Yes, there's always going to be a place for technical SEO. There's always going to be a place for things that we can apply and optimize that will be appealing to the search engines. But put the user first, then optimize. Mordy Oberstein: You know what? He's so right. And it really, as we spoke about, comes out to mindset. The way I put it is started thinking like a marketer almost, because marketers have been doing this for a long time. I know in SCL, "This is so new, think about the user," but marketer doing this forever. It's time to start thinking more like a traditional marketer in a lot of ways as part of your SEO process. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think so. And I think that when you do that it makes it more than just ranking. It actually means that you're actually connecting with the audience. So some of the YouTubers, for instance, that I really like, do this a lot. The last audience are together, and then it feels like it's a conversation. When you're literally user first, when a user says to you, "Oh, I don't understand this thing, can you help me?" And you write them a blog or you do the thing, and then you come back to them and you're like, "Hey, remember that thing you asked me about? Here it is." Do you know, they will go to you first the next time they need something that's in your niche, they will go to you first because they'll say, "Well, I trust this person. And if I get stuck, I trust that they'll help me in some way." So it's more than just ranking. It's also about building literal trust, building relationships with your audience. And I think that Google talks a lot about audiences. He was talking a lot about audiences there as well, and about making sure that you are thinking about something that is actually of value to the people that you're connecting with. Mordy Oberstein: Do you know who thinks of value with the people that they're connecting with and who always puts users first and not? Crystal Carter: Oh, yes, [inaudible 00:24:18] she absolutely does. Mordy Oberstein: Einat is a master at this. And she's a master of getting into the minds of the people that she's trying to help. Einat is also the product manager here at Wix for SEO tool set and development. So who would've thunk? What better person then to sit down and chat about how to put users first within an SEO context other than Einat? So join us now as we reach for the stars and go across the Wixverse with our own SEO product manager Einat Hoobian-Seybold. Audio: Three, two, one, ignition, lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: So we're here with Einat. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Hi. Mordy Oberstein: We've cornered you. We finally got you on the podcast. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: I'm happy to be here. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. We're really happy to have you because when we were sitting down, we were talking about doing an episode on user first SEO and how important that is. The person who immediately came to both of our minds was Einat, because your job is literally to put users first. And so many different kinds of users and it's so complicated. So we just wanted to pick your brain about how you put Wix's users first when developing our SEO product. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Well, that's an interesting questions because, first of all, what is Wix users, because we have a variety of users? We have the DIYs, the self-creators, the moms and pops, if you would like, which are just building their small business and they don't know much about SEO. And we have the professionals ones that are SEO professional, that are marketers. They need a lot more things and we need to dance in between. And every time I build a product, I don't build it for one of them, I build it for all of them. And that's the tricky part, because I need to take into consideration all their needs. I need to give the DIY users everything they need in order to have the best SEO without them understanding or without them knowing a lot. So that's why I will create lots of defaults and things that will be created for them with minimum effort or knowledge for their side. But in the same time, I will want to create full customization for the professional users. I want to allow them to have workflows. I want to allow them to have automation to save their time, that they will be able to do anything they want in the platform. I don't want the platform to minimize them in any way. Every time I build a product, I need to cater both of them. So I need to protect the DIYs and I need to give the full customization for our users. And it varies, so a lot of time I will give the basic information in the first view and then I will allow users, advanced users, to find what they can do more. Like I said, I will build a lot of defaults for the users, which is also beneficial for the professional one. For example, in Wix we create a lot of default structure data. I can recognize the page of the user, I know what it is. And for example, if you have a product page, I can already build you the structure data with all the information that you need. So it's, of course, extremely valuable for our DIYs, so they don't know structured data, they for sure don't know how to write it, so I already did it for them. And it's also extremely beneficial for the professional because I saved their time. It's automatically built to work in scale and, of course, they can customize it. If the default that I build is not enough for them, they want to change, they want to edit, they can do it as well. Crystal Carter: And I think this is a great example because one of the things I really like about the structure data customization options is that you have the default, which is great out of the box but, for instance, if you wanted to edit it, it also has a validator, so it tells you if you've misplaced your syntax and won't let you submit incorrect schema markup. The other thing I think is great about Wix is structured data customization options is there are variables, so variables already exist within the platform. I've previously had to build these myself and it can be very time consuming and sometimes inconsistent. So I think that's a great example of something that works for lots of different users. One of the things I also think is great, from observing you and the way that you roll out these products, is how you test them. Can you talk to us a little bit more about your testing process, about how you test to make sure that what you're building is good for your users? Einat Hoobian-Seybold: It's true that almost everything that we do in Wix, we test, because we don't know everything. Even if I know SEO and I know product and I know my users, still, reality is different and we really need to see how users behave and if users understand what they see and what they need to do, so we test everything. Every time I will make a major product or a major change, I will run an A/B test. I will start with 50% of the population. I will start with one market, because in Wix we have over 20 market. I will start with one dedicated one in order to really understand the effect of this new feature or this new tool. And I really will, I will run it 50% A/B test and I will see the effect, first of all, on the existing reality that we live in. We live in Wix in SEO, specifically in a very complex environment. We have lots of tools, again, we have lots of users, so I want to make sure that I didn't harm anything else, that by creating this new feature or by creating this new tool that everything else that our users are known and used to, stays the same and I didn't shake the boat too much. So I will test this and I will test also regarding the feature that I just launched. I will test the specific APIs that I want to reach with this tool, whether if there's usage in the tool, I will understand really how users behave in the tool. And I think one thing that is important to note, we don't only look on the quantitative data, we also look on the quality of data. I will see sometimes numbers and this is working well and this is not, but I want to understand why. For example, right now we ran a test, we added, we have the SEO wiz, we just added a new section GBP, the Google Business Profile to it, and it worked amazingly for Google Business Profile users, created extremely well, more locations as success verification. Was amazing. But it did affect the SEO with the checklist that we have. The KPIs of this affected it. I know that those KPIs, if you complete the checklist, if you move forward, it's improve your SEO, so I don't want to do that. I don't want to create any new feature, I will kind of sabotage the user success because this is really what lead us; user success, how we guide them to success. So what we did is we look at the data and we try to understand what's going on. And we understand that a lot of users, in order to create a Google Business Profile, they need to go out to Google Business Profile, which is in another place. And we participated this. We already added some CTAs to go back to the SEO wiz, to the checklist, but they weren't permanent enough and we saw that users are not seeing this. They are being sent out by me, but they don't come back. So what we did is, first of all, I looked at the full story, which is a tool that we use a lot to understand how user interact with our tools because sometimes just the data of the CTA is not enough. We need to know what he did before and if did he get lost or not. And we understand that they don't see the way to go back to where they were. So now we are improving it in terms of UI and in terms of content. And I will be glad to update you once the test will be done. Mordy Oberstein: We would love to be updated. So let me ask you real quick, because I know we're reaching the end of our allotted time together. Let's take it back a step. When you have so many things to develop, let's say, or multiple things you could be developing, how do you decide which one to do first? What goes through your thought process and how does the user factor into that and how do you really know which makes the most sense? Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Yeah, that's true. I think the most painful part of being a product manager that you have to prioritize is you have to decide what you do now and you won't do everything that you want. Because I have tons of plans, but I need to prioritize and I need to scale them down a lot of times. So I have lots of, I will say information sources that I use in order to decide what I do now. The bottom line is impact, is how do I help my users? What I do now is for my users. Will it, like I said, drive them towards success or not? So I have lots of information. I have, first of all, data. I look a lot of data of users and what they do and what they are missing and where they get stuck. And we have an SEO in Wix. We have a team, a dedicated team of SEO domain experts, data, the guys that are connected the most of the industry and they know what is needed, what are we lacking of, what do we need to do next. And so, I rely a lot of their recommendation. I do a lot of research and I really, really look at support information, support tickets, what our users are struggling with, what are coming to support. I talk a lot with the users and I really call our users and we talk about them. And all of this is driving me towards decision of what I need to do. That's the first step, what is missing. And then how do I prioritize this? It will be mainly on a impact. What will close a gap that I missing the most that will help our users? Or what will bring more value to my users? And this is what guides me when I prioritize the products. Crystal Carter: And I love these conversations because whenever we're like, "Oh, what about this?" you're like, "What about the users? How is this going to help the users?" Mordy Oberstein: Yep, so true. Crystal Carter: "How is this going to help the users? This is very interesting, Crystal, how are we going to help the users with this?" Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Einat, thank you so much for stopping by. It's really been a first class look into the mindset of putting a user first and what that looks take from a product point of view. And it really applies to anytime you put a user first, whether it be for a product or service or for a website itself. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Exactly. Thank you. I really enjoyed being with you. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: Well, we'll have to have you back again. Talk to you later. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Bye. Audio: Three, two, one, ignition, lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: She is so lovely. Always. Every time I speak with her, I always enjoy... Super calm under pressure too. Always pleasant. Everyone's like, "Oh no, what do we do?" She's always so calm. Crystal Carter: I am always in awe whenever I hear... Einat will give us presentations on all the different stuff that we do and she just. Yeah, exactly, always super calm, super organized, very committed to the project of making Wix SEO stack as best as it can possibly be for our users. It's phenomenal to work alongside Einat. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And it's great talking to her and being able to talk to her with our audience, because now you actually know one of the key people who has made our SEO product so evolved. And it's really, was a great pleasure to talk to Einat. Crystal Carter: And user first, just user first stuff, she constantly Slack messages, she's constantly, "Yeah, I'm just responding to questions that our users have about various different things." She's very much involved with making sure that things are user first. Mordy Oberstein: 1000%. Let's snap to it, because now it's time for the Snappy News. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Well, I guess the pandemic is behind us. I mean, Google did just announce that Google Business Profile health and safety attributes are being kicked to the curb. That's right. Per Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable, "Google Business Profile removes health and safety attributes." Google business profile attributes, by the way, are little tidbits of info that help users better understand services and structure of a business, for example, that are attributes that let you know of an establishment is wheelchair accessible or there are attributes that let you know that a business is owned by a woman, it's woman led or it's veteran led or so forth. During COVID, Google introduced the option to display health and safety attributes like a mask being required or staff gets temperature checks, et cetera. These are now gone. Why is that important? Well, less so for SEO or there's no ranking that's involved in it if it's gone from all business profiles and users won't expect it to be there at all, so if you don't have it, it's not like your competitors have it. This is more, in my mind, a general marketing point, as it's a strong statement of where the world is and where your potential customers might be currently at. And with that, this is the snappiest of Snappy News. Another wonderful week of SEO news. Crystal Carter: So newsy. Mordy Oberstein: So newsy. It's always newsy in the SEO world. All right, before we have to duly depart, it's really important that we share with you who we think you should be following for more SEO knowledge. And when it comes to being user first and user first friendly, we have two people for you, because it's such an important topic, we thought what person wasn't enough. And we couldn't decide on which person to showcase. So we're like, "Let's do both. Why not do both?" Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Two is better than one. When you have pie, they're like, "Oh, do you want the cherry pie and the blueberry pie?" Then they have a combination of it too. Oh, my god, I'll take that. Crystal Carter: Which pie do you want? Yes. Mordy Oberstein: All. Yes. I love pie, by the way. Crystal Carter: Pie's good. Mordy Oberstein: Here, by the way, is the cherry on your pie in the SEO industry when you're trying to think of being user first. I did it on the fly, I'm so proud of myself. What do we have? Who's your follow of the week or our follow week, but who are you going to showcase, Crystal? Crystal Carter: I would love to give a shoutout to Adriana Stein. She is a writer, she's in SEO and does some incredible user first content. One of the things that she does really often is she regularly speaks directly to people about how they approach content, how they approach different technical tactics, so she'll get on her Twitter account and she'll ask questions. She'll say, "How do you do this? What do you think of that?" And people respond to her and she uses that to help shape her content and how she makes content. And I think it's a great approach and I think she's really good at it. I think her content's really great. So she's someone who's really worth following. She does a lot of stuff with some of the industry's best publications, so it's really good to follow her for that advice and for just seeing how she works. Mordy Oberstein: And her Twitter account is so conversational and so engaging, so it's absolutely worth the follow. It's @adrianakstein, A-D-R-I-A-N-A-K-S-T-E-I-N. Of course, we'll link to her profile in the show notes. And bonus follow of the week- Crystal Carter: Bonus. Mordy Oberstein: ... the man who I will say is so dedicated and passionate to making sure the web actually has good content on there. He's Google's own John Mueller. Crystal Carter: John Mueller. Mordy Oberstein: Is a saint by the way, an absolute saint. I love John. He's hilarious as well. So it's a great follow for many reasons. But I remember when the product review update was first rolling out, maybe it was the second iteration of it, I can't remember which one it was. And people were saying, "Oh, why do we need this? Why is it there?" And John was just calling it as he saw it. No, because there's a lot of really not great content out there around product reviews. And it's so true. And John will literally just tell you like, "No, this is how it really is and this is why we needed improvement." I always say John Mueller is an advocate for Google, but he is also an advocate for a better web and a better web starter, I think, with better content. I think John is a prime example of someone who speaks of that. And I really do appreciate that. Crystal Carter: I think he's great. I think also the other thing that's great about John is that SEO, everyone's coming to SEO from different spaces. You might be an expert in one field and a beginner in another, and he speaks to everyone in the same way. So in his Webmaster Office Hours would very regularly speak to users from all different backgrounds, whatever questions they had. And he always did his best to answer every single question in those spaces. And it is something that is incredibly user first because that gives you a very clear finger on the pulse of the kinds of questions that people have. And he uses that to shape the content that he shares. I think that he's a pillar in that community. Mordy Oberstein: He's just simply wonderful. He's simply wonderful and- Crystal Carter: He's great. Mordy Oberstein: ... honestly, he brings joy to my day sometimes when you're on Twitter and is like things are not going great. John is wonderful. Anyway, it's @john, J-O-H-N-M-U, as in Mueller, John Mueller. And we'll link, of course, to John's profile in the show notes. And that's going to do it for us. Thank you for joining us on The SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with an all new episode as we dive into the controversy that is AI writers. AaaaaaaaaI writers, if you're Fonzie. Crystal Carter: Can we just call it AI the whole time? Mordy Oberstein: AI writers. Wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of the great content and webinars that we have on the Wix SEO Learning, I bet 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

They will try, but after this episode, they won't succeed in pulling the wool over your eyes. Mordy and George share how to know good SEO advice from bad. Learn how to pick out SEO advice that leads to poor practices with packaged, “wash, rinse and repeat” tactics. Listen in as our hosts deliver their rubric for knowing when you should or should not follow the SEO advice you come across! Himani Kankaria, the founder of Missive Digital, shares how some great SEO advice prevented her sites from being hit by Google’s Penguin algorithm updates. Want to know where you should look for good SEO advice? Mordy and George share their personal list of great sources of SEO advice and strategy! Back How to know good SEO advice from bad? They will try, but after this episode, they won't succeed in pulling the wool over your eyes. Mordy and George share how to know good SEO advice from bad. Learn how to pick out SEO advice that leads to poor practices with packaged, “wash, rinse and repeat” tactics. Listen in as our hosts deliver their rubric for knowing when you should or should not follow the SEO advice you come across! Himani Kankaria, the founder of Missive Digital, shares how some great SEO advice prevented her sites from being hit by Google’s Penguin algorithm updates. Want to know where you should look for good SEO advice? Mordy and George share their personal list of great sources of SEO advice and strategy! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 05 | September 21, 2022 | 37 MIN 00:00 / 36:53 This week’s guests Himani Kankaria Himani Kankaria is the Founder of Missive Digital, an organic marketing agency that focuses on enhancing the brand positioning of businesses to maximize ROI and brand loyalty through organic marketing channels. She specializes in strategizing, creating, and optimizing content for users and SERP features like Featured Snippets. Being in this industry for the past 12+ years, she has helped SaaS and Technology businesses multiply their organic presence and conversions through organic marketing channels. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding. Here at Wix and filling in for our head of SEO communications, crystal Carter, is Wix's own head of SEO editorial, George Nguyen. George Nguyen: How's it going, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: Well, that was like the whole build-up, hey, Mahalo. And then, Hey Mordy. Hey George. How's it going? George Nguyen: I have big shoes to fill. Crystal, she brings her own energy and our listeners might not be used to me. So I hope I'm stepping into it, treading lightly. Mordy Oberstein: Ah, I understand. I understand George. That's totally fine. George Nguyen: Yeah. Easing into it. Yeah. Crystal has fans. I don't want to upset those fans. You know how fans can get? Crystal's fans? Mordy Oberstein: Crystal has rabid fan base. George Nguyen: Yeah. It's like Crystal fans and then a little bit further down the list K-pop stans is what I'm really afraid of on the internet. And then way down there is the rest of the SEOs. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, don't worry George. Crystal's fans are going to love you. We all love you. There's one thing you should remember, George and that's the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where we now automatically create image site maps for our product event and forum vertical pages with more page types coming soon. All right, we've got a jam-packed episode. You ready for this? I'm ready for this. George, are you ready for this? George Nguyen: I'm so ready. Because I actually have something to say. Sometimes I shy away from things, but I feel like I have a lot to say here. [00:01:31] What's On This Episode of SERP's Up? Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to try to dramatize the whole intro then. George Nguyen: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. They will try, but after this episode, they won't succeed in pulling the wools over your eyes. That's right. In this episode, we're covering how to know good SEO advice from bad as an inspiring SEO. This episode is a must listen, because I will personally tell you when I started in the SEO world, I took on some bad SEO advice. And I can see that other SEO vets they're nodding right along, you know exactly what I'm talking about. When you got into the industry there was some not-so-great SEO content that you thought was maybe true, possibly true. And then it wasn't. So we'll dive into how to sift through the noise with a bonus piece of SEO advice from the one and the only Himani Kankaria. Also, did you catch when Google doesn't show the number of results at the top of the SERP? If you didn't, well we'll tell you when it happens and more importantly, why that actually matters. Plus you always wanted some snappy SEO news so we're going to give you some snappy SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness. Sit back, relax, and take it all in because the SERP's Up podcast begins now with a look at how to know good SEO advice from bad. [00:02:50] Focus Topic of the Week: Good SEO Advice vs. Bad George Nguyen: Good advice results in positive outcomes, such as getting closer to your business goals, be a greater search visibility and traffic. Cha-ching. Bad advice though, it costs you, which may be more evident over the long run. It sets your visibility back and that hinders your business goals. Ultimately though, SEO miseducation analyst tactics are totally avoidable even in local SEO. And not being able to succeed just because you don't know the difference or you don't know what guidance to apply, that's the ultimate missed opportunity. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, George, I love the fact that you did your own sound effects like cha-ching. George Nguyen: I love that. Mordy Oberstein: You bring your own set. You're like the guy from Police Academy. George Nguyen: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Nice George. A nice addition to the SERP's Up podcast my friend. George Nguyen: Yeah. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So this is a topic that's really close to my heart. I really love SEO education, I'm a former teacher. So it really speaks to me. There's so many ways to know that the content that you're looking at is maybe not the greatest. So I'm going to start off by, here's my top, top piece of advice for you. If you're reading something and it's not nuanced, it's an absolute and to quote Star Wars only Siths speak in absolutes. That's probably not the best advice to listen to. So it's a good lesson by the way, for your own self, right? It's a difference between being authoritative and trustworthy and not being authoritative and trustworthy is being nuanced. Even if it's beginner content. So at a minimum, you need to let your users know the layers of information that are still left to be explored. Because you can't possibly cover everything. You can't possibly offer the ultimate advice about anything in just one piece of content. If you SEO advice, that's telling you 50% of the time you should be doing this, but doesn't put a caveat of it depends or as a general rule spend 50% of your time, might be a good way to allocate your resources. Then at most the take that you're reading or listening to or watching is overreaching because there is no yeah, X amount of time you should be doing this in the absolute sense. Any absolute, always needs to be qualified. And that's so true in SEO. So if you see something like that, that's not doing that maybe take pause for a minute and think into it a bit. George Nguyen: Absolutely Mordy. And if I could just piggyback on what you said there, building on a little bit. This is actually why, if you were venturing into the SEO space and you're running across the line, which is our unofficial slogan in the industry, “it depends”. It grates on you after a while to keep hearing a non-answer. It depends. But really “it depends” is not the answer. People are giving you, what they're telling you is it's a nuanced answer and that they're lacking the information that they need about you and your business and you and your goals to actually provide you with a relevant answer. So that's why “it depends” is kind of a thing. But this is great advice from you, Mordy, especially for the content creators among us who are trying to get out SEO best practices and how they create their content's a huge deal. Mordy Oberstein: This is so true George. By the way, I think that's kind of why you see so much because people don't want to get into that “it depends” all the time or that's not a way to really market yourself. And that is hard from a marketing point of view that I think it lends into this idea of lack of nuance and lack of accuracy in terms of growth expectations and over promising in SEO, right? I mean, you've probably seen tons of that. George Nguyen: Yeah. So this is just going to help you in general, identify when somebody's trying to pull the wool over your eyes I suppose. Think about what the underlying motivations are here. This is going to be a running theme. So we're going to bring it up again. But timelines, growth expectations, over promising is super easy in every field, but look at your competition. What is your goal here within not just your business goal, but even more specifically, if you're thinking about ranking for a specific keyword and you really think that this is what you want to build your content around, what's going to get you to that next stage of your business. Look at who is already ranking in those top positions for what you want to rank for. Was that competition built in a day? Was it built in the timeline that maybe you're reading on some blog or some consultant is telling you is reasonable? Does it look like it's reasonable? If it clearly took months to research and organize the content and you're seeing advice that guarantees it and all the effort that is required is your credit card to buy 8 trillion backlinks for $4.99. If it was that easy, the rankings would be absolute chaos. Every time you go to do a search, you would just see a totally different set of results. So even from that basis you know, well, things take time and we're going to get into a little bit more of how you can check for validity a bit later on, but I'm holding onto that. Mordy, do you have anything to add here? Mordy Oberstein: But what's funny about that is that you see so many cases of things like you go on YouTube, you type in how do I do SEO and you see something like rank number one. Let me tell you a little secret about SEO. There are certain cases where it's probably going to be impossible for you to rank number one. I always use the case of heart attack prevention. It's a really hard keyword to rank for. There's so much authority and nuance that goes into that keyword and Google tends to rank Mayo Clinic, WebMD, and Harvard health. Are you one of those three websites? No. Then you're not going to rank number one for that keyword. And that's fine. There are things you can do to get traffic around that topic without ranking number one for that. So this idea of over-promising is very rampant and it's something I totally agree, just steer away from. And to me, I think that spills over to a lot of the things you read around SEO studies. 'Cause they've come up very authoritative, but they also kind of oversell in a similar way sometimes where you'll see I did this or the study shows this and that means you will get this kind of growth and they show some kind of graph and this crazy amount of growth that happens after you implement the tactic that their study shows that was successful for them. But a lot of the times, again, you need to take context and nuance into that. Again, if they're doing a case study, well, is your site in the same situation as that site, like you mentioned before, possibly not? And even if it's a kind of study where we analyze 5 million URLs or 5 million result pages and here's the data, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you know what's funny, and I have a bone to pick about that's with the SEO world a little bit. Have you ever read a thesis paper from a grad student or a Ph.D. student, George? George Nguyen: Yeah, a few times. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. So after the abstract, what's the first thing they always start off with? George Nguyen: Table of contents. Mordy Oberstein: A great answer. That and the limitations of the study. George Nguyen: The methodologies. Mordy Oberstein: Right, methodology and limitations. George Nguyen: That's what I always look at. The sample size and things like that. Those are extremely important. Mordy Oberstein: All those kind of things. And they're telling you, we only looked at this, we didn't look at that. We looked at this many, but not that many. And that's really important information. Not because, oh, this study must not be good. There are limitations. That's a silly way to look at it. It's really important information because it tells you how to use the data in the study. Where are the limits of this data? Where is this data appropriate to apply it to? Where is it inappropriate to apply it to? George, let me ask you another question. What information do you never see in an SEO study? Would it be the limitations? George Nguyen: Yeah. Sometimes some people are good enough about pointing out that due to the way click stream behavior works, those kind of studies, they'll generally tell you, more reputable data providers will tell you how their data works. But oftentimes the methodology and stuff, sometimes it's there, but it's not something that they really want to tell you about. Oh, we interviewed 80 marketers. Mordy Oberstein: Right. We looked at a hundred million keywords, but what kind of keywords? Where'd you get the data from? What was the data period and how might that impact what you're looking at? So you could throw big numbers at something, it sounds impressive, but it may not actually be anything that you can apply to your particular situation. And again, you're absolutely right. There are a lot of great people doing great work and great studies and great data providers out there and you'll notice, and that's my point, is that they'll generally tell you what they did, how they did it and some of the really good ones will tell you the limit. I looked at these keywords, but that's a problem because. And that's a key indicator when you're looking at an SEO study of whether or not that's good SEO advice or bad SEO advice. George Nguyen: Sometimes it'll even tell you how to use that data or how not to use that data. They'll just be like, this is purely contextual and correlation doesn't mean causation. It could be these other factors. One classic example is oh, people say pages with low bounce rate rank well. Well it's probably the opposite. Pages that rank well for other reasons have low bounce rate. So just think about that. But while we're talking about this focus, right? We're not just focusing on the nitty-gritty details of a study. You really want to look at the other components of what the advice is really telling you. Does it take into account search intent. Does it take into account you're vertical because this goes back to the heart of “it depends”. Because my business selling, I don't know let's say action figures is going to be totally different from Mordy's... I'm really trying hard not to make a really cheap potshot joke here at Mordy. Mordy's business of selling designer sunglasses, right? I'm going to go with something classy. Mordy Oberstein: Great shot at me George. That's why you're my best friend because you take really bad shots at me. George Nguyen: It was disciplined here not to take a pot shot. But the goals, the audiences are different. Mordy's probably going to sell way more sunglasses in summer. As where for me, it's not going to be a seasonal thing. But let's get into this advice here. So I'm going to go through a more tangible example for you about search and 10, your vertical specifically. So my fiance, who's an online personal trainer and nutrition coach asked me if she should try to rank for the term vegan bodybuilding as she's building out her business plan. Mordy Oberstein: Is your fiance a bodybuilder? George Nguyen: She is a bikini competitor. So yes she is a bodybuilder. Mordy Oberstein: That's awesome. Wow. George Nguyen: Yeah, I know I used to be super into it, but now I don't do anything. Mordy Oberstein: Now you SEO. We don't need exercise. George Nguyen: Yeah. Yeah. SEO is all-consuming. Trying to reach some balance here just like you listeners. Trying to find it in myself. But she thought that because no services were listed on the first page of results that the competition would be low. And looking at the SERP, the top results are educational resources like about how to have a vegan lifestyle, listicles of prominent vegan bodybuilders. The related searches is even just a grid of vegan ingredients, which is literally just a grid of vegetables and fruits. It's not that fancy. Clearly not aligned with her objective of marketing her services though. And I'm not saying she got this advice from somewhere. It was just a thought that she had. So maybe you're having the same thought. Oh yeah, nobody... My business is ranked for that. Maybe Google doesn't think that your business should rank for this because if it did then possibly yeah. But it's different because if you're an established brand, you might be able to generate that kind of demand. But if you're not, you have to think, you have to know how your audience searches and you have to know what is the most effective shield against bad advice for this kind of thing. Which our objectives are. Take it a step further to reconcile how your audience searches as in what terms they use and how Google serves them the results. And we're talking about search intent here. To not only help you avoid inappropriate advice that you might be getting from people but also spot potential opportunities to gain more traffic. If there is an opportunity there and like, oh, your customers are definitely searching for this. Maybe it's a super long tail thing and there's no competition. That's an opportunity. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really good point because look, even in the best article or the best webinar or podcast, like this podcast, no matter what they do, no one can predict or understand exactly how it's going to apply to your situation. So as someone consuming this content, you need to think and stop for a second. This sounds wonderful. And it might be wonderful, but how is it applied to me and my site? And while it might be great advice for one site, because of the way you're saying intent is on the SERP right, on the Google results page, Google could be showing one thing and then you're really doing something else. And it may be great advice for the site doing something different than you, but for what you are doing for that keyword, it may not be applicable really at all. And that's up to you as someone consuming the advice to not get caught up in what they're saying, to be able to make that break, stop, drop, and think. Stop, drop, and think does this work for me even though it sounds really, really, really good? That's a good point, George. George Nguyen: You're in marketing. When we're talking here, you're obviously looking to market your business and you're trying to build hype here, but don't fall victim to somebody else's hype if it isn't specific enough to your business, if it doesn't ultimately tie back to that because otherwise, why are you doing this? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. And something else about that, that just made me think about this, that sometimes, cause we're talking about market or sometimes when people are running SEO content, it's important to understand who they are and what they're doing and why they might be writing it. I'm not saying there's an ulterior motive. That's not what I'm trying to get at. But someone who's really into site audits. They just love site audits. They breeze... And there are people like this. And when you sometimes talk to them, they are so overzealous about site audits that the context of all the other things that are going on in that particular moment for you. And so while you are reading this article from them and they're saying site audits, like the most important thing ever for any website, you must do this, or everything else is completely worthless, And you start here and end here. Take it all with a grain of salt. That might not be the best outlook for you and where you're at with your business and with your website. So something to be careful of when you're reading something from an enthusiast around one particular strategy or one particular area of SEO is to realize that's their jam. But that doesn't mean that has to be your jam all the time, also. So much jam. George Nguyen: Everything is a nail to a hammer essentially is what we're saying here. Mordy Oberstein: Basically. George Nguyen: Yes. Mordy, let's take a pause here before we really think about the next thing. And what is your jam? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. George Nguyen: In terms of SEO. What is my jam? If I had to define myself in a space, I'd say definitely more education. SEO is the subject matter, but education is the jam across whatever that is for me. And so what does that really mean? It means content. Content creation, not necessarily the technical side. I don't do too much of that at all, but that's what my jam is. What is your jam? Mordy Oberstein: My jam. I love the algorithms. I love reverse engineering what Google's doing on the server, reverse engineering algorithms. I love content, and reverse engineering. I like reverse engineering. You can get that. I like reverse engineering. What's working, what's not working with content. So yeah, I have my jam. I spread out from my jam. I don't do link-building. I really don't like link-building. That's the only thing I really don't like. So when I do read advice around SEO, I do take it as, okay, that's a really great strategy but does that work for me? Because sometimes, it could be a great strategy, but does it work for you? And that's also a legitimate thing. You know, what's also legitimate? Getting more great SEO advice from other great SEO besides for George and myself. [00:17:32] Focus Topic Guest: Himani Kankaria So with that, here's Himani Kankaria talking about how she got advice before Google released its spam hunting algorithm beast known as Penguin, which would obviously penalize the heck out of your website if you were doing spamming link building practices. And here's how it saved her sites. Here's the best advice that Himani Kankaria has ever received. Himani Kankaria: Who remembers the time when we used to do, say 200 or 300 directory submissions in a day? So I'm talking about that pre-Panda and Penguin era. In 2010, I was responsible for link-building activities. And there were a lot of directory sites where I used to see two radio buttons, which said buy a link or exchange a link. And I asked my boss, "Why are we not selecting those radio buttons?" And honestly, I was blessed with one of the best SEO advices. He said, “Himani, If you want to play a long game, never think of exchanging links or buying them, see how you can earn them rather than owning them." It was my first boss and because I was very new to the industry, I blindly followed him. And within two years, I mean you won't believe I saw Panda and Penguin updates ruined the existence of those directory sites. And I'm very thankful to him for such a piece of gold advice he gave to me. I still believe in earning the assets of the website organically. And honestly, we are surely doing great there. But it's not easy and advisable to trust any SEO advice that gets your way. Especially today. These days, getting trapped into bad SEO advice is easier because any random post on any platform can get massive engagement. They talk about niche websites and then showcase how brilliantly they got great results without any solid proof of what strategy they used and how it was implemented. What you can do is verify if Google has any documentation around that advice, or even you can ask any Google Search employee. I mean, I have asked John Mueller a lot, many times, and he has helped me with a lot of great advice. And even you can ask any industry thought leader as well. They are very humble to reply, but it's just that we have to beware of asking stupid questions. So before you listen to any advice, please look at who is giving you that advice. I have my own bunch of people whom I know personally and follow on Twitter and LinkedIn for SEO advice. And they have gained my trust by sharing proof of what they have done, said over the years, and why. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Himani. There's definitely great advice. One is don't buy links, please. Don't buy links. Someone offers you it might sound enticing. Don't buy those links and always check out Google's documentation. Just today, the day of this recording, I found a gem that people were talking about something on Twitter. I looked at the documentation around it and there was something I didn't even realize like, wow, that is a gem that I didn't know, just by reading Google's own documentation in their own guidelines. Great places to get some great SEO advice other than of course our own SEO hub over at wix.com/seo/learn is learningseo.io from Aleyda Solis. Amazing resource. There's seoroundtable.com, which I start off my day reading that from Barry Schwartz. It's a great place to keep up to date with what's happening in the SEO world. And last but not least The Moz Blog. It's a great blog that really was a flourishing Moz community. This has kind of scaled back on that a bit, unfortunately, but the blog itself is absolutely phenomenal. Check out The Moz Blog as well. George any ones you want to add in real quick off the cuff? George Nguyen: Yeah. It depends on really what your jam is, right? You can't not mention Search Engine Land as a news publisher for both PPC and SEO and Barry Schwartz the owner of Search Engine Round Table works there as well. So they have a great format in terms of why marketers should care, especially if you're at agencies and you're not an SMB necessarily, but you're working at an agency. It's definitely written content for you. There's other places if you're looking for data for tracking, Semrush. But keep in mind who these publications serve, everybody's trying to sell you something, right? So think about that when you wade into it, but they are reputable. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. A hundred percent. And we can have a whole podcast episode just about who and what you should read, but we don't have time for that because [00:22:16] Is This New? on this podcast, we give full credit. We don't give partial credit, but we give full credit and full credit here goes to Amos Zimmerman over on our social media team who asked Mordy, George is this new? Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Is what new? George, you know when you Google something and way at the top, it says about 1 million gazillion trillion results in 0.52 seconds. George Nguyen: Yeah, yeah. Impressive. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Which we don't really pay attention to. George Nguyen: 'Cause you can't verify it. Mordy Oberstein: It just looks cool. So many results so quickly. Well Amos, who we give full credit to, because again, on this podcast we give full credit, pointed out that when you search for something like best mystery books, depending upon what country you're in, you get a series of bubble filters. A series of filters at the very, very, very top of the SERP above everything else that lets you refine your search query with options like for teens. So mystery books for teens, for kids, for criminals. Guess what Google does? By the way, that's true, they actually had for criminals I'm pretty sure. George Nguyen: Mystery books for criminals. Educational resources for criminals. Mordy Oberstein: How could I plan my next scheme? By the way, when you click on one of these filters, you go to a whole new service. So if you're a criminal and you're looking for mystery books for criminals, you get taken to a whole new results page about just mystery books for criminals. Which must be a very niche set of authors. Anyway, guess what google doesn't show when it shows these series of filters, these bubble filters at the top of the results page? Did you guess it? That's right, it doesn't show the about 4 million gazillion trillion results in 0.52 seconds. Amos saw that it's gone. Poof. George Nguyen: I know it's weird. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah it's weird. George Nguyen: It's weird because it's a classic at this point, right? Mordy Oberstein: And you also think- George Nguyen: But are you going to miss it? Mordy Oberstein: I'm putting words in your mouth, I was like who cares. George Nguyen: Yeah. It's just kind of a, who cares type thing. Mordy Oberstein: But by the way, not only is it gone with this particular instance that Amos found, but any time Google shows a carousel at the top of the results page, it's also gone. So Google Steelers roster, they're a football team, you Google their roster, you get a carousel of all the players on their team, little sliding carousel there. Or Google Tom Hanks movie, and you get a carousel, of all Tommy's movies. I call him Tommy we're on a first-name basis. So you get a whole carousel of all of Tommy's movies, but you don't get the about 4 trillion bazillion gazillion results in 0.52 seconds. George, Amos. I'm really sorry. The verdict is not new. This is not new. George Nguyen: Not new? Mordy Oberstein: I thought it was by the way, I ran it by Crystal and she's like, "No, no, I'm pretty sure that's old." So it's not new. But, it's still really important. George Nguyen: It is. Any changes, telling of a larger trend usually. Mordy Oberstein: And in this case, what is that larger trend? So I'm going to tell you, this is really important to know, because it's a great way to understand how the SERP works. I'm just going to run through this as quickly as I can. It's super complicated, but I'm going to try to make it as simple as I possibly can. Are you ready? George Nguyen: That preface helped. Mordy Oberstein: I try. I do try. Okay. This is a great way to understand how the SERP works because there are all sorts of features that can show up for any given search query. So you can have a feature snippet or a big old image pack also known as the image box show up, but there isn't room for all of these things on the actual results page, because you have to show actual results sometimes. So Google has a bidding system. In this case, carousels of Tom Hanks movies or whatever outbid that little line that says about four gazillion trillion results in 0.52 seconds. That's all that happened here. Google has a bidding system and said, we can't fit all this information as one spot. What's more important? We think the carousel all of Tom Hanks movies, when you search for Tom Hanks movies, is more important than us telling you how many results we have in about how many seconds. George Nguyen: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: So that's really interesting. Right? Right? Come on. George Nguyen: It is interesting. But then we're also losing an element of transparency. Are we ever going to really verify? Probably somebody could verify this with computer program, but it just seems like if you've been following Google for a long amount of time that every time something disappears or changes you end up wondering, do we know as much about how the company works, about how the search engine works as we used to? So in some ways we know more than ever because it is being transparent. In other ways, things are getting taken away or there are more features on the search results that mean that people don't have to click through. And so when you see even a minor thing taken away, there's that shadow of like, oh, is this not a trustworthy move? In this case, I'm like better results is better results. So I'm okay with it. Mordy Oberstein: In this case, yeah, essentially what's happening here is Google's saying, we like to be transparent about how many results we have and how quickly we have them. Also, it's nice to show how powerful the search engine is. It does show a level of transparency, but they're saying we don't have space for both the carousel of all of Tom Hanks movies and this thing. We think the better result for the more useful information for the user is Tom Hanks' movies and his carousel, not the how many results in how many seconds. But this idea of bidding and how SERP can just bid each other out can have real implications. And it can have a real impact on your organic traffic. I'll give you an example. Take the query, get New York City bagels. When I searched for this, the first thing I got was a featured snippet that lists the most iconic places in New York City to get a New York City bagel. And then Google showed me a local pack that gave me three listings, and three bagel shops, along with their reviews and addresses that I might be able to go and buy a bagel at. Which is weird, by the way, when you think about that. Because you would think the local pack with all of the listings where I can actually buy a bagel should show first for get New York City bagel. But what I think is happening here with this kind of weird query is that Google is bidding on the two features. There's the featured snippet telling me all the classic places to get this bagel. And then there's the feature that's telling me all the places near me right now where I can actually get a bagel that I'm most likely to go get the bagel from, and they're bidding each other out. Why do I think that the very first thing Google started off was not the actual place where I'm most likely to buy? Search intent. I think there's such a strong intent not to find whatever bagel store is right near you so you can actually buy the bagel. Which is what you would normally do. If I was buying pizza, I wouldn't want a whole information of the best pizza places in the entire New York state or the entire New York City. I would just want the places where I can buy a pizza right near me right now. But not so with New York City bagels, George. By the way, George, have you ever had a New York City bagel? George Nguyen: I have, but I've never bought it myself. It's been delivered to me. So I question the legitimacy because it was not special. Mordy Oberstein: But by the way, the fact that you would even do something like have it delivered to you is exactly what I'm talking about here. What am I talking about here? There's such a strong intent, not to find whatever bagel shop is in proximity to where you are searching from. But because New York bagels are such a thing which is why somebody like you in Rhode Island is going to have them ordered to you. Because they're such a thing, Google realized that the intent here is that people are looking to learn more about the iconic places to actually go out and seek that really genuine New York City bagel. Google [inaudible 00:30:06] people will actually travel and go far away to these iconic New York City bagel shops and ignore the local bagel shop, even though it's still in New York City, but it's not more in the iconic places. They'd rather have that information first. So Google's bidding system put the actual places near you second and the iconic places first. So if you're a local place, less visibility, less chance someone's going to find you and less chance of someone actually visiting your local bagel place from the local listings on the results page, because Google's bidding system put that SERP feature second, boom. That's why the about 4 million trillion results being taken away matters. George Nguyen: But I want to introduce a ripple here just for- Mordy Oberstein: Oh I love ripples. George Nguyen: ... listener engagement. Oh yeah. Ripples. Ripples are great. If you're in New York city and I really hope somebody in New York City is listening to this. Why don't you open up an incognito window and type in, Google it, get NYC bagels and hit us up on Twitter. Mordy, what's your handle? Mordy Oberstein: @MordyOberstein. George Nguyen: I'm geochingu, G-E-O-C-H-I-N-G-U. Let us know. Do you get that first, for me, it's a featured snippet from timeout.com about that list of best bagels, because maybe if you're actually in New York, the proximity will change and you'll just get the bagel shops. I'm curious. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. That is interesting. I like that. [00:31:24] Snappy News That is interesting. Speaking of interesting, you know what else is interesting? Some snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Big news from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land. Quote, Google expands enhanced product experiences to more e-commerce sites, releases new search console reports. So oi plain terms, you no longer, this is big, need to submit your products to Google via Google merchant center to be shown within Google shopping results. This is actually huge because all you need to do now, according to Google is have product structured data markup, and you'll be eligible for Google to pull in your products into Google shopping, which means all of those carousels on the main SERP that Google shows with products in them that come organically from Google shopping, well now you're theoretically eligible for those too, which is amazing. Google also added reporting in search console so you can more easily spot issues with your structured data for products. For Wix users, please note what you have to do in order to be eligible here. Nothing. Literally nothing. We create product structure data for you. So literally you have nothing that you have to do for all of your products to be eligible for Google shopping. How is that? Oh right. Article number two, a little PSA of sorts also from Barry Schwartz. But this time from Search Engine Round Table, because it's not enough for Barry to have one SEO news site, he needs two. Quote, Google review guidelines now prohibit incentivizing removal of negative reviews. Simply if you're offering a gift card or sorts to have folks remove their negative reviews from your Google business profile, this is now a violation of Google's guidelines. Proceed carefully, please. And with that, that is this week's snappy news. It's always snappy with that snappy news. Hey George? George Nguyen: So crisp. Mordy Oberstein: So crisp, so snappy. Before we leave, before we depart from this show, George, thank you for filling in for crystal this week. George Nguyen: No, yeah, I hope I did well. I hope come back. Mordy Oberstein: Well I'll grade you. George Nguyen: Can I come back? Mordy Oberstein: We'll send you a grading system later. George Nguyen: I'm coming back next week. Mordy Oberstein: I know, Crystal's still away next week. So George is coming back, but then we'll send you the grading system. [00:34:10] Follow of the Week But before we leave today, we of course want to leave you with some awesome person from the SEO industry who does awesome things and shares awesome things on Twitter that you could follow to gain more SEO awesomeness. This week of our follow the week is Lily Ray. You know Lily, George. George Nguyen: I do know Lily. She's a wonderful person. I'm [inaudible 00:34:31] seen as many of her speaking sessions and engagements as possible and let me tell you one of the highlights of following her beyond what she talks about in terms of SEO. And this is still kind of SEO related, but she does a lot of searches for queries that are related to her clients. And I'm just like these are off the wall queries. Some of them are kind of adult product type stuff. I remember there was something kind of in there, forgive me if I'm framing this incorrectly Lily, but some of those are just hilarious to me what the results are. And that's kind of one of my daily guilty pleasures, the distractions of SEO Twitter, I guess. Mordy Oberstein: She does put out a ton of information about what she's seeing on the results page. And it's really, really helpful information actually. And it is really funny too sometimes. Which is why you need to follow her on Twitter at @lilyraynyc, speak of NYC, @lilyraynyc on Twitter. And aside from all the webinars and podcasts and conferences she does, she shares so much of her thought process around SEO. And again, what she's seeing out there happening on the results page, she's always sharing and it's always good stuff. Make sure to give Lily a follow and learn from her yourself. George Nguyen: Yeah, I would say that her jam, like we talked about our jams earlier, I would say her jam is definitely expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness, EAT and your money, your life content. So if you're working in those verticals where authority, trustworthiness are second to none, definitely worth the follow. Mordy Oberstein: Definitely worth the follow. And speaking of jams, she's also a DJ on the side. So jamming is so applicable to her. Check that out. 360 George. George Nguyen: Wow, that was so organic. It's so easy. Mordy Oberstein: That was organic. Well, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Like what you heard? Well, go ahead and leave us a review on iTunes or rate us on Spotify. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with an all-new episode as we dive into more intents, and more problems. SEO for multiple user intents. Should you care? Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on our SEO learning up here at Wix at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content, and all the webinars on the Wix SEO learning hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein George Nguyen Himani Kankaria Lily Ray Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Missive Digital Learning SEO by Aleyda Solis Search Engine Roundtable Search Engine Land Semrush Blog Moz Blog News: Google expands enhanced product experiences to more ecommerce sites, releases new Search Console reports Google Review Guidelines Now Prohibit Incentivizing Removal Of Negative Reviews Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein George Nguyen Himani Kankaria Lily Ray Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Missive Digital Learning SEO by Aleyda Solis Search Engine Roundtable Search Engine Land Semrush Blog Moz Blog News: Google expands enhanced product experiences to more ecommerce sites, releases new Search Console reports Google Review Guidelines Now Prohibit Incentivizing Removal Of Negative Reviews Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding. Here at Wix and filling in for our head of SEO communications, crystal Carter, is Wix's own head of SEO editorial, George Nguyen. George Nguyen: How's it going, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: Well, that was like the whole build-up, hey, Mahalo. And then, Hey Mordy. Hey George. How's it going? George Nguyen: I have big shoes to fill. Crystal, she brings her own energy and our listeners might not be used to me. So I hope I'm stepping into it, treading lightly. Mordy Oberstein: Ah, I understand. I understand George. That's totally fine. George Nguyen: Yeah. Easing into it. Yeah. Crystal has fans. I don't want to upset those fans. You know how fans can get? Crystal's fans? Mordy Oberstein: Crystal has rabid fan base. George Nguyen: Yeah. It's like Crystal fans and then a little bit further down the list K-pop stans is what I'm really afraid of on the internet. And then way down there is the rest of the SEOs. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, don't worry George. Crystal's fans are going to love you. We all love you. There's one thing you should remember, George and that's the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where we now automatically create image site maps for our product event and forum vertical pages with more page types coming soon. All right, we've got a jam-packed episode. You ready for this? I'm ready for this. George, are you ready for this? George Nguyen: I'm so ready. Because I actually have something to say. Sometimes I shy away from things, but I feel like I have a lot to say here. [00:01:31] What's On This Episode of SERP's Up? Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to try to dramatize the whole intro then. George Nguyen: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. They will try, but after this episode, they won't succeed in pulling the wools over your eyes. That's right. In this episode, we're covering how to know good SEO advice from bad as an inspiring SEO. This episode is a must listen, because I will personally tell you when I started in the SEO world, I took on some bad SEO advice. And I can see that other SEO vets they're nodding right along, you know exactly what I'm talking about. When you got into the industry there was some not-so-great SEO content that you thought was maybe true, possibly true. And then it wasn't. So we'll dive into how to sift through the noise with a bonus piece of SEO advice from the one and the only Himani Kankaria. Also, did you catch when Google doesn't show the number of results at the top of the SERP? If you didn't, well we'll tell you when it happens and more importantly, why that actually matters. Plus you always wanted some snappy SEO news so we're going to give you some snappy SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness. Sit back, relax, and take it all in because the SERP's Up podcast begins now with a look at how to know good SEO advice from bad. [00:02:50] Focus Topic of the Week: Good SEO Advice vs. Bad George Nguyen: Good advice results in positive outcomes, such as getting closer to your business goals, be a greater search visibility and traffic. Cha-ching. Bad advice though, it costs you, which may be more evident over the long run. It sets your visibility back and that hinders your business goals. Ultimately though, SEO miseducation analyst tactics are totally avoidable even in local SEO. And not being able to succeed just because you don't know the difference or you don't know what guidance to apply, that's the ultimate missed opportunity. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, George, I love the fact that you did your own sound effects like cha-ching. George Nguyen: I love that. Mordy Oberstein: You bring your own set. You're like the guy from Police Academy. George Nguyen: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Nice George. A nice addition to the SERP's Up podcast my friend. George Nguyen: Yeah. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So this is a topic that's really close to my heart. I really love SEO education, I'm a former teacher. So it really speaks to me. There's so many ways to know that the content that you're looking at is maybe not the greatest. So I'm going to start off by, here's my top, top piece of advice for you. If you're reading something and it's not nuanced, it's an absolute and to quote Star Wars only Siths speak in absolutes. That's probably not the best advice to listen to. So it's a good lesson by the way, for your own self, right? It's a difference between being authoritative and trustworthy and not being authoritative and trustworthy is being nuanced. Even if it's beginner content. So at a minimum, you need to let your users know the layers of information that are still left to be explored. Because you can't possibly cover everything. You can't possibly offer the ultimate advice about anything in just one piece of content. If you SEO advice, that's telling you 50% of the time you should be doing this, but doesn't put a caveat of it depends or as a general rule spend 50% of your time, might be a good way to allocate your resources. Then at most the take that you're reading or listening to or watching is overreaching because there is no yeah, X amount of time you should be doing this in the absolute sense. Any absolute, always needs to be qualified. And that's so true in SEO. So if you see something like that, that's not doing that maybe take pause for a minute and think into it a bit. George Nguyen: Absolutely Mordy. And if I could just piggyback on what you said there, building on a little bit. This is actually why, if you were venturing into the SEO space and you're running across the line, which is our unofficial slogan in the industry, “it depends”. It grates on you after a while to keep hearing a non-answer. It depends. But really “it depends” is not the answer. People are giving you, what they're telling you is it's a nuanced answer and that they're lacking the information that they need about you and your business and you and your goals to actually provide you with a relevant answer. So that's why “it depends” is kind of a thing. But this is great advice from you, Mordy, especially for the content creators among us who are trying to get out SEO best practices and how they create their content's a huge deal. Mordy Oberstein: This is so true George. By the way, I think that's kind of why you see so much because people don't want to get into that “it depends” all the time or that's not a way to really market yourself. And that is hard from a marketing point of view that I think it lends into this idea of lack of nuance and lack of accuracy in terms of growth expectations and over promising in SEO, right? I mean, you've probably seen tons of that. George Nguyen: Yeah. So this is just going to help you in general, identify when somebody's trying to pull the wool over your eyes I suppose. Think about what the underlying motivations are here. This is going to be a running theme. So we're going to bring it up again. But timelines, growth expectations, over promising is super easy in every field, but look at your competition. What is your goal here within not just your business goal, but even more specifically, if you're thinking about ranking for a specific keyword and you really think that this is what you want to build your content around, what's going to get you to that next stage of your business. Look at who is already ranking in those top positions for what you want to rank for. Was that competition built in a day? Was it built in the timeline that maybe you're reading on some blog or some consultant is telling you is reasonable? Does it look like it's reasonable? If it clearly took months to research and organize the content and you're seeing advice that guarantees it and all the effort that is required is your credit card to buy 8 trillion backlinks for $4.99. If it was that easy, the rankings would be absolute chaos. Every time you go to do a search, you would just see a totally different set of results. So even from that basis you know, well, things take time and we're going to get into a little bit more of how you can check for validity a bit later on, but I'm holding onto that. Mordy, do you have anything to add here? Mordy Oberstein: But what's funny about that is that you see so many cases of things like you go on YouTube, you type in how do I do SEO and you see something like rank number one. Let me tell you a little secret about SEO. There are certain cases where it's probably going to be impossible for you to rank number one. I always use the case of heart attack prevention. It's a really hard keyword to rank for. There's so much authority and nuance that goes into that keyword and Google tends to rank Mayo Clinic, WebMD, and Harvard health. Are you one of those three websites? No. Then you're not going to rank number one for that keyword. And that's fine. There are things you can do to get traffic around that topic without ranking number one for that. So this idea of over-promising is very rampant and it's something I totally agree, just steer away from. And to me, I think that spills over to a lot of the things you read around SEO studies. 'Cause they've come up very authoritative, but they also kind of oversell in a similar way sometimes where you'll see I did this or the study shows this and that means you will get this kind of growth and they show some kind of graph and this crazy amount of growth that happens after you implement the tactic that their study shows that was successful for them. But a lot of the times, again, you need to take context and nuance into that. Again, if they're doing a case study, well, is your site in the same situation as that site, like you mentioned before, possibly not? And even if it's a kind of study where we analyze 5 million URLs or 5 million result pages and here's the data, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you know what's funny, and I have a bone to pick about that's with the SEO world a little bit. Have you ever read a thesis paper from a grad student or a Ph.D. student, George? George Nguyen: Yeah, a few times. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. So after the abstract, what's the first thing they always start off with? George Nguyen: Table of contents. Mordy Oberstein: A great answer. That and the limitations of the study. George Nguyen: The methodologies. Mordy Oberstein: Right, methodology and limitations. George Nguyen: That's what I always look at. The sample size and things like that. Those are extremely important. Mordy Oberstein: All those kind of things. And they're telling you, we only looked at this, we didn't look at that. We looked at this many, but not that many. And that's really important information. Not because, oh, this study must not be good. There are limitations. That's a silly way to look at it. It's really important information because it tells you how to use the data in the study. Where are the limits of this data? Where is this data appropriate to apply it to? Where is it inappropriate to apply it to? George, let me ask you another question. What information do you never see in an SEO study? Would it be the limitations? George Nguyen: Yeah. Sometimes some people are good enough about pointing out that due to the way click stream behavior works, those kind of studies, they'll generally tell you, more reputable data providers will tell you how their data works. But oftentimes the methodology and stuff, sometimes it's there, but it's not something that they really want to tell you about. Oh, we interviewed 80 marketers. Mordy Oberstein: Right. We looked at a hundred million keywords, but what kind of keywords? Where'd you get the data from? What was the data period and how might that impact what you're looking at? So you could throw big numbers at something, it sounds impressive, but it may not actually be anything that you can apply to your particular situation. And again, you're absolutely right. There are a lot of great people doing great work and great studies and great data providers out there and you'll notice, and that's my point, is that they'll generally tell you what they did, how they did it and some of the really good ones will tell you the limit. I looked at these keywords, but that's a problem because. And that's a key indicator when you're looking at an SEO study of whether or not that's good SEO advice or bad SEO advice. George Nguyen: Sometimes it'll even tell you how to use that data or how not to use that data. They'll just be like, this is purely contextual and correlation doesn't mean causation. It could be these other factors. One classic example is oh, people say pages with low bounce rate rank well. Well it's probably the opposite. Pages that rank well for other reasons have low bounce rate. So just think about that. But while we're talking about this focus, right? We're not just focusing on the nitty-gritty details of a study. You really want to look at the other components of what the advice is really telling you. Does it take into account search intent. Does it take into account you're vertical because this goes back to the heart of “it depends”. Because my business selling, I don't know let's say action figures is going to be totally different from Mordy's... I'm really trying hard not to make a really cheap potshot joke here at Mordy. Mordy's business of selling designer sunglasses, right? I'm going to go with something classy. Mordy Oberstein: Great shot at me George. That's why you're my best friend because you take really bad shots at me. George Nguyen: It was disciplined here not to take a pot shot. But the goals, the audiences are different. Mordy's probably going to sell way more sunglasses in summer. As where for me, it's not going to be a seasonal thing. But let's get into this advice here. So I'm going to go through a more tangible example for you about search and 10, your vertical specifically. So my fiance, who's an online personal trainer and nutrition coach asked me if she should try to rank for the term vegan bodybuilding as she's building out her business plan. Mordy Oberstein: Is your fiance a bodybuilder? George Nguyen: She is a bikini competitor. So yes she is a bodybuilder. Mordy Oberstein: That's awesome. Wow. George Nguyen: Yeah, I know I used to be super into it, but now I don't do anything. Mordy Oberstein: Now you SEO. We don't need exercise. George Nguyen: Yeah. Yeah. SEO is all-consuming. Trying to reach some balance here just like you listeners. Trying to find it in myself. But she thought that because no services were listed on the first page of results that the competition would be low. And looking at the SERP, the top results are educational resources like about how to have a vegan lifestyle, listicles of prominent vegan bodybuilders. The related searches is even just a grid of vegan ingredients, which is literally just a grid of vegetables and fruits. It's not that fancy. Clearly not aligned with her objective of marketing her services though. And I'm not saying she got this advice from somewhere. It was just a thought that she had. So maybe you're having the same thought. Oh yeah, nobody... My business is ranked for that. Maybe Google doesn't think that your business should rank for this because if it did then possibly yeah. But it's different because if you're an established brand, you might be able to generate that kind of demand. But if you're not, you have to think, you have to know how your audience searches and you have to know what is the most effective shield against bad advice for this kind of thing. Which our objectives are. Take it a step further to reconcile how your audience searches as in what terms they use and how Google serves them the results. And we're talking about search intent here. To not only help you avoid inappropriate advice that you might be getting from people but also spot potential opportunities to gain more traffic. If there is an opportunity there and like, oh, your customers are definitely searching for this. Maybe it's a super long tail thing and there's no competition. That's an opportunity. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really good point because look, even in the best article or the best webinar or podcast, like this podcast, no matter what they do, no one can predict or understand exactly how it's going to apply to your situation. So as someone consuming this content, you need to think and stop for a second. This sounds wonderful. And it might be wonderful, but how is it applied to me and my site? And while it might be great advice for one site, because of the way you're saying intent is on the SERP right, on the Google results page, Google could be showing one thing and then you're really doing something else. And it may be great advice for the site doing something different than you, but for what you are doing for that keyword, it may not be applicable really at all. And that's up to you as someone consuming the advice to not get caught up in what they're saying, to be able to make that break, stop, drop, and think. Stop, drop, and think does this work for me even though it sounds really, really, really good? That's a good point, George. George Nguyen: You're in marketing. When we're talking here, you're obviously looking to market your business and you're trying to build hype here, but don't fall victim to somebody else's hype if it isn't specific enough to your business, if it doesn't ultimately tie back to that because otherwise, why are you doing this? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. And something else about that, that just made me think about this, that sometimes, cause we're talking about market or sometimes when people are running SEO content, it's important to understand who they are and what they're doing and why they might be writing it. I'm not saying there's an ulterior motive. That's not what I'm trying to get at. But someone who's really into site audits. They just love site audits. They breeze... And there are people like this. And when you sometimes talk to them, they are so overzealous about site audits that the context of all the other things that are going on in that particular moment for you. And so while you are reading this article from them and they're saying site audits, like the most important thing ever for any website, you must do this, or everything else is completely worthless, And you start here and end here. Take it all with a grain of salt. That might not be the best outlook for you and where you're at with your business and with your website. So something to be careful of when you're reading something from an enthusiast around one particular strategy or one particular area of SEO is to realize that's their jam. But that doesn't mean that has to be your jam all the time, also. So much jam. George Nguyen: Everything is a nail to a hammer essentially is what we're saying here. Mordy Oberstein: Basically. George Nguyen: Yes. Mordy, let's take a pause here before we really think about the next thing. And what is your jam? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. George Nguyen: In terms of SEO. What is my jam? If I had to define myself in a space, I'd say definitely more education. SEO is the subject matter, but education is the jam across whatever that is for me. And so what does that really mean? It means content. Content creation, not necessarily the technical side. I don't do too much of that at all, but that's what my jam is. What is your jam? Mordy Oberstein: My jam. I love the algorithms. I love reverse engineering what Google's doing on the server, reverse engineering algorithms. I love content, and reverse engineering. I like reverse engineering. You can get that. I like reverse engineering. What's working, what's not working with content. So yeah, I have my jam. I spread out from my jam. I don't do link-building. I really don't like link-building. That's the only thing I really don't like. So when I do read advice around SEO, I do take it as, okay, that's a really great strategy but does that work for me? Because sometimes, it could be a great strategy, but does it work for you? And that's also a legitimate thing. You know, what's also legitimate? Getting more great SEO advice from other great SEO besides for George and myself. [00:17:32] Focus Topic Guest: Himani Kankaria So with that, here's Himani Kankaria talking about how she got advice before Google released its spam hunting algorithm beast known as Penguin, which would obviously penalize the heck out of your website if you were doing spamming link building practices. And here's how it saved her sites. Here's the best advice that Himani Kankaria has ever received. Himani Kankaria: Who remembers the time when we used to do, say 200 or 300 directory submissions in a day? So I'm talking about that pre-Panda and Penguin era. In 2010, I was responsible for link-building activities. And there were a lot of directory sites where I used to see two radio buttons, which said buy a link or exchange a link. And I asked my boss, "Why are we not selecting those radio buttons?" And honestly, I was blessed with one of the best SEO advices. He said, “Himani, If you want to play a long game, never think of exchanging links or buying them, see how you can earn them rather than owning them." It was my first boss and because I was very new to the industry, I blindly followed him. And within two years, I mean you won't believe I saw Panda and Penguin updates ruined the existence of those directory sites. And I'm very thankful to him for such a piece of gold advice he gave to me. I still believe in earning the assets of the website organically. And honestly, we are surely doing great there. But it's not easy and advisable to trust any SEO advice that gets your way. Especially today. These days, getting trapped into bad SEO advice is easier because any random post on any platform can get massive engagement. They talk about niche websites and then showcase how brilliantly they got great results without any solid proof of what strategy they used and how it was implemented. What you can do is verify if Google has any documentation around that advice, or even you can ask any Google Search employee. I mean, I have asked John Mueller a lot, many times, and he has helped me with a lot of great advice. And even you can ask any industry thought leader as well. They are very humble to reply, but it's just that we have to beware of asking stupid questions. So before you listen to any advice, please look at who is giving you that advice. I have my own bunch of people whom I know personally and follow on Twitter and LinkedIn for SEO advice. And they have gained my trust by sharing proof of what they have done, said over the years, and why. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Himani. There's definitely great advice. One is don't buy links, please. Don't buy links. Someone offers you it might sound enticing. Don't buy those links and always check out Google's documentation. Just today, the day of this recording, I found a gem that people were talking about something on Twitter. I looked at the documentation around it and there was something I didn't even realize like, wow, that is a gem that I didn't know, just by reading Google's own documentation in their own guidelines. Great places to get some great SEO advice other than of course our own SEO hub over at wix.com/seo/learn is learningseo.io from Aleyda Solis. Amazing resource. There's seoroundtable.com, which I start off my day reading that from Barry Schwartz. It's a great place to keep up to date with what's happening in the SEO world. And last but not least The Moz Blog. It's a great blog that really was a flourishing Moz community. This has kind of scaled back on that a bit, unfortunately, but the blog itself is absolutely phenomenal. Check out The Moz Blog as well. George any ones you want to add in real quick off the cuff? George Nguyen: Yeah. It depends on really what your jam is, right? You can't not mention Search Engine Land as a news publisher for both PPC and SEO and Barry Schwartz the owner of Search Engine Round Table works there as well. So they have a great format in terms of why marketers should care, especially if you're at agencies and you're not an SMB necessarily, but you're working at an agency. It's definitely written content for you. There's other places if you're looking for data for tracking, Semrush. But keep in mind who these publications serve, everybody's trying to sell you something, right? So think about that when you wade into it, but they are reputable. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. A hundred percent. And we can have a whole podcast episode just about who and what you should read, but we don't have time for that because [00:22:16] Is This New? on this podcast, we give full credit. We don't give partial credit, but we give full credit and full credit here goes to Amos Zimmerman over on our social media team who asked Mordy, George is this new? Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Is what new? George, you know when you Google something and way at the top, it says about 1 million gazillion trillion results in 0.52 seconds. George Nguyen: Yeah, yeah. Impressive. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Which we don't really pay attention to. George Nguyen: 'Cause you can't verify it. Mordy Oberstein: It just looks cool. So many results so quickly. Well Amos, who we give full credit to, because again, on this podcast we give full credit, pointed out that when you search for something like best mystery books, depending upon what country you're in, you get a series of bubble filters. A series of filters at the very, very, very top of the SERP above everything else that lets you refine your search query with options like for teens. So mystery books for teens, for kids, for criminals. Guess what Google does? By the way, that's true, they actually had for criminals I'm pretty sure. George Nguyen: Mystery books for criminals. Educational resources for criminals. Mordy Oberstein: How could I plan my next scheme? By the way, when you click on one of these filters, you go to a whole new service. So if you're a criminal and you're looking for mystery books for criminals, you get taken to a whole new results page about just mystery books for criminals. Which must be a very niche set of authors. Anyway, guess what google doesn't show when it shows these series of filters, these bubble filters at the top of the results page? Did you guess it? That's right, it doesn't show the about 4 million gazillion trillion results in 0.52 seconds. Amos saw that it's gone. Poof. George Nguyen: I know it's weird. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah it's weird. George Nguyen: It's weird because it's a classic at this point, right? Mordy Oberstein: And you also think- George Nguyen: But are you going to miss it? Mordy Oberstein: I'm putting words in your mouth, I was like who cares. George Nguyen: Yeah. It's just kind of a, who cares type thing. Mordy Oberstein: But by the way, not only is it gone with this particular instance that Amos found, but any time Google shows a carousel at the top of the results page, it's also gone. So Google Steelers roster, they're a football team, you Google their roster, you get a carousel of all the players on their team, little sliding carousel there. Or Google Tom Hanks movie, and you get a carousel, of all Tommy's movies. I call him Tommy we're on a first-name basis. So you get a whole carousel of all of Tommy's movies, but you don't get the about 4 trillion bazillion gazillion results in 0.52 seconds. George, Amos. I'm really sorry. The verdict is not new. This is not new. George Nguyen: Not new? Mordy Oberstein: I thought it was by the way, I ran it by Crystal and she's like, "No, no, I'm pretty sure that's old." So it's not new. But, it's still really important. George Nguyen: It is. Any changes, telling of a larger trend usually. Mordy Oberstein: And in this case, what is that larger trend? So I'm going to tell you, this is really important to know, because it's a great way to understand how the SERP works. I'm just going to run through this as quickly as I can. It's super complicated, but I'm going to try to make it as simple as I possibly can. Are you ready? George Nguyen: That preface helped. Mordy Oberstein: I try. I do try. Okay. This is a great way to understand how the SERP works because there are all sorts of features that can show up for any given search query. So you can have a feature snippet or a big old image pack also known as the image box show up, but there isn't room for all of these things on the actual results page, because you have to show actual results sometimes. So Google has a bidding system. In this case, carousels of Tom Hanks movies or whatever outbid that little line that says about four gazillion trillion results in 0.52 seconds. That's all that happened here. Google has a bidding system and said, we can't fit all this information as one spot. What's more important? We think the carousel all of Tom Hanks movies, when you search for Tom Hanks movies, is more important than us telling you how many results we have in about how many seconds. George Nguyen: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: So that's really interesting. Right? Right? Come on. George Nguyen: It is interesting. But then we're also losing an element of transparency. Are we ever going to really verify? Probably somebody could verify this with computer program, but it just seems like if you've been following Google for a long amount of time that every time something disappears or changes you end up wondering, do we know as much about how the company works, about how the search engine works as we used to? So in some ways we know more than ever because it is being transparent. In other ways, things are getting taken away or there are more features on the search results that mean that people don't have to click through. And so when you see even a minor thing taken away, there's that shadow of like, oh, is this not a trustworthy move? In this case, I'm like better results is better results. So I'm okay with it. Mordy Oberstein: In this case, yeah, essentially what's happening here is Google's saying, we like to be transparent about how many results we have and how quickly we have them. Also, it's nice to show how powerful the search engine is. It does show a level of transparency, but they're saying we don't have space for both the carousel of all of Tom Hanks movies and this thing. We think the better result for the more useful information for the user is Tom Hanks' movies and his carousel, not the how many results in how many seconds. But this idea of bidding and how SERP can just bid each other out can have real implications. And it can have a real impact on your organic traffic. I'll give you an example. Take the query, get New York City bagels. When I searched for this, the first thing I got was a featured snippet that lists the most iconic places in New York City to get a New York City bagel. And then Google showed me a local pack that gave me three listings, and three bagel shops, along with their reviews and addresses that I might be able to go and buy a bagel at. Which is weird, by the way, when you think about that. Because you would think the local pack with all of the listings where I can actually buy a bagel should show first for get New York City bagel. But what I think is happening here with this kind of weird query is that Google is bidding on the two features. There's the featured snippet telling me all the classic places to get this bagel. And then there's the feature that's telling me all the places near me right now where I can actually get a bagel that I'm most likely to go get the bagel from, and they're bidding each other out. Why do I think that the very first thing Google started off was not the actual place where I'm most likely to buy? Search intent. I think there's such a strong intent not to find whatever bagel store is right near you so you can actually buy the bagel. Which is what you would normally do. If I was buying pizza, I wouldn't want a whole information of the best pizza places in the entire New York state or the entire New York City. I would just want the places where I can buy a pizza right near me right now. But not so with New York City bagels, George. By the way, George, have you ever had a New York City bagel? George Nguyen: I have, but I've never bought it myself. It's been delivered to me. So I question the legitimacy because it was not special. Mordy Oberstein: But by the way, the fact that you would even do something like have it delivered to you is exactly what I'm talking about here. What am I talking about here? There's such a strong intent, not to find whatever bagel shop is in proximity to where you are searching from. But because New York bagels are such a thing which is why somebody like you in Rhode Island is going to have them ordered to you. Because they're such a thing, Google realized that the intent here is that people are looking to learn more about the iconic places to actually go out and seek that really genuine New York City bagel. Google [inaudible 00:30:06] people will actually travel and go far away to these iconic New York City bagel shops and ignore the local bagel shop, even though it's still in New York City, but it's not more in the iconic places. They'd rather have that information first. So Google's bidding system put the actual places near you second and the iconic places first. So if you're a local place, less visibility, less chance someone's going to find you and less chance of someone actually visiting your local bagel place from the local listings on the results page, because Google's bidding system put that SERP feature second, boom. That's why the about 4 million trillion results being taken away matters. George Nguyen: But I want to introduce a ripple here just for- Mordy Oberstein: Oh I love ripples. George Nguyen: ... listener engagement. Oh yeah. Ripples. Ripples are great. If you're in New York city and I really hope somebody in New York City is listening to this. Why don't you open up an incognito window and type in, Google it, get NYC bagels and hit us up on Twitter. Mordy, what's your handle? Mordy Oberstein: @MordyOberstein. George Nguyen: I'm geochingu, G-E-O-C-H-I-N-G-U. Let us know. Do you get that first, for me, it's a featured snippet from timeout.com about that list of best bagels, because maybe if you're actually in New York, the proximity will change and you'll just get the bagel shops. I'm curious. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. That is interesting. I like that. [00:31:24] Snappy News That is interesting. Speaking of interesting, you know what else is interesting? Some snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Big news from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land. Quote, Google expands enhanced product experiences to more e-commerce sites, releases new search console reports. So oi plain terms, you no longer, this is big, need to submit your products to Google via Google merchant center to be shown within Google shopping results. This is actually huge because all you need to do now, according to Google is have product structured data markup, and you'll be eligible for Google to pull in your products into Google shopping, which means all of those carousels on the main SERP that Google shows with products in them that come organically from Google shopping, well now you're theoretically eligible for those too, which is amazing. Google also added reporting in search console so you can more easily spot issues with your structured data for products. For Wix users, please note what you have to do in order to be eligible here. Nothing. Literally nothing. We create product structure data for you. So literally you have nothing that you have to do for all of your products to be eligible for Google shopping. How is that? Oh right. Article number two, a little PSA of sorts also from Barry Schwartz. But this time from Search Engine Round Table, because it's not enough for Barry to have one SEO news site, he needs two. Quote, Google review guidelines now prohibit incentivizing removal of negative reviews. Simply if you're offering a gift card or sorts to have folks remove their negative reviews from your Google business profile, this is now a violation of Google's guidelines. Proceed carefully, please. And with that, that is this week's snappy news. It's always snappy with that snappy news. Hey George? George Nguyen: So crisp. Mordy Oberstein: So crisp, so snappy. Before we leave, before we depart from this show, George, thank you for filling in for crystal this week. George Nguyen: No, yeah, I hope I did well. I hope come back. Mordy Oberstein: Well I'll grade you. George Nguyen: Can I come back? Mordy Oberstein: We'll send you a grading system later. George Nguyen: I'm coming back next week. Mordy Oberstein: I know, Crystal's still away next week. So George is coming back, but then we'll send you the grading system. [00:34:10] Follow of the Week But before we leave today, we of course want to leave you with some awesome person from the SEO industry who does awesome things and shares awesome things on Twitter that you could follow to gain more SEO awesomeness. This week of our follow the week is Lily Ray. You know Lily, George. George Nguyen: I do know Lily. She's a wonderful person. I'm [inaudible 00:34:31] seen as many of her speaking sessions and engagements as possible and let me tell you one of the highlights of following her beyond what she talks about in terms of SEO. And this is still kind of SEO related, but she does a lot of searches for queries that are related to her clients. And I'm just like these are off the wall queries. Some of them are kind of adult product type stuff. I remember there was something kind of in there, forgive me if I'm framing this incorrectly Lily, but some of those are just hilarious to me what the results are. And that's kind of one of my daily guilty pleasures, the distractions of SEO Twitter, I guess. Mordy Oberstein: She does put out a ton of information about what she's seeing on the results page. And it's really, really helpful information actually. And it is really funny too sometimes. Which is why you need to follow her on Twitter at @lilyraynyc, speak of NYC, @lilyraynyc on Twitter. And aside from all the webinars and podcasts and conferences she does, she shares so much of her thought process around SEO. And again, what she's seeing out there happening on the results page, she's always sharing and it's always good stuff. Make sure to give Lily a follow and learn from her yourself. George Nguyen: Yeah, I would say that her jam, like we talked about our jams earlier, I would say her jam is definitely expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness, EAT and your money, your life content. So if you're working in those verticals where authority, trustworthiness are second to none, definitely worth the follow. Mordy Oberstein: Definitely worth the follow. And speaking of jams, she's also a DJ on the side. So jamming is so applicable to her. Check that out. 360 George. George Nguyen: Wow, that was so organic. It's so easy. Mordy Oberstein: That was organic. Well, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Like what you heard? Well, go ahead and leave us a review on iTunes or rate us on Spotify. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with an all-new episode as we dive into more intents, and more problems. SEO for multiple user intents. Should you care? Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on our SEO learning up here at Wix at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content, and all the webinars on the Wix SEO learning hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. 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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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Why do SEOs have a disdain for site migrations? Could it be the broken URLs, the redirects, or even a new hosting environment? It could be that or a million other things. The point is that successful site migrations require attention to detail. We explore the intricacies and considerations of site migrations on this episode of the SERPs Up SEO Podcast! Miracle Inameti, an expert in SEO and data strategy, joins the podcast to tackle challenging site migration problems by implementing practical and pragmatic solutions. This, as the SERP’s Up team discusses site migrations and the associated SEO considerations. Join Mordy and Crystal to understand the complexity of site migration. Back How big of a headache are site migrations? Why do SEOs have a disdain for site migrations? Could it be the broken URLs, the redirects, or even a new hosting environment? It could be that or a million other things. The point is that successful site migrations require attention to detail. We explore the intricacies and considerations of site migrations on this episode of the SERPs Up SEO Podcast! Miracle Inameti, an expert in SEO and data strategy, joins the podcast to tackle challenging site migration problems by implementing practical and pragmatic solutions. This, as the SERP’s Up team discusses site migrations and the associated SEO considerations. Join Mordy and Crystal to understand the complexity of site migration. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 21 | January 18, 2023 | 34 MIN 00:00 / 34:17 This week’s guests Miracle Inameti A rounded SEO consultant, trainer, and speaker. Miracle provides expertise in SEO and Data Strategy to resolve challenging problems and implement practical and pragmatic solutions. Relentlessly focused on customer outcomes with strong commercial acumen, natural drive, with a strong passion for people. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Guess we're pushing out some grueling new insights around what's happened in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein head of SEO branding here at Wix, the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, I was going to say edible, but that doesn't make any sense. Our head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. SEO internet people. Welcome to episode 21. We're about to double down on these SEO insights. Mordy Oberstein: It's Blackjack. It's our Blackjack episode. Crystal Carter: It's right. That's what's up. We're going to put two on the river or double down. I can't... I've forgotten about Blackjack. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. If I tell you, I've been to a casino one time. My wife, 15 years ago, we walked in, we played a couple of games. We said, "This is boring." And we bounced the hell out of there. Crystal Carter: I got married in Las Vegas. I spend a lot of time. Mordy Oberstein: On purpose? Crystal Carter: My family on purpose. Las Vegas. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, you meant to get married? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Okay cool. I was checking. Crystal Carter: Yeah. You know Caesars Palace? Mordy Oberstein: Sure, I've heard of it. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I got married across the street from there. Mordy Oberstein: Across the street. It's good set up. Crystal Carter: Thank you. So, yeah, they demolished it. It was a dive, but we had a great wedding. Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can easily set up 301 redirects with our redirect managers. Set single redirects, group redirects when the URL follow the same logic like they live in the same folder, upload bulk redirects, or do nothing as we implement redirect automatically and aesthetic product and event pages. And we're talking about redirects because guess what we're talking about today? Site migrations. Oh, the word itself made me gas and choke. 'Cause you're going to wreck the URLs with the site migration. Crystal Carter: Oh, good. Mordy Oberstein: And that's where things get into problems. Crystal Carter: You weren't there, man. You weren't there. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Today's show is about the root canal and lobotomy of SEO site migrations. We'll dive into migrations and why do so many people get them wrong? What's the worst thing that can happen? What's the worst thing that can happen? Why are SEO so freaked out about site migrations? The ever wonderful Miracle Inameti stops by to talk about when SEOs should become involved in the site migration process. Also, have a bit of fun around migrations and the people also ask box. And of course, we have your ever so snappy SEO news and who you should be following on social. For more SEO awesomeness episode number 21 of the SERP's Up podcast is migrating your way. Get it. That was a bad one. Crystal Carter: That's right. Mordy Oberstein: That was a bad... I tried. That was a bad one. I was thinking of that or it's an SEO migraine-tion, get it because it's a migraine and migrate at the same time. Crystal Carter: Oh man. Wow. okay Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. How's that? Not good? Yeah. Crystal Carter: All right, so moving on. Mordy Oberstein: We're migrating past that and to the next thing. Crystal Carter: We're going to shift, we're going to do a 301 from that. No, kidding. Okay. So just so we're all on the same page, we are going to talk a little bit about what a site migration is. On the Wix SEO Learning Hub, there's a fantastic article from Mr. Chris Green where he explains the fundamentals of site migrations and he explains that site migration is a term that SEOs use quite often. But being familiar with the different types of elements that make up a site migration can really help you to make the process easier. He talks about a few common site migration scenarios. One is changing domain names, which is essentially where you change your name from, say, redshoes.com to maybe even redshoes.co.uk or the red shoes or bestredshoes.com. So that's where you change your domain name. There's also migrating through hosting providers, which is something that people don't very often think about, but that's one that he thinks about as well. And then he considers that where your website's hosted one company and then maybe moving hosting to another company. And sometimes going into the ins and outs of that can be quite complicated because sometimes with hosting, people don't remember where the hosting is and all of that sort of thing. Also, you can think about changing the content management system. So for instance, if you're keeping the same domain name but you're changing from maybe one CMS to another CMS, then that might be something that you want to think about with regards to... Well, it is absolutely something you need to think about with regards to migrations. I would also add to this, sometimes changing the design of your website can be migration. So there's a few SEOs that I've heard talk about migrations and they're like, "It can have it, big deal." And sometimes people don't think about this, but I've had it where clients were like, "Oh yeah, we're just changing the homepage," or, "We're just changing this big money page. We're changing around the design of it." And I'm like, "We need to check that." And they say, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "Well, if you have the design of a page and you have a certain number of links that are coming from that, you have certain elements that are on that page that if you change that page, then we need to figure out what we're going to do with all of that link equity as we're spreading it out across the rest of the page. And that is something that we need to think about as well." So we can also think about URL changes overall. Now, when you're talking about your migration, Google sometimes call this a site move. So they have a page on their documentation saying, "What is a site move?" And in that they talk about site moves without URL changes and they talk about site moves with URL changes. And all of these things are considered migrations. And essentially what you want to think about when you have a migration is making sure that Google can find the new content and that Google can find the old content as well, so that if you have old content, that's really important that they can find it, that there's links to it. And you also need to think about how it impacts your wider digital footprint. So Mordy mentioned 301 redirects. 301 redirects are really useful for what happens within your site, but they're also really useful for what happens with the links that you have out there on the web still coming into your site. So for instance, let's say you changed your blog format. So let's say it used to be example.com/post, and then you change it to example.com/article for instance, you need to think about that because you'll have old links to the old URL format and those will impact how your site is indexed, how your site is performing, and how it all works out. So there's a lot of ins and outs. There's a lot of different parts of a migration that you should think about. They should not be taken lightly at all. And essentially anything that you're changing that's a structural change or even a design change that impacts your link structure should be considered a migration. And sometimes there's big, big migration. Sometimes it's a smaller migration, but you still should think about it in that way. Mordy Oberstein: I think you answered all three of the questions we mentioned in the intro in one breath. What was it? Why did so many people get cyber migrations wrong? What's the worst thing that can happen and why are we all freaked out about them? And it's because there's so many things to think about. And then you think about the implications of those. I've had a case one time where it's like they forgot like, "Oh wait, the canonicals that..." We actually use the old website for the canonical. We don't know why we did that, but we did. And now things are totally messed up and we don't want even thought about that. 'Cause you're not thinking about that. Okay, the URL, I got the old URL, I got the new URL, I got this. But when you're transferring things over and you're copying and pasting certain things, you end up copying and pasting the canonicals over and now doesn't make any sense. Crystal Carter: Right. Absolutely. And there can be other things underneath that. So sometimes it might be that you have old menu configurations in the back end of the website. You copied and pasted those over and there's a 404. I've seen that before where people are like, "Why have we got this 404?" And it's like, because it's in the menu that we migrated over from the other thing. Mordy Oberstein: You know what it's like? It's like when you're family, you stick all the dirty laundry, sweep it under the carpet for a long, long time and then a family event happens. And all those things, the dysfunction that you swept under the carpet for years, all of a sudden it comes out at one time and it's complete chaos and dysfunction. That's a site migration. Crystal Carter: I think that there's so many different moving parts. So there's the stuff with all the DNS stuff and making sure that all of that stuff is working well. There's also the migrations from before. So sometimes if somebody did a bad migration before you then that can haunt you when you try to do the next migration, for instance. So it can be very, very tricky. And then sometimes it can feel a little bit like... There's that magic trick where there's a fully set table and somebody tries to remove the tablecloth from the table. And what you want to do is essentially make sure that everything that you need stays there, but it can also be a really, really good time to clean house. So you talked about sweeping things under the carpet and migration can be a really good time to be like, "We don't need this URL, we don't need that one, we don't need this, we don't need that, we don't need that." And to clear those things out and that can be a really good time to do that as well. And I think also with migrations, it's very important that someone has the reins, that there is someone who is in charge of it. And this is normally an SEO and it should be an SEO. There's somebody who's in charge of making sure that holistically it works. So I've had it before where a client migrated a site to a new setup and the client, they had a third party subduing without documentation and they decided to copy all of those things and put them on the blog of the new site. And you're making a face here like, "Oh my gosh." But they did not cut off the old help doc. So instead we had a whole another set of content that was competing, which Google had already indexed the other site and then they added it onto the new site. And the way that it had been configured was super complicated and it was very, very difficult to unpick all of these different pages that had been added into and with all of the different URLs and stuff. So it can be very, very tricky. And one of the things we have built into Wix, because it's such a pain in the box, one of the things we have built into Wix is sometimes you have to do some of the big folder updates via DHT access file for instance. But within Wix for instance, you can go into this bulk URL management tool and you can set up so that any URL that starts with a certain prefix will be redirected to a certain thing. So for instance, in the post article example, if you had all of your blogs under post, you can set up bulk redirect within the tool that's within the CMS. You can set a bulk redirect that says any URL that starts with... That has the prefixed post should be redirected to this one in this framework. And you can set it up so it's in the same way that you would with an HD access file. And it makes it a lot easier to manage those things in bulk. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm going to catch the error. So that's also good. But I want to go back to your point about the tablecloth where you pull a tablecloth off and then you're hoping everything stays the same. I think one of the reasons why I think we're freaked out about site migration and why they're pain in the neck is that we don't properly set expectations. 'Cause when you pull that table cloth out, it's inevitable that something's going to shift around a little bit and it's not going to be a 100% perfect. I think Google has to come and say like, "Yep, if you're going to migrate over, expect there to be some traffic loss for some time." Those are the things that are just going to happen and there's going to be a problem, there's going to be things you have to fix. I mean, it could be, by the way, things that you have to fix that are not really even on the SEO side. For example, I saw they moved over, I don't remember how the heck they ended up like this, but all of their blog posts, the first paragraph, somehow they coded it automatically that the text was in white and you couldn't read it. You got to the page and you couldn't read it. Now Google could read it great, but the users got there and they were like, "This sucks." And no one's linking to it or whatever it is. It's just not good, obviously. And you mentioned being holistic about it and as an SEO, I mean maybe it's not really here, but you should look, you should see what's going on and you should be take care of what's... Because they're going to be things that shift and it impacts sometimes everything, which by the way, what's the worst that can happen? Well, that's like everything's the worst that could... It could be really bad, which is why you need to be careful. And I would say you're right about having one person manage all of it, or overseeing it. I would also recommend that person be a type A personality. Somebody who's got a checklist for everything. It's crossing every T, dotting every I, thinking about what the next problem is going to be so they can predict what the problem is going to be before it happens and have a list about those. It's one of those things that you could be super smart and greatest strategy and that's not be your thing. There are definitely people who are brilliant with migration, not their thing because it's so detail oriented. Crystal Carter: So detailed. And the other thing I would say is that thinking about that, is that one of the things that I always do with the migration is I always download the original site. So benchmarking and sorting out yourself before the website so that you can see. So for instance, if we're talking about the tablecloth, if you don't know what the table looked like before, how do you know if something moved? How do you know if something moved? How do you know if something changed? So you should always benchmark what you want to see. So benchmark what your normal traffic is, what things you normally rank for, which things you normally... What you would normally expect to see over the course of even a year. Because there's a lot of seasonality. In all businesses, there's going to be some seasonality. If you think about accountants or whatever, come tax season, there's going to be a high... There's going to be a peak season. And then for white collar industries, it tends to be like during holiday seasons, that tends to be a bit of a lull. So for instance, there's always some seasonality. So make sure you know what your traffic looks like. Make sure that you know what your keywords look like. And I always download the site before because it's always useful to have that to hand. There's a couple of tools that you can get to do this, but I always download the full site before so that I can see what it looked like before anything gets moved around. And also monitor it, monitor it, monitor it, before, during, after, throughout the whole thing and keep monitoring it. And I'll even monitor up to a year. And the other thing is if it's done well, you don't necessarily see a drop in traffic. Sometimes you see a big increase actually if you've done it well. And also, a migration, again, I talked about it being an opportunity to clean house. It's sometimes a really good opportunity to add new content and stuff because if you're changing around the format of the website, the how of the website, for instance, like how people navigate to different pages or how people use or how people access different information, you might look around and say, "Oh, actually we can do that in a different way." Maybe those bits of blogs that are thin should actually be formatted as FAQs instead. So maybe we can do that differently. And when you do that, you can add more value to the website and sometimes you actually see a boost, but you should make sure that you're mapping those things correctly. So for instance, if you change a blog into an FAQ, then make sure that you've done the 301s correctly and that you've formatted the new page correctly and that you're tracking it and you know what's going on. Mordy Oberstein: It's also a good time to reflect how your ecosystem is working. If you work with a bunch of sub domains and you're looking out from the main site to these other sub domains. First off, that might be the best way to do it. If you have to reform it, restructure anyway, this is a great time. I've seen sites where there's one page, for whatever reason, it's linking to all of their different sub-domains and then they mess around with that page. First off, even if you did that right, that might not be the best way to go about this to begin with. So it's a good opportunity to sit and think, does this actually make sense for how we want our site to be structured and how we want people to access and move along, as you said, from page to page or sub domain to sub domain or whatever it is. I guess to end off real quick, if you are migrating a website, hopefully you get a boost. If you see it, slight traffic loss, don't freak out. It's sometimes par for the course. Try to keep URL the same whenever you can. Just avoids a lot of the mess. Just makes things so much easier. And then check it all before it goes live so you don't end up with the canolicalization problem I mentioned before. Check it before it goes live, a bunch of times. Crystal Carter: Check it, check again, check it 25 times. I keep checking it. Mordy Oberstein: And then check it afterwards. Crystal Carter: Check it afterwards. Check all of the things and make sure that you're checking as well as user experience. Because the other thing is when you're migrating, there's all the technical stuff as well. But very funny, if I go to a website and they changed things around, I'm like, "Where's that thing I liked? I don't know where it is. I don't know where that is." So you might see your conversion rates change for a while, while people get used to your new configuration. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, exactly. It's a good time to look at the whole ecosystem. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: It's a good time. It's a good time for all. You know what's a good time? When's a good time? When is it a good time for an SEO to be involved in a site migration? If you are an SEO, when should you demand that you be involved? And if you're a website owner, when should you involve the SEO in the site migration process? To help answer that, let's please welcome Miracle Inameti. Take it away, Miracle. Miracle Inameti: Never involve the SEO team. Just wait. If it's a success, then take all the credit. If it's not, then you can blame them. As a general rule of thumb, I would say that you should always involve the SEO team. Once you start thinking of a site migration, you should speak to your SEO team. When this doesn't happen, it's either because people within the organization don't understand the SEO team's function. They see the SEO team on the marketing as a campaigns function and they want to present to you this shiny news site and go, "Is this fit for purpose?" However, there's so many things that the SEO team has to think about when you're planning a site migration. And in order for the site migration to be successful and for you not to lose any visibility, you need to involve the SEO team in the planning process. So there are various types of site migration. There is several migrations, there's platform migrations. There is just a risking, there's URL. I think the ones that are most critical to the SEO team is when you are changing the URL structure, migrating the domain because they need to plan redirects, make sure that everything is going end to end and relevant page to relevant page. On a page by page level, not just like the whole domain is redirected to the homepage. They need to ensure that all critical pages are taking long. They need to look at back links, which ones are relevant, which ones they want to, you know, walk contact into, to link directly to the pages. So there's so many things that the SEO team needs to think about. There is tracking as well. You want to make sure that your tracking and monitoring still stays on or are migrated to the right pages. So you need to make sure that you are set up in search console, any of the tools that you are using to track them and monitor the performance of your site is done. So all of these things. You need to make sure that when the site is migrated, the search engines are informed that your site is migrating. You want the new structure to get crawled quick and index. It's very, very critical that the SEO team is involved right at the start so that they can plan for all of this. Mordy Oberstein: Couldn't agree more. Thank you so much, Miracle. Obviously, it's super important to have your SEO team involved in the migration process as soon as possible. I'll say I don't want to double down on SEO. I think it's really important to have all your teams involved in the migration process as soon as possible so you all can communicate and be on the same page with each other. I think it's just getting people involved in communication at the very, very beginning is probably the linchpin of migration success. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And I think everyone should know what's going on and I absolutely agree with Miracle about saying that it's very important to have input from SEO and for all of the different layers. When you're talking about having other teams involved, that impacts the effectiveness of the migration. So SEOs will have their own priorities. She talked a lot about back links, she talked a lot about the structure of the page. But again, there's going to be things that the sales team needs as well and that they want to. That might be their favorite thing, that's a really useful tool that works really, really well for them that an SEO might not be able to see from their assessment. So it's really important to have lots of different parts of your team involved. And not to just, like she said, just present "Oh, look at our shiny new thing." I've had people do that and they've had a panic attack because they're like, "Look at our brand new..." And then you didn't... This is completely no. And that can be really, really stressful and it can mean that you're starting on a back foot when you don't involve teams, then rely on the website in order to do their work and in order to make sure that the business is performing the way that it should. So- Mordy Oberstein: You know why you don't want to start on a bad foot, if you're an SEO, as strategically as possible, fight for a seat at the table. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: It's one of those things. Crystal Carter: Totally. And starting on the back foot particularly with migration can be a real challenge because Google's trying to figure out all of the things anyway. And so if you've just migrated the site and you have to do a lot of the SEO work that should have been done before whilst Google's trying to understand the new site, then it's going to make it very difficult to rank and fight those fires at the same time. So make sure that you're involved early. Make sure that if your SEO is saying they want a meeting about the migration, that you're getting that meeting, setting that meeting making sure that happens. Mordy Oberstein: The early SEO gets the worm. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of migration, so we sum that up a fascinating little example around keyword disambiguation that means, what does this keyword actually mean? So if I type in for example, Rangers, is that the New York Rangers hockey team? Is it the Rangers soccer football team? Is it the Texas Rangers, baseball team and or police organization? What does it actually mean? And Google has ways of disambiguating what that actually is, but we're going to use the term how to migrate the keyword, how to migrate to show you how you could use the PAA box, the people also ask box, which is Google's set of four initial questions that, I ask a very popular question, to ask around the web and then offer you a snippet of content and a URL to answer that question. So we're going to see how everyone's little favorite SERP feature the PAA, people also ask box can help you disambiguate because it is time for fun with the PAA box. Crystal Carter: Oh, we used to have so much fun with the PAA box. Mordy Oberstein: It's so much fun. When I ever go to Google and I look at it, I look at the SERP, I'm like, "Oh, the PAA box is so fun because you keep clicking on it and more things load." Crystal Carter: Just more and more. Mordy Oberstein: This is so much fun. Crystal Carter: This is so much fun. Mordy Oberstein: Look at, look more things load when you search for how to migrate, what I find interesting is sometimes Google has a little box on the side that's literally called an ambiguation box that helps you understand, okay, migrate what? As I mentioned before, rangers, if you type rangers, you'll probably get a box. I'm going to do that right now. I'm going to type rangers into Google. I know it. I'm going to get a box on the side, right? See results about Texas Rangers, baseball team, even though the one... The SERP I have now is about the hockey team. Google knows I might mean something else, but in this case how to migrate, it's not there, but it should be there. Crystal Carter: It should be there. Mordy Oberstein: And it's important. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. But the people also ask here, it's coming in to save the day on this particular section to help people to understand which thing they're talking about- Mordy Oberstein: Which is super important because if you are trying to target the keyword, how to migrate, because you have a blog post about how to migrate, then you need to understand what's actually showing up on Google because your post might not be the migrate that Google thinks it is, or Google thinks that users want. Crystal Carter: Indeed. So I think on this particular one we have, the questions that you get are how do we migrate, how does migrate work? Again, people also ask, sometimes it's not grammatically correct, but there we go. How do you plan a migration? Also, how long is a migration process? Now, when you think about the term migration, there's lots of different ways you can talk about that particular term if we're thinking about a disambiguation situation. And so they're hedging their bets with some of those answers. So some of them answers some kinds of ways to migrate and some of them answers other kinds of ways to migrate because they're trying to help people find what they need. Mordy Oberstein: So just so you know, by the way, I've had, how do we migrate? How does migrate work? How do you plan on migration? How is data migration done? So I have that last question that's different because I'm looking at it from the US right now and I'm assuming you're set up from the UK. Crystal Carter: Indeed. So then how do we migrate that gives us a human migration thing? Mordy Oberstein: Right, so that's topic one, is human migration. Crystal Carter: Then the second one I've got is how animal migration works. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, topic two, animal migration. Crystal Carter: And then I've got how do you plan a migration? And then that's talking about data migration. Mordy Oberstein: Topic three. Crystal Carter: And how long is migration process? That's also talking about data migration. So here Google's trying to figure out different ways to understand that. Similarly, with- Mordy Oberstein: Three different ways, 'cause I can count 1, 2, 3. Crystal Carter: And if you look up something similar like migrating, you also get some answers that are around human migration. Some answers that are around salmon migration, for instance. And so Google sometimes uses the people also ask to help point people where they need to go if they've entered a term that's ambiguous. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So by the way, this is a great example because if you're writing this post about how to migrate, let's say yours is about data migration. So realizing that you're limiting your chance to pull in organic traffic because Google's addressing three different intents on the page. So you probably want to go a little bit more specific or realize that if you're targeting how to migrate, you're not going to get a lot of traffic necessarily because you're only relevant to... Let's assume that Google has it proportionate to a third of the people who are coming for that keyword. Also, really interesting by the way, is that both of our cases, and this is part of the disambiguation process, the first question we both had was relevant to... I'm talking about human migration then animal migration. And even though our last two questions weren't the same, they both addressed data migration, meaning that shows you that the dominant intent might be data migration because Google thinks that's the strongest... Let's rephrase that, because Google is showing a double result there because that's probably the strongest intent on the page or for the keyword rather. Crystal Carter: Had a webinar recently and someone was asking about keywords and they said, "Oh, this keyword is too difficult." And sometimes that happens when you have a keyword that is like this. So something like how to migrate, if you were writing an SEO blog around that, for instance, then you would think, "Oh yeah, those are the questions that people are asking." But actually there's lots of people asking you those questions in lots of different ways. So as you're saying, if you're making it more specific, maybe you might not have the same huge search volume, but the people who are actually searching for what you are actually talking about are much more likely to actually find the information that you have. So that's really useful to think about. And again, the ways that that data flows from the people also ask can, yeah, give you such information about how people think about that terminology. And if you're finding that, like you said, that two out of three are for a different topic, actually, then- Mordy Oberstein: You should pivot. Crystal Carter: ... you should pivot. Mordy Oberstein: Which comes back to this old, the SEO adage. Don't just rely on when an SEO tool tells you the search volume is super high for this keyword, you should grow the SERP and see what it actually looks like. That's the best advice I could ever give you about SEO is go to the SERP, go to Google, look at the results and see what's there and use Google to your advantage. Now speaking of using Google to your advantage, what gives you an advantage in terms of your SEO? Crystal Carter: What gives you an advantage in terms of your SEO? Mordy Oberstein: Understanding the latest news around what's happening in SEO? Crystal Carter: You don't say. Mordy Oberstein: I do say, which means it's time for some snappy SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Oh boy, the sky is falling. Big brands such as Bankrate are now using, well, now admitting to using AI writers for some of its content. And Google has taken notice per the great Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land. Google Search responds to Bankrate, more brands using AI to write content. As I mentioned about five seconds ago, AI written content has been spotted on big name websites because they admitted it right there on the page saying quote, "This article was generated using automation technology," et cetera. Don't say the et cetera, I'm just using half the quote. The attribution is, one, great to see, and two, also mentions the content was reviewed by a human. When you look at the actual article, it does list the name of the human who reviewed that content. And now a word of caution by Mordy Oberstein. AI scrapes the web and regurgitates what's already been said. So it can't really offer something genuinely unique. So be careful and don't be swayed by sites with a huge amount of topical authority using AI written content. Also, again, they may have extensionally revised it with their human reviewers. So it's not a carte blanche, just start doing whatever you want with AI written content. However, Google did say, and this is coming from Google's search liaison Danny Sullivan, that it is okay to use AI written content. The general problem with AI written content is that it's low quality content written for search rankings as opposed to users. But when it is used or written for the sake of being helpful, then that's spying. So Danny said, if content is helpful and creative for people first, that's not an issue referring to AI written content. So Google is in my opinion, walking back on its hard line that they've taken in the past. I think they have to, AA content is here, it is staying, it is not going anywhere. It does have a place, my personal opinion is that it has a place with borders. And knowing those borders and how to use AI properly is incredibly important, particularly if you're not one of these ginormous sites on the web that's just banking on a lot of pre-established authority. Article number two, from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable. This time Google linking to multiple providers in product reviews might give a small ranking boost. So way back when Google updated its guidance around product reviews in relation to its product review updates, saying that, "Yeah, you have to have more than one provider in the review." Meaning if you're just stuffing in an affiliate link or multiple affiliate links to the one company that you are tied to, that's not a great user experience, it's a questionable user experience altogether. So now we have official confirmation that Google is looking at this algorithmically. I would have expected the impact to have been bigger or Google to have wanted the impact, at least to have been bigger. Google is saying here, that's a pretty small factor. My takeaway is Google, as a whole, is not happy about the state of affiliates. They are looking at the web and trying to improve the web and is looking to the change the game here in regards to affiliates, which is why I thought that this would've been a bigger factor. But again, linking to multiple providers from the user's point of view is a more... It's called honest experience that Google is trying to push for and it has been confirmed. It is a small ranking boost. So if you are writing up product reviews and just stuffing in your one particular affiliate, that could, all things being equal, impact your rankings and that will do it for this week's snappy news. And now we're back from the Snappy news. Now, before we go, as we always do, you should have a diverse set of information in front of you from a diverse set of SEOs. So we always end off, before we have to duly depart with our follow of the week, and you already mentioned him. Yeah, you did. It was like SEO, podcasting, foreshadowing. Now who could it be? Who could it be? Crystal Carter: Who could it be? It's Chris Green people. Mordy Oberstein: It's Chris Green. Crystal Carter: Chris Green. Mordy Oberstein: The one and only Chris Green who you can find on Twitter at Chris Green SEO, C-H-R-I-S G-R-E-E-N SEO. Link to his profile and show notes. And Chris is a wonderful SEO, technical SEO to has done... As Crystal mentioned, he did a poll post on the Wix SEO hub about things you need to know about migrating and particularly about money you're migrating to Wix as well, so if you're looking to bring a site to Wix, that's a great resource for you. He says it's a great resource in general on social media. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he specializes in migrations, auditing, reporting, training, and so he's got a lot of really great information and his article on migration is particularly useful for people who are looking to migrate to Wix. I mean, he just lays it out really, really clearly. He's awesome. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, he's got a lot of really cool resources for you, also, on his own website. It's chris-green.net, all sorts of templates you can use and checklists you can use, and all sorts of deep dive SEO stuffed greatness for you. So check that website out, which happens to be, by the way, a Wix website. Yes, dare I say. So definitely check that out. That gave you a quick Tech SEO audit template. There's mapping for keywords to your website for SEO using blended data to add annotations onto time series in Google Looker Data Studio. Lot of great resources for you on Chris's website, so definitely check that out. Awesome. I think we're done then. Crystal Carter: Well done. I think we have moved everything along. I think that everything has gone from one place to another. Mordy Oberstein: There's been no hiccups. It's all been- Crystal Carter: There's been no hiccups. Mordy Oberstein: Permanently moved with all the proper checks and balances and whatnot. Indeed. Crystal Carter: Indeed, we've moved everything we have migrated from the beginning of the podcast to the end of the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Amazingly. Crystal Carter: Now we shall see you again. Mordy Oberstein: I hope the traffic is good. 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 an all new episode as we dive into why ranking factors might not matter nearly as much as you think. Heresy, I know. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix 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. And until next time, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Miracle Inameti Chris Green Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub The Fundamentals of Site Migrations Site Moves & Migrations News: Google search responds to BankRate, more brands using AI to write content Google: Linking To Multiple Providers In Product Reviews Might Give A Small Ranking Boost Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Miracle Inameti Chris Green Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub The Fundamentals of Site Migrations Site Moves & Migrations News: Google search responds to BankRate, more brands using AI to write content Google: Linking To Multiple Providers In Product Reviews Might Give A Small Ranking Boost Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Guess we're pushing out some grueling new insights around what's happened in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein head of SEO branding here at Wix, the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, I was going to say edible, but that doesn't make any sense. Our head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. SEO internet people. Welcome to episode 21. We're about to double down on these SEO insights. Mordy Oberstein: It's Blackjack. It's our Blackjack episode. Crystal Carter: It's right. That's what's up. We're going to put two on the river or double down. I can't... I've forgotten about Blackjack. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. If I tell you, I've been to a casino one time. My wife, 15 years ago, we walked in, we played a couple of games. We said, "This is boring." And we bounced the hell out of there. Crystal Carter: I got married in Las Vegas. I spend a lot of time. Mordy Oberstein: On purpose? Crystal Carter: My family on purpose. Las Vegas. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, you meant to get married? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Okay cool. I was checking. Crystal Carter: Yeah. You know Caesars Palace? Mordy Oberstein: Sure, I've heard of it. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I got married across the street from there. Mordy Oberstein: Across the street. It's good set up. Crystal Carter: Thank you. So, yeah, they demolished it. It was a dive, but we had a great wedding. Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can easily set up 301 redirects with our redirect managers. Set single redirects, group redirects when the URL follow the same logic like they live in the same folder, upload bulk redirects, or do nothing as we implement redirect automatically and aesthetic product and event pages. And we're talking about redirects because guess what we're talking about today? Site migrations. Oh, the word itself made me gas and choke. 'Cause you're going to wreck the URLs with the site migration. Crystal Carter: Oh, good. Mordy Oberstein: And that's where things get into problems. Crystal Carter: You weren't there, man. You weren't there. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Today's show is about the root canal and lobotomy of SEO site migrations. We'll dive into migrations and why do so many people get them wrong? What's the worst thing that can happen? What's the worst thing that can happen? Why are SEO so freaked out about site migrations? The ever wonderful Miracle Inameti stops by to talk about when SEOs should become involved in the site migration process. Also, have a bit of fun around migrations and the people also ask box. And of course, we have your ever so snappy SEO news and who you should be following on social. For more SEO awesomeness episode number 21 of the SERP's Up podcast is migrating your way. Get it. That was a bad one. Crystal Carter: That's right. Mordy Oberstein: That was a bad... I tried. That was a bad one. I was thinking of that or it's an SEO migraine-tion, get it because it's a migraine and migrate at the same time. Crystal Carter: Oh man. Wow. okay Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. How's that? Not good? Yeah. Crystal Carter: All right, so moving on. Mordy Oberstein: We're migrating past that and to the next thing. Crystal Carter: We're going to shift, we're going to do a 301 from that. No, kidding. Okay. So just so we're all on the same page, we are going to talk a little bit about what a site migration is. On the Wix SEO Learning Hub, there's a fantastic article from Mr. Chris Green where he explains the fundamentals of site migrations and he explains that site migration is a term that SEOs use quite often. But being familiar with the different types of elements that make up a site migration can really help you to make the process easier. He talks about a few common site migration scenarios. One is changing domain names, which is essentially where you change your name from, say, redshoes.com to maybe even redshoes.co.uk or the red shoes or bestredshoes.com. So that's where you change your domain name. There's also migrating through hosting providers, which is something that people don't very often think about, but that's one that he thinks about as well. And then he considers that where your website's hosted one company and then maybe moving hosting to another company. And sometimes going into the ins and outs of that can be quite complicated because sometimes with hosting, people don't remember where the hosting is and all of that sort of thing. Also, you can think about changing the content management system. So for instance, if you're keeping the same domain name but you're changing from maybe one CMS to another CMS, then that might be something that you want to think about with regards to... Well, it is absolutely something you need to think about with regards to migrations. I would also add to this, sometimes changing the design of your website can be migration. So there's a few SEOs that I've heard talk about migrations and they're like, "It can have it, big deal." And sometimes people don't think about this, but I've had it where clients were like, "Oh yeah, we're just changing the homepage," or, "We're just changing this big money page. We're changing around the design of it." And I'm like, "We need to check that." And they say, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "Well, if you have the design of a page and you have a certain number of links that are coming from that, you have certain elements that are on that page that if you change that page, then we need to figure out what we're going to do with all of that link equity as we're spreading it out across the rest of the page. And that is something that we need to think about as well." So we can also think about URL changes overall. Now, when you're talking about your migration, Google sometimes call this a site move. So they have a page on their documentation saying, "What is a site move?" And in that they talk about site moves without URL changes and they talk about site moves with URL changes. And all of these things are considered migrations. And essentially what you want to think about when you have a migration is making sure that Google can find the new content and that Google can find the old content as well, so that if you have old content, that's really important that they can find it, that there's links to it. And you also need to think about how it impacts your wider digital footprint. So Mordy mentioned 301 redirects. 301 redirects are really useful for what happens within your site, but they're also really useful for what happens with the links that you have out there on the web still coming into your site. So for instance, let's say you changed your blog format. So let's say it used to be example.com/post, and then you change it to example.com/article for instance, you need to think about that because you'll have old links to the old URL format and those will impact how your site is indexed, how your site is performing, and how it all works out. So there's a lot of ins and outs. There's a lot of different parts of a migration that you should think about. They should not be taken lightly at all. And essentially anything that you're changing that's a structural change or even a design change that impacts your link structure should be considered a migration. And sometimes there's big, big migration. Sometimes it's a smaller migration, but you still should think about it in that way. Mordy Oberstein: I think you answered all three of the questions we mentioned in the intro in one breath. What was it? Why did so many people get cyber migrations wrong? What's the worst thing that can happen and why are we all freaked out about them? And it's because there's so many things to think about. And then you think about the implications of those. I've had a case one time where it's like they forgot like, "Oh wait, the canonicals that..." We actually use the old website for the canonical. We don't know why we did that, but we did. And now things are totally messed up and we don't want even thought about that. 'Cause you're not thinking about that. Okay, the URL, I got the old URL, I got the new URL, I got this. But when you're transferring things over and you're copying and pasting certain things, you end up copying and pasting the canonicals over and now doesn't make any sense. Crystal Carter: Right. Absolutely. And there can be other things underneath that. So sometimes it might be that you have old menu configurations in the back end of the website. You copied and pasted those over and there's a 404. I've seen that before where people are like, "Why have we got this 404?" And it's like, because it's in the menu that we migrated over from the other thing. Mordy Oberstein: You know what it's like? It's like when you're family, you stick all the dirty laundry, sweep it under the carpet for a long, long time and then a family event happens. And all those things, the dysfunction that you swept under the carpet for years, all of a sudden it comes out at one time and it's complete chaos and dysfunction. That's a site migration. Crystal Carter: I think that there's so many different moving parts. So there's the stuff with all the DNS stuff and making sure that all of that stuff is working well. There's also the migrations from before. So sometimes if somebody did a bad migration before you then that can haunt you when you try to do the next migration, for instance. So it can be very, very tricky. And then sometimes it can feel a little bit like... There's that magic trick where there's a fully set table and somebody tries to remove the tablecloth from the table. And what you want to do is essentially make sure that everything that you need stays there, but it can also be a really, really good time to clean house. So you talked about sweeping things under the carpet and migration can be a really good time to be like, "We don't need this URL, we don't need that one, we don't need this, we don't need that, we don't need that." And to clear those things out and that can be a really good time to do that as well. And I think also with migrations, it's very important that someone has the reins, that there is someone who is in charge of it. And this is normally an SEO and it should be an SEO. There's somebody who's in charge of making sure that holistically it works. So I've had it before where a client migrated a site to a new setup and the client, they had a third party subduing without documentation and they decided to copy all of those things and put them on the blog of the new site. And you're making a face here like, "Oh my gosh." But they did not cut off the old help doc. So instead we had a whole another set of content that was competing, which Google had already indexed the other site and then they added it onto the new site. And the way that it had been configured was super complicated and it was very, very difficult to unpick all of these different pages that had been added into and with all of the different URLs and stuff. So it can be very, very tricky. And one of the things we have built into Wix, because it's such a pain in the box, one of the things we have built into Wix is sometimes you have to do some of the big folder updates via DHT access file for instance. But within Wix for instance, you can go into this bulk URL management tool and you can set up so that any URL that starts with a certain prefix will be redirected to a certain thing. So for instance, in the post article example, if you had all of your blogs under post, you can set up bulk redirect within the tool that's within the CMS. You can set a bulk redirect that says any URL that starts with... That has the prefixed post should be redirected to this one in this framework. And you can set it up so it's in the same way that you would with an HD access file. And it makes it a lot easier to manage those things in bulk. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm going to catch the error. So that's also good. But I want to go back to your point about the tablecloth where you pull a tablecloth off and then you're hoping everything stays the same. I think one of the reasons why I think we're freaked out about site migration and why they're pain in the neck is that we don't properly set expectations. 'Cause when you pull that table cloth out, it's inevitable that something's going to shift around a little bit and it's not going to be a 100% perfect. I think Google has to come and say like, "Yep, if you're going to migrate over, expect there to be some traffic loss for some time." Those are the things that are just going to happen and there's going to be a problem, there's going to be things you have to fix. I mean, it could be, by the way, things that you have to fix that are not really even on the SEO side. For example, I saw they moved over, I don't remember how the heck they ended up like this, but all of their blog posts, the first paragraph, somehow they coded it automatically that the text was in white and you couldn't read it. You got to the page and you couldn't read it. Now Google could read it great, but the users got there and they were like, "This sucks." And no one's linking to it or whatever it is. It's just not good, obviously. And you mentioned being holistic about it and as an SEO, I mean maybe it's not really here, but you should look, you should see what's going on and you should be take care of what's... Because they're going to be things that shift and it impacts sometimes everything, which by the way, what's the worst that can happen? Well, that's like everything's the worst that could... It could be really bad, which is why you need to be careful. And I would say you're right about having one person manage all of it, or overseeing it. I would also recommend that person be a type A personality. Somebody who's got a checklist for everything. It's crossing every T, dotting every I, thinking about what the next problem is going to be so they can predict what the problem is going to be before it happens and have a list about those. It's one of those things that you could be super smart and greatest strategy and that's not be your thing. There are definitely people who are brilliant with migration, not their thing because it's so detail oriented. Crystal Carter: So detailed. And the other thing I would say is that thinking about that, is that one of the things that I always do with the migration is I always download the original site. So benchmarking and sorting out yourself before the website so that you can see. So for instance, if we're talking about the tablecloth, if you don't know what the table looked like before, how do you know if something moved? How do you know if something moved? How do you know if something changed? So you should always benchmark what you want to see. So benchmark what your normal traffic is, what things you normally rank for, which things you normally... What you would normally expect to see over the course of even a year. Because there's a lot of seasonality. In all businesses, there's going to be some seasonality. If you think about accountants or whatever, come tax season, there's going to be a high... There's going to be a peak season. And then for white collar industries, it tends to be like during holiday seasons, that tends to be a bit of a lull. So for instance, there's always some seasonality. So make sure you know what your traffic looks like. Make sure that you know what your keywords look like. And I always download the site before because it's always useful to have that to hand. There's a couple of tools that you can get to do this, but I always download the full site before so that I can see what it looked like before anything gets moved around. And also monitor it, monitor it, monitor it, before, during, after, throughout the whole thing and keep monitoring it. And I'll even monitor up to a year. And the other thing is if it's done well, you don't necessarily see a drop in traffic. Sometimes you see a big increase actually if you've done it well. And also, a migration, again, I talked about it being an opportunity to clean house. It's sometimes a really good opportunity to add new content and stuff because if you're changing around the format of the website, the how of the website, for instance, like how people navigate to different pages or how people use or how people access different information, you might look around and say, "Oh, actually we can do that in a different way." Maybe those bits of blogs that are thin should actually be formatted as FAQs instead. So maybe we can do that differently. And when you do that, you can add more value to the website and sometimes you actually see a boost, but you should make sure that you're mapping those things correctly. So for instance, if you change a blog into an FAQ, then make sure that you've done the 301s correctly and that you've formatted the new page correctly and that you're tracking it and you know what's going on. Mordy Oberstein: It's also a good time to reflect how your ecosystem is working. If you work with a bunch of sub domains and you're looking out from the main site to these other sub domains. First off, that might be the best way to do it. If you have to reform it, restructure anyway, this is a great time. I've seen sites where there's one page, for whatever reason, it's linking to all of their different sub-domains and then they mess around with that page. First off, even if you did that right, that might not be the best way to go about this to begin with. So it's a good opportunity to sit and think, does this actually make sense for how we want our site to be structured and how we want people to access and move along, as you said, from page to page or sub domain to sub domain or whatever it is. I guess to end off real quick, if you are migrating a website, hopefully you get a boost. If you see it, slight traffic loss, don't freak out. It's sometimes par for the course. Try to keep URL the same whenever you can. Just avoids a lot of the mess. Just makes things so much easier. And then check it all before it goes live so you don't end up with the canolicalization problem I mentioned before. Check it before it goes live, a bunch of times. Crystal Carter: Check it, check again, check it 25 times. I keep checking it. Mordy Oberstein: And then check it afterwards. Crystal Carter: Check it afterwards. Check all of the things and make sure that you're checking as well as user experience. Because the other thing is when you're migrating, there's all the technical stuff as well. But very funny, if I go to a website and they changed things around, I'm like, "Where's that thing I liked? I don't know where it is. I don't know where that is." So you might see your conversion rates change for a while, while people get used to your new configuration. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, exactly. It's a good time to look at the whole ecosystem. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: It's a good time. It's a good time for all. You know what's a good time? When's a good time? When is it a good time for an SEO to be involved in a site migration? If you are an SEO, when should you demand that you be involved? And if you're a website owner, when should you involve the SEO in the site migration process? To help answer that, let's please welcome Miracle Inameti. Take it away, Miracle. Miracle Inameti: Never involve the SEO team. Just wait. If it's a success, then take all the credit. If it's not, then you can blame them. As a general rule of thumb, I would say that you should always involve the SEO team. Once you start thinking of a site migration, you should speak to your SEO team. When this doesn't happen, it's either because people within the organization don't understand the SEO team's function. They see the SEO team on the marketing as a campaigns function and they want to present to you this shiny news site and go, "Is this fit for purpose?" However, there's so many things that the SEO team has to think about when you're planning a site migration. And in order for the site migration to be successful and for you not to lose any visibility, you need to involve the SEO team in the planning process. So there are various types of site migration. There is several migrations, there's platform migrations. There is just a risking, there's URL. I think the ones that are most critical to the SEO team is when you are changing the URL structure, migrating the domain because they need to plan redirects, make sure that everything is going end to end and relevant page to relevant page. On a page by page level, not just like the whole domain is redirected to the homepage. They need to ensure that all critical pages are taking long. They need to look at back links, which ones are relevant, which ones they want to, you know, walk contact into, to link directly to the pages. So there's so many things that the SEO team needs to think about. There is tracking as well. You want to make sure that your tracking and monitoring still stays on or are migrated to the right pages. So you need to make sure that you are set up in search console, any of the tools that you are using to track them and monitor the performance of your site is done. So all of these things. You need to make sure that when the site is migrated, the search engines are informed that your site is migrating. You want the new structure to get crawled quick and index. It's very, very critical that the SEO team is involved right at the start so that they can plan for all of this. Mordy Oberstein: Couldn't agree more. Thank you so much, Miracle. Obviously, it's super important to have your SEO team involved in the migration process as soon as possible. I'll say I don't want to double down on SEO. I think it's really important to have all your teams involved in the migration process as soon as possible so you all can communicate and be on the same page with each other. I think it's just getting people involved in communication at the very, very beginning is probably the linchpin of migration success. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And I think everyone should know what's going on and I absolutely agree with Miracle about saying that it's very important to have input from SEO and for all of the different layers. When you're talking about having other teams involved, that impacts the effectiveness of the migration. So SEOs will have their own priorities. She talked a lot about back links, she talked a lot about the structure of the page. But again, there's going to be things that the sales team needs as well and that they want to. That might be their favorite thing, that's a really useful tool that works really, really well for them that an SEO might not be able to see from their assessment. So it's really important to have lots of different parts of your team involved. And not to just, like she said, just present "Oh, look at our shiny new thing." I've had people do that and they've had a panic attack because they're like, "Look at our brand new..." And then you didn't... This is completely no. And that can be really, really stressful and it can mean that you're starting on a back foot when you don't involve teams, then rely on the website in order to do their work and in order to make sure that the business is performing the way that it should. So- Mordy Oberstein: You know why you don't want to start on a bad foot, if you're an SEO, as strategically as possible, fight for a seat at the table. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: It's one of those things. Crystal Carter: Totally. And starting on the back foot particularly with migration can be a real challenge because Google's trying to figure out all of the things anyway. And so if you've just migrated the site and you have to do a lot of the SEO work that should have been done before whilst Google's trying to understand the new site, then it's going to make it very difficult to rank and fight those fires at the same time. So make sure that you're involved early. Make sure that if your SEO is saying they want a meeting about the migration, that you're getting that meeting, setting that meeting making sure that happens. Mordy Oberstein: The early SEO gets the worm. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of migration, so we sum that up a fascinating little example around keyword disambiguation that means, what does this keyword actually mean? So if I type in for example, Rangers, is that the New York Rangers hockey team? Is it the Rangers soccer football team? Is it the Texas Rangers, baseball team and or police organization? What does it actually mean? And Google has ways of disambiguating what that actually is, but we're going to use the term how to migrate the keyword, how to migrate to show you how you could use the PAA box, the people also ask box, which is Google's set of four initial questions that, I ask a very popular question, to ask around the web and then offer you a snippet of content and a URL to answer that question. So we're going to see how everyone's little favorite SERP feature the PAA, people also ask box can help you disambiguate because it is time for fun with the PAA box. Crystal Carter: Oh, we used to have so much fun with the PAA box. Mordy Oberstein: It's so much fun. When I ever go to Google and I look at it, I look at the SERP, I'm like, "Oh, the PAA box is so fun because you keep clicking on it and more things load." Crystal Carter: Just more and more. Mordy Oberstein: This is so much fun. Crystal Carter: This is so much fun. Mordy Oberstein: Look at, look more things load when you search for how to migrate, what I find interesting is sometimes Google has a little box on the side that's literally called an ambiguation box that helps you understand, okay, migrate what? As I mentioned before, rangers, if you type rangers, you'll probably get a box. I'm going to do that right now. I'm going to type rangers into Google. I know it. I'm going to get a box on the side, right? See results about Texas Rangers, baseball team, even though the one... The SERP I have now is about the hockey team. Google knows I might mean something else, but in this case how to migrate, it's not there, but it should be there. Crystal Carter: It should be there. Mordy Oberstein: And it's important. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. But the people also ask here, it's coming in to save the day on this particular section to help people to understand which thing they're talking about- Mordy Oberstein: Which is super important because if you are trying to target the keyword, how to migrate, because you have a blog post about how to migrate, then you need to understand what's actually showing up on Google because your post might not be the migrate that Google thinks it is, or Google thinks that users want. Crystal Carter: Indeed. So I think on this particular one we have, the questions that you get are how do we migrate, how does migrate work? Again, people also ask, sometimes it's not grammatically correct, but there we go. How do you plan a migration? Also, how long is a migration process? Now, when you think about the term migration, there's lots of different ways you can talk about that particular term if we're thinking about a disambiguation situation. And so they're hedging their bets with some of those answers. So some of them answers some kinds of ways to migrate and some of them answers other kinds of ways to migrate because they're trying to help people find what they need. Mordy Oberstein: So just so you know, by the way, I've had, how do we migrate? How does migrate work? How do you plan on migration? How is data migration done? So I have that last question that's different because I'm looking at it from the US right now and I'm assuming you're set up from the UK. Crystal Carter: Indeed. So then how do we migrate that gives us a human migration thing? Mordy Oberstein: Right, so that's topic one, is human migration. Crystal Carter: Then the second one I've got is how animal migration works. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, topic two, animal migration. Crystal Carter: And then I've got how do you plan a migration? And then that's talking about data migration. Mordy Oberstein: Topic three. Crystal Carter: And how long is migration process? That's also talking about data migration. So here Google's trying to figure out different ways to understand that. Similarly, with- Mordy Oberstein: Three different ways, 'cause I can count 1, 2, 3. Crystal Carter: And if you look up something similar like migrating, you also get some answers that are around human migration. Some answers that are around salmon migration, for instance. And so Google sometimes uses the people also ask to help point people where they need to go if they've entered a term that's ambiguous. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So by the way, this is a great example because if you're writing this post about how to migrate, let's say yours is about data migration. So realizing that you're limiting your chance to pull in organic traffic because Google's addressing three different intents on the page. So you probably want to go a little bit more specific or realize that if you're targeting how to migrate, you're not going to get a lot of traffic necessarily because you're only relevant to... Let's assume that Google has it proportionate to a third of the people who are coming for that keyword. Also, really interesting by the way, is that both of our cases, and this is part of the disambiguation process, the first question we both had was relevant to... I'm talking about human migration then animal migration. And even though our last two questions weren't the same, they both addressed data migration, meaning that shows you that the dominant intent might be data migration because Google thinks that's the strongest... Let's rephrase that, because Google is showing a double result there because that's probably the strongest intent on the page or for the keyword rather. Crystal Carter: Had a webinar recently and someone was asking about keywords and they said, "Oh, this keyword is too difficult." And sometimes that happens when you have a keyword that is like this. So something like how to migrate, if you were writing an SEO blog around that, for instance, then you would think, "Oh yeah, those are the questions that people are asking." But actually there's lots of people asking you those questions in lots of different ways. So as you're saying, if you're making it more specific, maybe you might not have the same huge search volume, but the people who are actually searching for what you are actually talking about are much more likely to actually find the information that you have. So that's really useful to think about. And again, the ways that that data flows from the people also ask can, yeah, give you such information about how people think about that terminology. And if you're finding that, like you said, that two out of three are for a different topic, actually, then- Mordy Oberstein: You should pivot. Crystal Carter: ... you should pivot. Mordy Oberstein: Which comes back to this old, the SEO adage. Don't just rely on when an SEO tool tells you the search volume is super high for this keyword, you should grow the SERP and see what it actually looks like. That's the best advice I could ever give you about SEO is go to the SERP, go to Google, look at the results and see what's there and use Google to your advantage. Now speaking of using Google to your advantage, what gives you an advantage in terms of your SEO? Crystal Carter: What gives you an advantage in terms of your SEO? Mordy Oberstein: Understanding the latest news around what's happening in SEO? Crystal Carter: You don't say. Mordy Oberstein: I do say, which means it's time for some snappy SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Oh boy, the sky is falling. Big brands such as Bankrate are now using, well, now admitting to using AI writers for some of its content. And Google has taken notice per the great Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land. Google Search responds to Bankrate, more brands using AI to write content. As I mentioned about five seconds ago, AI written content has been spotted on big name websites because they admitted it right there on the page saying quote, "This article was generated using automation technology," et cetera. Don't say the et cetera, I'm just using half the quote. The attribution is, one, great to see, and two, also mentions the content was reviewed by a human. When you look at the actual article, it does list the name of the human who reviewed that content. And now a word of caution by Mordy Oberstein. AI scrapes the web and regurgitates what's already been said. So it can't really offer something genuinely unique. So be careful and don't be swayed by sites with a huge amount of topical authority using AI written content. Also, again, they may have extensionally revised it with their human reviewers. So it's not a carte blanche, just start doing whatever you want with AI written content. However, Google did say, and this is coming from Google's search liaison Danny Sullivan, that it is okay to use AI written content. The general problem with AI written content is that it's low quality content written for search rankings as opposed to users. But when it is used or written for the sake of being helpful, then that's spying. So Danny said, if content is helpful and creative for people first, that's not an issue referring to AI written content. So Google is in my opinion, walking back on its hard line that they've taken in the past. I think they have to, AA content is here, it is staying, it is not going anywhere. It does have a place, my personal opinion is that it has a place with borders. And knowing those borders and how to use AI properly is incredibly important, particularly if you're not one of these ginormous sites on the web that's just banking on a lot of pre-established authority. Article number two, from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable. This time Google linking to multiple providers in product reviews might give a small ranking boost. So way back when Google updated its guidance around product reviews in relation to its product review updates, saying that, "Yeah, you have to have more than one provider in the review." Meaning if you're just stuffing in an affiliate link or multiple affiliate links to the one company that you are tied to, that's not a great user experience, it's a questionable user experience altogether. So now we have official confirmation that Google is looking at this algorithmically. I would have expected the impact to have been bigger or Google to have wanted the impact, at least to have been bigger. Google is saying here, that's a pretty small factor. My takeaway is Google, as a whole, is not happy about the state of affiliates. They are looking at the web and trying to improve the web and is looking to the change the game here in regards to affiliates, which is why I thought that this would've been a bigger factor. But again, linking to multiple providers from the user's point of view is a more... It's called honest experience that Google is trying to push for and it has been confirmed. It is a small ranking boost. So if you are writing up product reviews and just stuffing in your one particular affiliate, that could, all things being equal, impact your rankings and that will do it for this week's snappy news. And now we're back from the Snappy news. Now, before we go, as we always do, you should have a diverse set of information in front of you from a diverse set of SEOs. So we always end off, before we have to duly depart with our follow of the week, and you already mentioned him. Yeah, you did. It was like SEO, podcasting, foreshadowing. Now who could it be? Who could it be? Crystal Carter: Who could it be? It's Chris Green people. Mordy Oberstein: It's Chris Green. Crystal Carter: Chris Green. Mordy Oberstein: The one and only Chris Green who you can find on Twitter at Chris Green SEO, C-H-R-I-S G-R-E-E-N SEO. Link to his profile and show notes. And Chris is a wonderful SEO, technical SEO to has done... As Crystal mentioned, he did a poll post on the Wix SEO hub about things you need to know about migrating and particularly about money you're migrating to Wix as well, so if you're looking to bring a site to Wix, that's a great resource for you. He says it's a great resource in general on social media. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he specializes in migrations, auditing, reporting, training, and so he's got a lot of really great information and his article on migration is particularly useful for people who are looking to migrate to Wix. I mean, he just lays it out really, really clearly. He's awesome. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, he's got a lot of really cool resources for you, also, on his own website. It's chris-green.net, all sorts of templates you can use and checklists you can use, and all sorts of deep dive SEO stuffed greatness for you. So check that website out, which happens to be, by the way, a Wix website. Yes, dare I say. So definitely check that out. That gave you a quick Tech SEO audit template. There's mapping for keywords to your website for SEO using blended data to add annotations onto time series in Google Looker Data Studio. Lot of great resources for you on Chris's website, so definitely check that out. Awesome. I think we're done then. Crystal Carter: Well done. I think we have moved everything along. I think that everything has gone from one place to another. Mordy Oberstein: There's been no hiccups. It's all been- Crystal Carter: There's been no hiccups. Mordy Oberstein: Permanently moved with all the proper checks and balances and whatnot. Indeed. Crystal Carter: Indeed, we've moved everything we have migrated from the beginning of the podcast to the end of the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Amazingly. Crystal Carter: Now we shall see you again. Mordy Oberstein: I hope the traffic is good. 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 an all new episode as we dive into why ranking factors might not matter nearly as much as you think. Heresy, I know. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix 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. And until next time, peace, love and SEO. 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