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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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What prevents SEO professionals from pursuing senior positions at an SEO agency? Which skills are essential for excelling in a senior SEO role? What mindset is necessary to succeed in a senior position? Wix’s, Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter discuss ascending your career as an SEO with StudioHawk UK founder Anthony Barone. Anthony shares his comprehensive strategy for demonstrating your value in order to advance your career within the agency hierarchy, along with additional valuable agency insights. Plus, If you're on the hunt for an SEO gig we run through how to pick apart an SEO job listing. Get ready to skyrocket your SEO career with this episode of the SERP's Up SEO Podcast! Back How to build your career at an SEO agency What prevents SEO professionals from pursuing senior positions at an SEO agency? Which skills are essential for excelling in a senior SEO role? What mindset is necessary to succeed in a senior position? Wix’s, Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter discuss ascending your career as an SEO with StudioHawk UK founder Anthony Barone. Anthony shares his comprehensive strategy for demonstrating your value in order to advance your career within the agency hierarchy, along with additional valuable agency insights. Plus, If you're on the hunt for an SEO gig we run through how to pick apart an SEO job listing. Get ready to skyrocket your SEO career with this episode of the SERP's Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 44 | June 28, 2023 | 41 MIN 00:00 / 40:46 This week’s guests Anthony Barone Anthony Barone is the Co-Founder & Managing Director of StudioHawk UK. Anthony was the 3rd hire at StudioHawk Australia and is one of the longest-serving members, making up the Core Hawk team. Anthony originally came from a background in Hospitality and Sports, completing a Bachelor’s Degree in Sports Management, while working in a nightclub, pub and at an Australian Football Club for 5 years. Anthony learnt SEO from the ground up, under the tutelage of Harry Sanders, and now is the leader in the UK, leading the team and the day-to-day operations of StudioHawk UK. A Senior SEO Specialist before starting the UK arm of StudioHawk. Anthony has a soft spot for Local SEO. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Branding here at Wix and I'm enjoying life. Check this. She's not AI. I ran it through an AI checker. It's 100% human. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Oh wait, you forgot. I've got a bionic leg. No, I don't have a bionic leg, although I wish I did. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that would be awesome. I wish I had a bionic... Maybe my knees wouldn't hurt so much. Crystal Carter: My knee is such a mess. I wish I had a better knee. Maybe AI can fix my leg. Mordy Oberstein: My wife's like, "Why is your chair so low?" I'm like, "Well, because if I sit high up and then my leg half dangles a little bit and my knee hurts at night." Crystal Carter: These are honestly the things that you have to think about. Mordy Oberstein: I've reached that stage. Now I feel officially old, my knees hurt. Crystal Carter: They have that... What is that, there's that standing up sound, the... Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I totally do that. I totally do that. Crystal Carter: These are the things. You've got to pace yourself these days. You have to pace yourself. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Advil. No, I'm just kidding. Crystal Carter: I know. Mordy Oberstein: It's brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search that at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can work efficiently and at scale with cutting edge SEO technology that helps you work as efficiently as possible. It helps you even leave broken links with automatic redirects, inspect indexation in a single bound, and apply tags to all pages within a folder faster than a locomotive. Look up in the sky. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Wix SEO for scalability and efficiency. Heck, by the way, you can even spin up content with our inbuilt AI tools. Make sure you edit and review the content that comes out. I feel like I need to have that disclaimer in there about all things AI. Scalability, by the way, why? Because today we're helping you scale the company ladder by talking about how to move up from a junior to a senior at an SEO agency. By the way, the advantage of moving up to being from a junior to a senior is you'll get discounted tickets to the movie and on the bus. Crystal Carter: That's a fact sponsored by Advil again. Mordy Oberstein: Right, bad joke. Just kidding, not that kind of senior. We're going to dive into what holds SEOs back from taking on a senior role at an SEO agency, what skills actually help you thrive in a senior role at an SEO agency, the mindset that matters for thriving as a senior at an SEO agency. And to help us, we have a special guest host, all around great guy, all around nice guy and co-founder of StudioHawk UK, Anthony Barone is set to join us in just a wee bit. Plus we'll take a look at Google for jobs and some red flags in SEO job listings that you might want to avoid. And of course we have the snap piece of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So get out your climbing shoes as episode number 44 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you reach the top of the SEO agency mountain. Crystal Carter: We're climbing up. Mordy Oberstein: We're climbing on up. It's really moving on up, but we're just going to go with it. So agency life is a hard knock life, cue music from Annie. I wouldn't know, I've never worked at an agency, but from what I've heard, that seems to be the general consensus. Crystal Carter: I had a lovely time working at an agency. There's some great agencies. We are going to be joined by the head of a fantastic agency, as a matter of fact. And so I think that there's some great things and it's not without challenge, but I think the challenge could be fun. Mordy Oberstein: Well, that's what I was about to say, that you can meet these challenges and really grow and advance your career by checking out as much as you can as a junior, learning as much as you can, and then taking on a senior role at an agency and really putting your SEO career on a very different trajectory. So to do that, to help us climb the agency, scale the agency ladder, give a warm welcome to the boss. Also, again the founding member of StudioHawk UK. The one, the only, Anthony Barone. What's up? How are you dude? Anthony Barone: Very well. Thank you very much for having me today. Morning, Crystal. Great to be here. Crystal Carter: It's our absolute pleasure. Such a big fan of StudioHawk. Mordy Oberstein: Love it. Crystal Carter: The team is fantastic. I love your energy and I'm sorry that every time I see y'all, I kakaaw at you. I just love it. Mordy Oberstein: Great logo, by the way. Love the logo. So cool. Check if you're listening, check it out. Anthony Barone: Thank you very much. Some of the team have actually taken on that kakaaw actually. Mordy Oberstein: Really? Anthony Barone: Internally, yeah. So we start to do it. So Logan and a few other team members, when we're doing things, the kakaaw will come out. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like whenever there's success, landed a big new client, optimize a million pages, it should be an official kakaaw that goes off around the office. Anthony Barone: Pretty much. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Anthony Barone: Pretty much. Mordy Oberstein: We're glad we can do that for you. Anthony Barone: Thank you very much. Crystal Carter: Hawks assemble. Mordy Oberstein: It just reminded me of the Silver Hawks, which was an amazing 1980s cartoon, but let's not get too down, yeah, check that out. That's a deep cut. Let's not go down too far the 1980s wormhole because I can get very much stuck there. Anthony, you obviously know a lot about working on an SEO agency, having founded a branch of one. Let's just start from basics, the most fundamental thing. If you're trying to move up from a junior role to a senior role, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Anthony Barone: The strategy. You can learn about SEO on the internet. You can go onto many different platforms to try and learn... All the stuff about SEO is out there. You don't have to tell, I don't have to tell you. It's the execution and then understanding how those individual parts that make up SEO are relevant in an overall strategy for a business. Whether you're working as an agency like us or working in-house, how do these moves move the needle for the business to achieve their goals? Crystal Carter: I think that's so important. You talked about, "Yeah, you can learn it online." I think in an agency environment, what's great is that you can learn from other people. So one of the things that I learned... And this is why I said I love your team. So the team element of an SEO agency is so fantastic and if you've got a good team, like I know that you do, you have a good team, then you can learn from each other. So somebody says, "Oh, I tried this thing and it worked really well", and says "Really? Oh, what did you do?" And then you can apply it to another client and you say, "Oh well I did this a little bit different and I added that." And so, that I find is a really fantastic environment for learning and for bringing together all those component parts that you're talking about. Mordy Oberstein: For us, we've got a team of eight here, whereby some people working on an e-commerce client, some people working on B2B, they'll be working on Shopify, they'll be working on this, they'll be working on that. I've tried one thing here that might work there. So yes, working on the team and being able, so that's what we try and do. We try and collaborate and foster that learning and growth between each other. So we'll have a Slack channel. I do things like team brainstorms every couple of weeks where we'll look at a client and go, "Hey, what's maybe the problem with this one? Or how can we grow this one?" And then so someone will come who did mention it before, "Oh, how about you try this? Oh actually, have you done a proper technical SEO ordered on so and so? Or actually we tried improving location pages for this." So the team, because you got the... Instead of just one person learning everything, the more members you add to your team, the more people that can read, they'll learn, they can understand what's going on in SEO, they're working on different platforms, they're working on different clients, they're working in different businesses. All that knowledge can then... You want to try and foster that sort of knowledge sharing. So you're saying, at the role of someone in senior in the SEO agency, it's really to foster collaboration. Anthony Barone: I would be fostering collaboration, leadership, lead by example and then overall strategy. So being able to understand the business or understand the client and go, all right, what will move the needle? Like a site map in robots TXT, that's default. No one's really going to care. But a full on hub and spoke approach, content approach. Great. That's the type of stuff where I think as a senior you're looking more at that strategic level because you've got really good knowledge in SEO and how it works and all that. But it's then putting it into place for different clients, businesses, people, websites. That's where I think you make that leap. You can go and teach a junior how to do title tags great. But it's understanding the data and analytics and strategy behind that. Crystal Carter: And I think also being able to demonstrate your strategy. So certainly with one of the key components of any SEO agency is maintaining good client relationships and being able to build on your client base to minimize churn so that you can maximize growth and all of that sort of stuff. So to be able to evidence the strategy that helped you to achieve that for the client is really, really useful. I was lucky enough to see an entry for StudioHawk and awards and I know that you guys are great at evidencing your work. What advice would you give to somebody who wanted to demonstrate the high level strategies that they have in order to be seen as a more senior role, and potentially move up? Mordy Oberstein: So it's matching that with the business goal. So this is where SEO struggles because it's an intangible thing. I can't sit there and guarantee you 10,000 views a month from Google. It's just not the way it works. So you use things like forecasting and then Google search console data and you use their Google analytics data as the baseline and then try and map out points along the way where you can then match up, okay, these are the tasks you want to join the SEO front and this is why. So using that data, but for me, reporting is a big one to be able to showcase the intangible thing that is SEO in a tangible way so that either, your team can understand what you're trying to do, clients can understand what you're trying to do, stakeholders are trying to understand what you do. But that's the way I see it, is fundamentally understanding what you're trying to do, the data around it, explaining that clearly and then matching that up with the business goals. Because not everyone's going to be as good at SEO as you, that's why they're paying you either in-house or they're paying an agency to tell them how this matches up with their business goals. How is this going to get me more sales of chairs? That's what you want to try and do. It's funny because I wanted to hone in on that, being good at SEO, not just related to that. I do have a question about this, but also to pivot back to a point you made before, I feel like there's like a pink elephant in the room, white elephant in the room. I always get the two phrases confused. I'm so bad at English. Just because, I feel like just because you haven't moved up to a senior role doesn't mean that you are not good at SEO. I think that something you hit on before that it's very strategy driven, it's very top level view, holistic view of everything that's going on, understanding the impact and aligning it, the business, all that kind... That in itself is a unique skill and a unique way of thinking. And that I don't think it means that if you're not good at that, you're not good at SEO. It just means that you're not good at this particular part, which happens to coincide with what is important to being in a senior role. Anthony Barone: A hundred percent. And this is where the collaboration comes together. There's people who are just SEO specialists, they love that, they want to do that. Fine, jump into a WordPress website, jump into a website, jump in and do the work and see the results, great. But in terms of high level strategy, some people will like it, some people don't. Honestly, you are right. It shouldn't disqualify you from thinking that you're not good. Because mate, you've got SEO specialists at bigger companies who would be better than senior SEO specialists at other companies. So you're a hundred percent right there. Crystal Carter: In my career, I had a situation where I made a role, they didn't have a senior role, they didn't have a senior SEO role. And I was like, we should because in our current structure we need one. And I basically was looking around and I was like, I'm training everybody. I'm doing the role. Mordy Oberstein: I am the senior now. Crystal Carter: Well I'm training everybody. So we had a new group of people and sometimes with agencies you'll have a growth spurt, you'll suddenly get a bunch of clients or suddenly you'll get a really big project and you have to hire quickly and get people on. And I was training everybody and I was like, I'm training everybody. I should be acknowledged for all of this because they're taking all of the things from my brain. So I think that that's something that you can think about as well. So if you, certainly in my experience, I found that the new thing that comes along, let's say there's a new mobile first and maybe we need to be doing more mobile or maybe there's a new other thing as well. And I think that sometimes people feel like, oh, I have to stick to whatever role is currently available to me. But... I can see you nodding, Anthony, there can be sometimes that where, maybe we should create a new role and maybe you should advocate for yourself to be that person for that new role, if you see that there's a need. Mordy Oberstein: Understand. Honestly as an agency owner, when you can see that drive and determination for people who are willing to put it all on the line to be like, "I could do better than that." Great, because you have done so well to be able to force me or force an owner to consider creating that role. Whether you call that head of role, head of training, head of SEO, head of strategy or whatever it is, like you did, you proved your worth, you showcased what you were doing and forced your way into creating that role, because sometimes the business owner just doesn't think about it. They just, recency bias, they like what's happening. It's always worked, so why change it? But with SEO, as we know, you have to keep, if you don't innovate, you die. And with SEO, it's probably one of those industries where you have to keep on top of everything because we are throwing so many challenges at all times. You look at every facet of SEO, Google changes, you've got other search engines that'll keep changing, you've got CMS's that'll keep changing. Businesses keep changing. There are so many factors that keep changing. You have to keep on moving because there are so many working parts that make up our day-to-day lives to be able to get that traffic from search engines. If we're not doing that, we are left behind. It's so much of that goes into it, is more so I feel like business acumen, business skills, business navigation, however you want to define it versus actual SEO, it's like almost ironic in a way. Anthony Barone: Hundred percent. And that's why we are trying, that's the strategy point of it, where you're just understanding, dig into those client's understanding what are your goals, what do you want to achieve? Because they don't understand what a robust TST file is. But if you say you have disallowed Google from calling your website and that stops you from, that stops you from ranking on Google to get some more customers, they'll maybe understand, but I don't actually know what the hell a robot's txt file is. So that's some of the stuff that you want to try and match up, which as a junior, you're learning the ropes, you're learning the basics, that's what you want to do. But as you grow and develop, it's having that commercial mindset of you are an agency or you are a client, you are an in-house that's getting paid, and it's simple like money in money out, ROI, what am I doing to be able to provide the ROI? Because if you think in terms of how a business owner thinks, they're looking at simple P&L, money in money out. I'm paying this person for X job, what's it going to get me? And as an agency you look at that and go, all right, we've got X amount of time and investments to be able to do what we need to do. How can we make the biggest impact? Crystal Carter: How do you feel about opportunity? So within an agency space and within a single SEO space or if you are a freelancer, if you are in-house or whichever. In my experience I've seen that being able to spot the opportunity, spot the gap can be really, really useful. Do you find that that is something that would lead you to progressive project or a progressive person to lead that project? How do you find that that plays into reading opportunities for progression? Mordy Oberstein: I love that type of stuff because if you can see someone who's actively used data to find those opportunities. There's one where, speaking to a local bar and their SEO's no good, but I looked at the Google search console and found three or four opportunities to create events, pages, and hubs because they just had no idea. So using that data to be able to find those opportunities. And when I see people who do use that same methodology, using data or trends, and then even just a little bit of an understanding of the business, that's where you can be like, all right, awesome. You are now thinking about it differently. It's not just the SEO bit like, "Oh, I'm going to use Google Search Console to see if I can improve impressions." No. Actually using Google search console to see what Google and the users are clicking on and Google showing you for, and they're looking at the website and going, oh actually people are searching for this, they're looking for it, but it's not on a website. And then there's an opportunity, there's a content plan, there's a whole strategy around it. So I love that when I see that from people. I think it's something that's universal at a certain level of, we'll call it business or involvement in a company, that hunting for opportunity is the key difference between one level of functioning within an organization and a different level of functioning within an organization. And on that point, and you think about spotting opportunity, I'm curious, as somebody who is high up in the agency world, to toot your horn for you, what are you looking for? If you are looking to move somebody up? And I know maybe you want to speak very generally about this, because who knows who from StudioHawk is listening, Ethan Marlbauer. Crystal Carter: You're taking notes right now. Mordy Oberstein: Taking notes, but what are you looking for, universally speaking? Anthony Barone: So for me it's the attitude to learning and the attitude to taking on a challenge. Because like you said, in SEO, nothing ever stops. Just because something worked six months ago doesn't mean it's going to work today. And the businesses are changing. People shut down their website, Google will drop the bomb at Google IO. Mordy Oberstein: And SGE. Anthony Barone: There you go, like SGE. So these are the types of things where it's attitude to learning, being a perennial student SEO. And for me with SEO, it's having a lack of ego. And I say that because SEO, there is always someone harder, better, faster, stronger as staff, I would say in SEO. So it's about learning from each other and learning others who have done it with bigger science, smaller science, bigger ecomms, smaller ecomms, because there's always someone who's done something somewhere that we can learn from and either replicate or improve. So that's what I say. Crystal Carter: I agree with that a hundred percent. In my agency team that I was working with, I mean my team now, which is fantastic as well. Shout out, Mordy Oberstein. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Thank you. Crystal Carter: I think sharing is caring and I think remembering when you were in an agency... People say, and I'm not sure if I like this term generally speaking, but we're all going to eat. We do well on this client, then we are all going to benefit from that. And we as a team, if you see somebody in your agency that's struggling and you can help them, then that means that we can all do well out of it. If you see someone in your team that's doing well, you should think, how'd you do that? How did you do that? How can we do that for everyone? How can we roll that out? And that perennial student, that's a great phrase. Perennial student is a really good way to keep on top of learning and to end and keep on top of new trends, new ideas. That's a great scope. Mordy Oberstein: And it could be scary. You want to bring somebody in who might be better than you are at something. I've had that experience multiple times and it's something that I now lean into on purpose. That person's better? Great. That's actually a good thing. And that's your job as a leader. First off, let's work for me. Right? No, just kidding. But as a leader, that's what you want to be doing. Anthony Barone: I wish us, but all the team better than me SEO, you know, these days. And that's what I want, because for me to be able to run the company, run the agency, I'm the MD, I'm the co-founder, I'm supposed to be the orchestrator. If I'm still doing day-to-day work and telling everyone, if I'm still micromanaging and saying that title tag's not right and hover and not trusting them, then yeah, what am I doing here? So for me, it's about instilling the values, the high quality, the standards that they can replicate, but leave them to do the SEO and lead that team because I've got to run the rest of the agency and then find people who are better than me at other sections and then orchestrate it off. So that's my job. I started off as an SEO, as a junior SEO, but now it's up to me to foster the culture, foster the team, foster the learning so that they can take it and run with it. And then I do all the stuff in the background. Mordy Oberstein: You're living proof, you're proof of the success of going from junior to senior. Anthony Barone: There you go. Thank you very much. Crystal Carter: Kakaa. Mordy Oberstein: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. That's my story, man. I started off as a two day week junior SEO, and I knew nothing about SEO. I had so little idea of SEO that I didn't even bring my laptop to my first day with Harry. I printed off the Moz Beginner's Guide in a binder folder and had highlighted sections. And then my first six months were pretty terrible, but I stuck at it, did audits, read Search Engine and Barry Schwarz, all these guys, right? What's going on? What's going on? And then it clicked for me at about the month five, month six mark as to how the technical came in with the content, came in with the links, came in with the local and then go, oh, okay. And then Google search content and using all these tools and started to click for me because it was more like the Mr. Miyagi approach of understanding why am I waxing the car? Well, you're going to wax the car because it's going to lead you to be able to do that move. Same thing with us at StudioHawk and the way I learned was do a title tag here, do this, do that, and then all of a sudden after, well not all of a sudden, but after six months it started to click. And then that's how I did it. And then I started to develop further and further. And then, I think it was maybe, I was in hospitality and retail before this and had to deal with a lot of people and had to do a few things in those areas where you're looking at that ROI and go, okay, so how is this SEO matching up with the business goals and trying to be a bit more commercially minded when I was just an SEO specialist and then developed to be senior back in Australia and that's my story. And then being able to move over here and create an agency. You said it, that's my journey as well. Crystal Carter: We've discussed this before about the value of doing that repetitive SEO task of going hard on the copy/paste. You do a lot of time, you go do a lot of time strategizing, planning, research, and things, and then you upload it or onto a sheet or you upload it onto a document and then you got to get it on the website and you do that 700 times, then you're going to learn a lot. And I've heard from juniors who are like, "Oh, I've had to do this loads of times, I have to do this over and over again." And I'm like, "Yeah, but that's learning. Every time you do it, you're going to refine it every single time. And if you do it enough times, you'll figure out the best way." They say 10,000 hours, learn an instrument or whatever it is. And I'm not saying necessarily you should do 10,000 hours of SEO, but that practicing, practicing again, practicing with intent, moving forward, that does make a really big difference and helps you get that high level strategy from having done the practical. Mordy Oberstein: Hundred percent. I love SEO. So when you practice it, I regard it as just doing SEO, just like that's what you want to do. You are practicing this through doing, and if you call it practice might have a negative connotation, but that's just doing SEO. The more and more that you do it, the better you get at it. The more understand... And think about how flexible you have to be. You have to do this on one CMS with, you have to do it with different agencies. Someone sells dog food, someone's a lawyer over here, someone does this, someone does that. You're going to be like, you are learning so much, you're going to be so flexible. So I've had days where I'll be having six calls a day and I'll go from women's fashion to dog food to automotive to marketing to men's fashion to marketing again. It's just like all talking about SEO, because you're continually learning, continually understanding SEO. Crystal Carter: I love that. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. And that learning process that... Kind of goes back, we talked about a different episode about learning SEO. One of the great things that you should be doing is taking that initiative just to dive in and learn. I remember I started with, not the Mazda beginner, but I started with the periodic table of SEO from search engine land. But you take that on, you dive into it, okay, what's the next thing that's like, let me read SEO Roundtable every single day to get a sense of what's going on. And as you get a better sense of what's going on, you really get a feel for SEO. That kind of thing is really, really important. If people wanted to learn from you, Anthony, where could they theoretically find you on the internet? Anthony Barone: LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one that I'm trying to really grow in terms of SEO tips or agency staff or the events that we do. So LinkedIn is probably one of the channels that I'm doing again. So probably LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: So we will definitely link to your LinkedIn profile. Anthony Barone: We do run an event called the Agency Social Club, which is geared towards agencies in the heart of shortage. Then we're just trying to create a fun, friendly vibe on the night and shortage, which is Thursday nights. So look out for the next one. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well follow Anthony. Or is it follow on LinkedIn? I think it's Follow or Connect. I'm not good at the whole LinkedIn verbiage. Whatever it is on LinkedIn, do that and see when the next event is. Anthony, thank you so much for joining us. This was super fantastic. Say Hi to Ethan Mar for me. Anthony Barone: Will do. He's always asking about you. Thank you Crystal. Thank you Mordy. Appreciate your time. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much. So, since we're talking SEO careers, we thought we'd give you some tips on what to look for in an SEO job listing. Maybe point out some red flags because some of them are great and some of them you need to be careful with, I think. So we're going to do that by taking a look at a little All SERP feature, which is called Google for Jobs, which means that we're doing a very special from the top of the SERP because Google for Jobs shows at the top of the SERP. So here's the SEO jobs version of from the top of the SERP. So Google for Jobs, you may not know, you may know because it does depend on the geolocation, doesn't show everywhere, it's box. It's a SERP feature. And what it does is amazing. It aggregates job listing. So for example, if I search for accountant's job in New York City, this box, the top of the SERP will pull in listings from, I don't know, monster.com or career builders. Am I dating myself? Is career builders still a thing? I think I am, right? Crystal Carter: Possibly. Possibly. Mordy Oberstein: That's indeed. Crystal Carter: Glass Door, various different places. Mordy Oberstein: Indeed is another one. Crystal Carter: Indeed, indeed. Mordy Oberstein: Indeed is another one. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: That was not on purpose, by the way. Indeed. It's a great feature that helps you really explore the jobs that, the listings that you might want to explore because you might need a new job and you might want to move careers or whatever it is you're trying to do. Look for a friend. I don't know. However, with SEO jobs, sometimes they're great and sometimes you need to be careful. Crystal Carter: This is true. Mordy Oberstein: What we did was we looked for SEO jobs for you and pulled out some listings and these are from Google for Jobs, which shows at the top of the SERP. And here's a couple of things that you might want to look out for. So for example, I pulled out a job listing and it talked about the usual two plus years experience and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then it says something like strong foundational knowledge of whatever. I don't want to give away the full listing. I don't want you to find it. I don't want you to be able, that listing was bad, that company was bad. It's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to give you tips. We're not trying to get people in trouble. And what it said was strong foundational knowledge of HTML, CSS, analytics and reporting. And that's not out of the order, in my personal opinions, necessarily for certain types of SEO job. But then it said knowledge of social media analytics and tracking technologies. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Whoa, wait a second. That seems like it's a very technical SEO job, which is great. And a social media marketing manager at the same time. Crystal Carter: Right, right. And I think this is something that you get a lot of, I've seen a lot of SEOs discuss this where there will be a job description and it seems to be asking you to do everything. Mordy Oberstein: And I think it's very common in SEO. Crystal Carter: It's very common. I think a lot of teams will be looking for somebody to help them with SEO, potentially in-house. I think you see this less from agencies, these kinds of job requests. But I think, particularly for in-house things, they'll be asking for everything under the moon because they know that they need digital marketing support. And so they'll try to throw everything all together, not realizing that social media is a specialism. And there's a whole different ecosystem for social media. And I think that sometimes this can be a sign that the team is less experienced in their digital marketing journey or less sophisticated in their digital marketing journey. It might mean that they need more guidance. And I think also if you see this job description, if you do get to interview, let's say this is a job description and you're like, oh my gosh, but actually the salary's okay, and there's other things that might work. You can also talk to them about some of this. You can say, I can offer you this, but I would recommend that, you get somebody else to do that part. Or I know a great consultant. Mordy Oberstein: What we're pointing out might not be like, don't apply for the job, or this is a terrible company. It's not what we're saying at all. These would be things to red flag to ask at a job interview, let's say. I mean, I think there are certain things, there are enormous red flags that maybe you shouldn't apply altogether. I don't think we're getting into those. I think those are relatively obvious, but I think it's a common theme. One of them, another one that I saw was talking about, you love technical SEO, can quickly identify issues, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And another bullet point was, excellent writer, you believe grammar editing is not subjective. A lot of heavy detail, wait a second. My point of view is sometimes those are very different people, very technical SEO and someone who's really into content writing, personal experience only here. And that's a little bit biased. Those two things, generally, it's a real unicorn to find somebody who does both of those at that level. Crystal Carter: Right, right. There will definitely be some overlap. And you want somebody who's a good communicator. But if you've got, but I think that depending on the job title for that, you've got somebody who's super technical and you also want somebody who's a super writer. I mean, that person is going to be worth a lot, is going to be very expensive. It's what I say. Mordy Oberstein: And if that is you, you're listening to this ask for a lot of money, I think. Crystal Carter: Right, right. That's what I'm saying. Mordy Oberstein: It's very rare to find somebody who's so in depth into technical grammar and technical SEO. At the same time. Crystal Carter: And I think that there's a difference between, so people who are working in semantic SEO, again, will also be doing some work that will include some understanding of grammar and stuff, but maybe not necessarily with the stylistic, I think more of the LLM functioning of grammar. And I think that if you're that person, then you are worth a lot of money. And if you are that team, then you should expect to be paying that person well to be able to do that. And it might even make more sense to split that job between somebody who is one or the other, potentially supported by an agency or supported by a freelancer or supported by a consultant or something to that effect. Mordy Oberstein: And by the way, if you're listening to this and you're an SEO agency or in-house and you're listing the job listing, you might write things like that because from your point of view, those are things that you're concerned about. And I think it's a matter of just wording them in a way where it's clearly understood. That's something you want, you're focused on. But this is the main part of the job. And I think a great example of one is something similar that I saw was it talked about being successful in the role that you need to be comfortable moving between high level strategy, in the weeds work. And it's for an SEO manager, it wasn't for an SEO strategist. And I think if I were applying for this job, I would be wanting to clarify, well, what exactly is the role? And again, this comes back to the same sort of thematic theme. Sometimes it's a lot and certain things do and don't mesh, being high level strategy and then being in the weeds, it's a very different mindset. Forget the hours in the day, how do I get all that done? It's a very different mindset of, okay, how do I be a super efficient updating all the title tags and how do I make sure this whole high level strategy thing is working are different ways of thinking. So if you're creating this listing, I might want to phrase it in a way where you're making it clear that you don't expect that person to do all of the things. Crystal Carter: Right. I think that that's something to think about. I think when you're speaking to agencies, so if you are somebody who's looking for an SEO job and you see a job listing like that, I think call them up, have a chat. Have a chat, because I think the other thing is there's a lot of flexibility, particularly from an agency point of view, there's a lot of flexibility with regards to agency roles, because an agency will be made up of a team. They might have a specific person in mind, but if you have a lot of the skills and if you have some of them that are high priority, then there's very often a lot of space to negotiate what's required and what's not required. But for instance, for that both strategic and in the weeds thing, you're absolutely right that they're individuals, they tend to be individual skills. But also, I mean, it's possible to do some of that, but it will also have to do with how much time you're giving. Mordy Oberstein: And that's what you need to clarify. Crystal Carter: So you need to clarify, what is the workload? How are we doing this? How many clients should I be expecting to be managing at the same time? Because there's no way that you could possibly be in the weeds on 15 clients at a time and do your strategy at the same time. And also think about what is the team framework. Because if you have a situation where you're expected to be the one man band per client, or whether or not you have assistance or a technologist that works in your team or whether you have developers at your disposal or that sort of thing, that will change what the role is and what the demands are on your role. Because I think, with SEO, there's a million things you could do. And as an SEO, an account manager, you need to think about prioritizing those things and what resources you have available will impact your effectiveness and whether or not, what becomes a top priority. And if you want to be successful in the job, you need to be able to manage that well. Mordy Oberstein: And again, a job listing, you're trying to really, if you're creating a job with, and we've never done this before, but you're really trying to mesh all these 4 million points that you're thinking about into basically an email. And it's hard to get that right. So while these might be red flags, just because there's a red flag there, again, it's something for you to think about and discuss. It doesn't necessarily mean, whoa, bad place to work. It's hard to get that listing right. So inquire. Crystal Carter: Right, absolutely inquire. And I think also we see fairly often that there are people who tend to be from marginalized communities who are less likely to apply for a job if they don't have all the qualifications, like statistically speaking, apparently it's quite common for people to not apply if they don't have all the qualifications. Whereas there are people who are from more privileged communities or whatever you want to call it, who tend to be more likely to be like, "Yeah, I'll like throw my hat in the ring. We'll see what happens." And I think that if you see jobs that have these sorts of things, try to clarify with them and try to make sure that you aren't selling yourself short if it is an opportunity that you think might work for you, but also think about some of the other elements that you can bring, even if it's not listed. And think about some of the things that you are not willing to do, even if they are listed. And so if they've listed a bunch of things, just say in the interview, I don't do that, but I do this really well. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point because again, in the format of a job listing, it's very hard to indicate what you are prioritizing and what you're not prioritizing. You're just listing all of the things basically. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Precisely. Mordy Oberstein: It's exactly why. Now with that, if you want to see what's happening on the SERP, the top of the SERP, new things, new changes, you would have to read the news in order to know that. Crystal Carter: The news. Mordy Oberstein: The news, the SEO news, and what better time than I think than for us to dive into the snappy news. Crystal Carter: The snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. INP has arrived, sort of kind of. A little while ago we told you that Google was going to replace first input delay, better known as FID as one of the core web vitals and replace it with INP interaction to next paint. Long story short, FID is very easy to pass because it doesn't require a lot to get that first input. INP is a little more, let's call it, thorough. Anyway, per met southern over at Search Engine Journal. Google's search console adds INP to core web vitals report. So basically, Google is starting to add INP to the Google search console core web vital reporting as it will replace FID in March of 2024. So new data in GSC, but not part of the ranking equation yet. And just a reminder, don't freak out, in my honest opinion, as the data tends to show that core web vitals has not been a major factor in sites improving losing rankings. Obviously there are cases where it does, but as Google has said, it's more when there is a tiebreaker scenario that core web vitals really factors into that extent. Speaking of freaking out, by the way, per the King of SEO news, Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google search ranking volatility exploding. Where is the confirmed algorithm update? Where's the cream filling? Usually I don't report on these, but this time the movement is so extensive and so unusual from beyond what we normally see with these unconfirmed updates that I thought I would share it here. It's not just, by the way, I'm not just seeing this in the SEO weather tools like the Summer sensor in actual sites that I'm monitoring. I'm seeing a lot of extensive movement. It's hotter than usual for a unconfirmed algorithm update. My SEO sense, if you want to call that my spidey sense but in the SEO sense, is tingling. Seeing this makes me feel like Google is prepping for a bigger, wider, official Google update coming, which is why I guess Barry's asking, where is the confirmed algorithm update? Famous last words, by the way, famous last words. And with that, that is this week's snappy news. And again, what a lovely edition of the Snappiest of the Snappiest of Snappys of New's. Crystal Carter: So snappy. I really enjoyed how snappy it was. Mordy Oberstein: That's what I aim for when I do it. I really, I want to snap like a snow pea, like a really good crisp snow pea. It's like Snap. Crystal Carter: Oh, you're right. That is nice. Mordy Oberstein: They call Snap peas. I don't know, maybe I'm confusing this. Crystal Carter: No, I know what you mean though. Mordy Oberstein: You know what I'm talking about? Crystal Carter: I know what you mean. I know what, the other one that I think of is of is like a nice crisp apple. I love a nice crisp apple. Mordy Oberstein: That does make a nice snap. It does make a nice snap. If only this pocket were about vegetables and fruits that make nice snaps. But there is something to it, right? There's something to it... Crystal Carter: That's true. Mordy Oberstein: The sound of a carrot. Crystal Carter: This is true. We should just start a podcast that's just us eating vegetables. Mordy Oberstein: But I feel like might not be what our target audience is really after. I don't know. I speculate. Crystal Carter: Right. Okay. Okay. We can do some research. Mordy Oberstein: What they might be after is who they could follow on social media for more SEO awesomeness. And this week I have my favorite, one of my favorites, I should say my favorite because Barry Schwartz is also a favorite. It's like Ty, like Barry Schwartz level favorite. It's Carolyn Leiden who's like my SEO BFF. I love Caroline Leiden. Why is she a great follower? Because she's a great person and you'll get great parenting tips, but you'll also get tips about your SEO career because Carolyn is at aficionado at giving advice on SEO career, negotiating for yourself in your career, how to negotiate. She had a newsletter, at one point, all about this. So a great follow at Carolyn Leiden on Twitter about advancing your SEO career and getting a career tips and advice. Crystal Carter: She's a fantastic follow and such an anchor and a wonderful, wonderful part of the SEO community. She's really encouraging and supportive and just fantastic. And she's done so much for the community over the years and it's, she's a fantastic, fantastic follow. Mordy Oberstein: I cannot more highly recommend a follow, so extra emphasis on Follow Carolyn Leiden over at Carolyn Leiden on Twitter. We'll link to her profile in the show notes. Carolyn, we love you. You're amazing. Keep at it. By the way, she does share a lot of job listings, so it's a good follow, practically speaking, if you're looking for a job. Crystal Carter: And her discussions around salary are fantastic. So she had her salary newsletter and I think they're available in archive about negotiations and about making sure that you, she's very frank about it. She's like, get your money, get your money, go and get paid. Go and get your money. Get paid for what you do. And it's really important because I think that SEO salaries can vary significantly. So make sure that you're doing your best for you. Mordy Oberstein: So cha ching. It's a good follow, cha ching, cash register sound. I can't do that sound. I don't know how to, I'm not the guy from Police Academy. I can't make sounds. Crystal Carter: Oh gosh. He's great. Mordy Oberstein: He's wonderful. What happened with that guy? 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 with the new episodes we dive into, does Speed Experience still matter? Short answer, yes, but we'll see why we're asking the question, if you tune in next week. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check out all the great content and webinars we have on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Anthony Barone Carolyn Lyden Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter StudioHawk SEO Agency About Google for Jobs News: Google Search Console Adds INP To Core Web Vitals Report Google Search Ranking Volatility Exploding Today - Where Is The Confirmed Algorithm Update? Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Anthony Barone Carolyn Lyden Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter StudioHawk SEO Agency About Google for Jobs News: Google Search Console Adds INP To Core Web Vitals Report Google Search Ranking Volatility Exploding Today - Where Is The Confirmed Algorithm Update? Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Branding here at Wix and I'm enjoying life. Check this. She's not AI. I ran it through an AI checker. It's 100% human. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Oh wait, you forgot. I've got a bionic leg. No, I don't have a bionic leg, although I wish I did. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that would be awesome. I wish I had a bionic... Maybe my knees wouldn't hurt so much. Crystal Carter: My knee is such a mess. I wish I had a better knee. Maybe AI can fix my leg. Mordy Oberstein: My wife's like, "Why is your chair so low?" I'm like, "Well, because if I sit high up and then my leg half dangles a little bit and my knee hurts at night." Crystal Carter: These are honestly the things that you have to think about. Mordy Oberstein: I've reached that stage. Now I feel officially old, my knees hurt. Crystal Carter: They have that... What is that, there's that standing up sound, the... Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I totally do that. I totally do that. Crystal Carter: These are the things. You've got to pace yourself these days. You have to pace yourself. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Advil. No, I'm just kidding. Crystal Carter: I know. Mordy Oberstein: It's brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search that at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can work efficiently and at scale with cutting edge SEO technology that helps you work as efficiently as possible. It helps you even leave broken links with automatic redirects, inspect indexation in a single bound, and apply tags to all pages within a folder faster than a locomotive. Look up in the sky. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Wix SEO for scalability and efficiency. Heck, by the way, you can even spin up content with our inbuilt AI tools. Make sure you edit and review the content that comes out. I feel like I need to have that disclaimer in there about all things AI. Scalability, by the way, why? Because today we're helping you scale the company ladder by talking about how to move up from a junior to a senior at an SEO agency. By the way, the advantage of moving up to being from a junior to a senior is you'll get discounted tickets to the movie and on the bus. Crystal Carter: That's a fact sponsored by Advil again. Mordy Oberstein: Right, bad joke. Just kidding, not that kind of senior. We're going to dive into what holds SEOs back from taking on a senior role at an SEO agency, what skills actually help you thrive in a senior role at an SEO agency, the mindset that matters for thriving as a senior at an SEO agency. And to help us, we have a special guest host, all around great guy, all around nice guy and co-founder of StudioHawk UK, Anthony Barone is set to join us in just a wee bit. Plus we'll take a look at Google for jobs and some red flags in SEO job listings that you might want to avoid. And of course we have the snap piece of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So get out your climbing shoes as episode number 44 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you reach the top of the SEO agency mountain. Crystal Carter: We're climbing up. Mordy Oberstein: We're climbing on up. It's really moving on up, but we're just going to go with it. So agency life is a hard knock life, cue music from Annie. I wouldn't know, I've never worked at an agency, but from what I've heard, that seems to be the general consensus. Crystal Carter: I had a lovely time working at an agency. There's some great agencies. We are going to be joined by the head of a fantastic agency, as a matter of fact. And so I think that there's some great things and it's not without challenge, but I think the challenge could be fun. Mordy Oberstein: Well, that's what I was about to say, that you can meet these challenges and really grow and advance your career by checking out as much as you can as a junior, learning as much as you can, and then taking on a senior role at an agency and really putting your SEO career on a very different trajectory. So to do that, to help us climb the agency, scale the agency ladder, give a warm welcome to the boss. Also, again the founding member of StudioHawk UK. The one, the only, Anthony Barone. What's up? How are you dude? Anthony Barone: Very well. Thank you very much for having me today. Morning, Crystal. Great to be here. Crystal Carter: It's our absolute pleasure. Such a big fan of StudioHawk. Mordy Oberstein: Love it. Crystal Carter: The team is fantastic. I love your energy and I'm sorry that every time I see y'all, I kakaaw at you. I just love it. Mordy Oberstein: Great logo, by the way. Love the logo. So cool. Check if you're listening, check it out. Anthony Barone: Thank you very much. Some of the team have actually taken on that kakaaw actually. Mordy Oberstein: Really? Anthony Barone: Internally, yeah. So we start to do it. So Logan and a few other team members, when we're doing things, the kakaaw will come out. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like whenever there's success, landed a big new client, optimize a million pages, it should be an official kakaaw that goes off around the office. Anthony Barone: Pretty much. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Anthony Barone: Pretty much. Mordy Oberstein: We're glad we can do that for you. Anthony Barone: Thank you very much. Crystal Carter: Hawks assemble. Mordy Oberstein: It just reminded me of the Silver Hawks, which was an amazing 1980s cartoon, but let's not get too down, yeah, check that out. That's a deep cut. Let's not go down too far the 1980s wormhole because I can get very much stuck there. Anthony, you obviously know a lot about working on an SEO agency, having founded a branch of one. Let's just start from basics, the most fundamental thing. If you're trying to move up from a junior role to a senior role, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Anthony Barone: The strategy. You can learn about SEO on the internet. You can go onto many different platforms to try and learn... All the stuff about SEO is out there. You don't have to tell, I don't have to tell you. It's the execution and then understanding how those individual parts that make up SEO are relevant in an overall strategy for a business. Whether you're working as an agency like us or working in-house, how do these moves move the needle for the business to achieve their goals? Crystal Carter: I think that's so important. You talked about, "Yeah, you can learn it online." I think in an agency environment, what's great is that you can learn from other people. So one of the things that I learned... And this is why I said I love your team. So the team element of an SEO agency is so fantastic and if you've got a good team, like I know that you do, you have a good team, then you can learn from each other. So somebody says, "Oh, I tried this thing and it worked really well", and says "Really? Oh, what did you do?" And then you can apply it to another client and you say, "Oh well I did this a little bit different and I added that." And so, that I find is a really fantastic environment for learning and for bringing together all those component parts that you're talking about. Mordy Oberstein: For us, we've got a team of eight here, whereby some people working on an e-commerce client, some people working on B2B, they'll be working on Shopify, they'll be working on this, they'll be working on that. I've tried one thing here that might work there. So yes, working on the team and being able, so that's what we try and do. We try and collaborate and foster that learning and growth between each other. So we'll have a Slack channel. I do things like team brainstorms every couple of weeks where we'll look at a client and go, "Hey, what's maybe the problem with this one? Or how can we grow this one?" And then so someone will come who did mention it before, "Oh, how about you try this? Oh actually, have you done a proper technical SEO ordered on so and so? Or actually we tried improving location pages for this." So the team, because you got the... Instead of just one person learning everything, the more members you add to your team, the more people that can read, they'll learn, they can understand what's going on in SEO, they're working on different platforms, they're working on different clients, they're working in different businesses. All that knowledge can then... You want to try and foster that sort of knowledge sharing. So you're saying, at the role of someone in senior in the SEO agency, it's really to foster collaboration. Anthony Barone: I would be fostering collaboration, leadership, lead by example and then overall strategy. So being able to understand the business or understand the client and go, all right, what will move the needle? Like a site map in robots TXT, that's default. No one's really going to care. But a full on hub and spoke approach, content approach. Great. That's the type of stuff where I think as a senior you're looking more at that strategic level because you've got really good knowledge in SEO and how it works and all that. But it's then putting it into place for different clients, businesses, people, websites. That's where I think you make that leap. You can go and teach a junior how to do title tags great. But it's understanding the data and analytics and strategy behind that. Crystal Carter: And I think also being able to demonstrate your strategy. So certainly with one of the key components of any SEO agency is maintaining good client relationships and being able to build on your client base to minimize churn so that you can maximize growth and all of that sort of stuff. So to be able to evidence the strategy that helped you to achieve that for the client is really, really useful. I was lucky enough to see an entry for StudioHawk and awards and I know that you guys are great at evidencing your work. What advice would you give to somebody who wanted to demonstrate the high level strategies that they have in order to be seen as a more senior role, and potentially move up? Mordy Oberstein: So it's matching that with the business goal. So this is where SEO struggles because it's an intangible thing. I can't sit there and guarantee you 10,000 views a month from Google. It's just not the way it works. So you use things like forecasting and then Google search console data and you use their Google analytics data as the baseline and then try and map out points along the way where you can then match up, okay, these are the tasks you want to join the SEO front and this is why. So using that data, but for me, reporting is a big one to be able to showcase the intangible thing that is SEO in a tangible way so that either, your team can understand what you're trying to do, clients can understand what you're trying to do, stakeholders are trying to understand what you do. But that's the way I see it, is fundamentally understanding what you're trying to do, the data around it, explaining that clearly and then matching that up with the business goals. Because not everyone's going to be as good at SEO as you, that's why they're paying you either in-house or they're paying an agency to tell them how this matches up with their business goals. How is this going to get me more sales of chairs? That's what you want to try and do. It's funny because I wanted to hone in on that, being good at SEO, not just related to that. I do have a question about this, but also to pivot back to a point you made before, I feel like there's like a pink elephant in the room, white elephant in the room. I always get the two phrases confused. I'm so bad at English. Just because, I feel like just because you haven't moved up to a senior role doesn't mean that you are not good at SEO. I think that something you hit on before that it's very strategy driven, it's very top level view, holistic view of everything that's going on, understanding the impact and aligning it, the business, all that kind... That in itself is a unique skill and a unique way of thinking. And that I don't think it means that if you're not good at that, you're not good at SEO. It just means that you're not good at this particular part, which happens to coincide with what is important to being in a senior role. Anthony Barone: A hundred percent. And this is where the collaboration comes together. There's people who are just SEO specialists, they love that, they want to do that. Fine, jump into a WordPress website, jump into a website, jump in and do the work and see the results, great. But in terms of high level strategy, some people will like it, some people don't. Honestly, you are right. It shouldn't disqualify you from thinking that you're not good. Because mate, you've got SEO specialists at bigger companies who would be better than senior SEO specialists at other companies. So you're a hundred percent right there. Crystal Carter: In my career, I had a situation where I made a role, they didn't have a senior role, they didn't have a senior SEO role. And I was like, we should because in our current structure we need one. And I basically was looking around and I was like, I'm training everybody. I'm doing the role. Mordy Oberstein: I am the senior now. Crystal Carter: Well I'm training everybody. So we had a new group of people and sometimes with agencies you'll have a growth spurt, you'll suddenly get a bunch of clients or suddenly you'll get a really big project and you have to hire quickly and get people on. And I was training everybody and I was like, I'm training everybody. I should be acknowledged for all of this because they're taking all of the things from my brain. So I think that that's something that you can think about as well. So if you, certainly in my experience, I found that the new thing that comes along, let's say there's a new mobile first and maybe we need to be doing more mobile or maybe there's a new other thing as well. And I think that sometimes people feel like, oh, I have to stick to whatever role is currently available to me. But... I can see you nodding, Anthony, there can be sometimes that where, maybe we should create a new role and maybe you should advocate for yourself to be that person for that new role, if you see that there's a need. Mordy Oberstein: Understand. Honestly as an agency owner, when you can see that drive and determination for people who are willing to put it all on the line to be like, "I could do better than that." Great, because you have done so well to be able to force me or force an owner to consider creating that role. Whether you call that head of role, head of training, head of SEO, head of strategy or whatever it is, like you did, you proved your worth, you showcased what you were doing and forced your way into creating that role, because sometimes the business owner just doesn't think about it. They just, recency bias, they like what's happening. It's always worked, so why change it? But with SEO, as we know, you have to keep, if you don't innovate, you die. And with SEO, it's probably one of those industries where you have to keep on top of everything because we are throwing so many challenges at all times. You look at every facet of SEO, Google changes, you've got other search engines that'll keep changing, you've got CMS's that'll keep changing. Businesses keep changing. There are so many factors that keep changing. You have to keep on moving because there are so many working parts that make up our day-to-day lives to be able to get that traffic from search engines. If we're not doing that, we are left behind. It's so much of that goes into it, is more so I feel like business acumen, business skills, business navigation, however you want to define it versus actual SEO, it's like almost ironic in a way. Anthony Barone: Hundred percent. And that's why we are trying, that's the strategy point of it, where you're just understanding, dig into those client's understanding what are your goals, what do you want to achieve? Because they don't understand what a robust TST file is. But if you say you have disallowed Google from calling your website and that stops you from, that stops you from ranking on Google to get some more customers, they'll maybe understand, but I don't actually know what the hell a robot's txt file is. So that's some of the stuff that you want to try and match up, which as a junior, you're learning the ropes, you're learning the basics, that's what you want to do. But as you grow and develop, it's having that commercial mindset of you are an agency or you are a client, you are an in-house that's getting paid, and it's simple like money in money out, ROI, what am I doing to be able to provide the ROI? Because if you think in terms of how a business owner thinks, they're looking at simple P&L, money in money out. I'm paying this person for X job, what's it going to get me? And as an agency you look at that and go, all right, we've got X amount of time and investments to be able to do what we need to do. How can we make the biggest impact? Crystal Carter: How do you feel about opportunity? So within an agency space and within a single SEO space or if you are a freelancer, if you are in-house or whichever. In my experience I've seen that being able to spot the opportunity, spot the gap can be really, really useful. Do you find that that is something that would lead you to progressive project or a progressive person to lead that project? How do you find that that plays into reading opportunities for progression? Mordy Oberstein: I love that type of stuff because if you can see someone who's actively used data to find those opportunities. There's one where, speaking to a local bar and their SEO's no good, but I looked at the Google search console and found three or four opportunities to create events, pages, and hubs because they just had no idea. So using that data to be able to find those opportunities. And when I see people who do use that same methodology, using data or trends, and then even just a little bit of an understanding of the business, that's where you can be like, all right, awesome. You are now thinking about it differently. It's not just the SEO bit like, "Oh, I'm going to use Google Search Console to see if I can improve impressions." No. Actually using Google search console to see what Google and the users are clicking on and Google showing you for, and they're looking at the website and going, oh actually people are searching for this, they're looking for it, but it's not on a website. And then there's an opportunity, there's a content plan, there's a whole strategy around it. So I love that when I see that from people. I think it's something that's universal at a certain level of, we'll call it business or involvement in a company, that hunting for opportunity is the key difference between one level of functioning within an organization and a different level of functioning within an organization. And on that point, and you think about spotting opportunity, I'm curious, as somebody who is high up in the agency world, to toot your horn for you, what are you looking for? If you are looking to move somebody up? And I know maybe you want to speak very generally about this, because who knows who from StudioHawk is listening, Ethan Marlbauer. Crystal Carter: You're taking notes right now. Mordy Oberstein: Taking notes, but what are you looking for, universally speaking? Anthony Barone: So for me it's the attitude to learning and the attitude to taking on a challenge. Because like you said, in SEO, nothing ever stops. Just because something worked six months ago doesn't mean it's going to work today. And the businesses are changing. People shut down their website, Google will drop the bomb at Google IO. Mordy Oberstein: And SGE. Anthony Barone: There you go, like SGE. So these are the types of things where it's attitude to learning, being a perennial student SEO. And for me with SEO, it's having a lack of ego. And I say that because SEO, there is always someone harder, better, faster, stronger as staff, I would say in SEO. So it's about learning from each other and learning others who have done it with bigger science, smaller science, bigger ecomms, smaller ecomms, because there's always someone who's done something somewhere that we can learn from and either replicate or improve. So that's what I say. Crystal Carter: I agree with that a hundred percent. In my agency team that I was working with, I mean my team now, which is fantastic as well. Shout out, Mordy Oberstein. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Thank you. Crystal Carter: I think sharing is caring and I think remembering when you were in an agency... People say, and I'm not sure if I like this term generally speaking, but we're all going to eat. We do well on this client, then we are all going to benefit from that. And we as a team, if you see somebody in your agency that's struggling and you can help them, then that means that we can all do well out of it. If you see someone in your team that's doing well, you should think, how'd you do that? How did you do that? How can we do that for everyone? How can we roll that out? And that perennial student, that's a great phrase. Perennial student is a really good way to keep on top of learning and to end and keep on top of new trends, new ideas. That's a great scope. Mordy Oberstein: And it could be scary. You want to bring somebody in who might be better than you are at something. I've had that experience multiple times and it's something that I now lean into on purpose. That person's better? Great. That's actually a good thing. And that's your job as a leader. First off, let's work for me. Right? No, just kidding. But as a leader, that's what you want to be doing. Anthony Barone: I wish us, but all the team better than me SEO, you know, these days. And that's what I want, because for me to be able to run the company, run the agency, I'm the MD, I'm the co-founder, I'm supposed to be the orchestrator. If I'm still doing day-to-day work and telling everyone, if I'm still micromanaging and saying that title tag's not right and hover and not trusting them, then yeah, what am I doing here? So for me, it's about instilling the values, the high quality, the standards that they can replicate, but leave them to do the SEO and lead that team because I've got to run the rest of the agency and then find people who are better than me at other sections and then orchestrate it off. So that's my job. I started off as an SEO, as a junior SEO, but now it's up to me to foster the culture, foster the team, foster the learning so that they can take it and run with it. And then I do all the stuff in the background. Mordy Oberstein: You're living proof, you're proof of the success of going from junior to senior. Anthony Barone: There you go. Thank you very much. Crystal Carter: Kakaa. Mordy Oberstein: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. That's my story, man. I started off as a two day week junior SEO, and I knew nothing about SEO. I had so little idea of SEO that I didn't even bring my laptop to my first day with Harry. I printed off the Moz Beginner's Guide in a binder folder and had highlighted sections. And then my first six months were pretty terrible, but I stuck at it, did audits, read Search Engine and Barry Schwarz, all these guys, right? What's going on? What's going on? And then it clicked for me at about the month five, month six mark as to how the technical came in with the content, came in with the links, came in with the local and then go, oh, okay. And then Google search content and using all these tools and started to click for me because it was more like the Mr. Miyagi approach of understanding why am I waxing the car? Well, you're going to wax the car because it's going to lead you to be able to do that move. Same thing with us at StudioHawk and the way I learned was do a title tag here, do this, do that, and then all of a sudden after, well not all of a sudden, but after six months it started to click. And then that's how I did it. And then I started to develop further and further. And then, I think it was maybe, I was in hospitality and retail before this and had to deal with a lot of people and had to do a few things in those areas where you're looking at that ROI and go, okay, so how is this SEO matching up with the business goals and trying to be a bit more commercially minded when I was just an SEO specialist and then developed to be senior back in Australia and that's my story. And then being able to move over here and create an agency. You said it, that's my journey as well. Crystal Carter: We've discussed this before about the value of doing that repetitive SEO task of going hard on the copy/paste. You do a lot of time, you go do a lot of time strategizing, planning, research, and things, and then you upload it or onto a sheet or you upload it onto a document and then you got to get it on the website and you do that 700 times, then you're going to learn a lot. And I've heard from juniors who are like, "Oh, I've had to do this loads of times, I have to do this over and over again." And I'm like, "Yeah, but that's learning. Every time you do it, you're going to refine it every single time. And if you do it enough times, you'll figure out the best way." They say 10,000 hours, learn an instrument or whatever it is. And I'm not saying necessarily you should do 10,000 hours of SEO, but that practicing, practicing again, practicing with intent, moving forward, that does make a really big difference and helps you get that high level strategy from having done the practical. Mordy Oberstein: Hundred percent. I love SEO. So when you practice it, I regard it as just doing SEO, just like that's what you want to do. You are practicing this through doing, and if you call it practice might have a negative connotation, but that's just doing SEO. The more and more that you do it, the better you get at it. The more understand... And think about how flexible you have to be. You have to do this on one CMS with, you have to do it with different agencies. Someone sells dog food, someone's a lawyer over here, someone does this, someone does that. You're going to be like, you are learning so much, you're going to be so flexible. So I've had days where I'll be having six calls a day and I'll go from women's fashion to dog food to automotive to marketing to men's fashion to marketing again. It's just like all talking about SEO, because you're continually learning, continually understanding SEO. Crystal Carter: I love that. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. And that learning process that... Kind of goes back, we talked about a different episode about learning SEO. One of the great things that you should be doing is taking that initiative just to dive in and learn. I remember I started with, not the Mazda beginner, but I started with the periodic table of SEO from search engine land. But you take that on, you dive into it, okay, what's the next thing that's like, let me read SEO Roundtable every single day to get a sense of what's going on. And as you get a better sense of what's going on, you really get a feel for SEO. That kind of thing is really, really important. If people wanted to learn from you, Anthony, where could they theoretically find you on the internet? Anthony Barone: LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one that I'm trying to really grow in terms of SEO tips or agency staff or the events that we do. So LinkedIn is probably one of the channels that I'm doing again. So probably LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: So we will definitely link to your LinkedIn profile. Anthony Barone: We do run an event called the Agency Social Club, which is geared towards agencies in the heart of shortage. Then we're just trying to create a fun, friendly vibe on the night and shortage, which is Thursday nights. So look out for the next one. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well follow Anthony. Or is it follow on LinkedIn? I think it's Follow or Connect. I'm not good at the whole LinkedIn verbiage. Whatever it is on LinkedIn, do that and see when the next event is. Anthony, thank you so much for joining us. This was super fantastic. Say Hi to Ethan Mar for me. Anthony Barone: Will do. He's always asking about you. Thank you Crystal. Thank you Mordy. Appreciate your time. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much. So, since we're talking SEO careers, we thought we'd give you some tips on what to look for in an SEO job listing. Maybe point out some red flags because some of them are great and some of them you need to be careful with, I think. So we're going to do that by taking a look at a little All SERP feature, which is called Google for Jobs, which means that we're doing a very special from the top of the SERP because Google for Jobs shows at the top of the SERP. So here's the SEO jobs version of from the top of the SERP. So Google for Jobs, you may not know, you may know because it does depend on the geolocation, doesn't show everywhere, it's box. It's a SERP feature. And what it does is amazing. It aggregates job listing. So for example, if I search for accountant's job in New York City, this box, the top of the SERP will pull in listings from, I don't know, monster.com or career builders. Am I dating myself? Is career builders still a thing? I think I am, right? Crystal Carter: Possibly. Possibly. Mordy Oberstein: That's indeed. Crystal Carter: Glass Door, various different places. Mordy Oberstein: Indeed is another one. Crystal Carter: Indeed, indeed. Mordy Oberstein: Indeed is another one. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: That was not on purpose, by the way. Indeed. It's a great feature that helps you really explore the jobs that, the listings that you might want to explore because you might need a new job and you might want to move careers or whatever it is you're trying to do. Look for a friend. I don't know. However, with SEO jobs, sometimes they're great and sometimes you need to be careful. Crystal Carter: This is true. Mordy Oberstein: What we did was we looked for SEO jobs for you and pulled out some listings and these are from Google for Jobs, which shows at the top of the SERP. And here's a couple of things that you might want to look out for. So for example, I pulled out a job listing and it talked about the usual two plus years experience and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then it says something like strong foundational knowledge of whatever. I don't want to give away the full listing. I don't want you to find it. I don't want you to be able, that listing was bad, that company was bad. It's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to give you tips. We're not trying to get people in trouble. And what it said was strong foundational knowledge of HTML, CSS, analytics and reporting. And that's not out of the order, in my personal opinions, necessarily for certain types of SEO job. But then it said knowledge of social media analytics and tracking technologies. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Whoa, wait a second. That seems like it's a very technical SEO job, which is great. And a social media marketing manager at the same time. Crystal Carter: Right, right. And I think this is something that you get a lot of, I've seen a lot of SEOs discuss this where there will be a job description and it seems to be asking you to do everything. Mordy Oberstein: And I think it's very common in SEO. Crystal Carter: It's very common. I think a lot of teams will be looking for somebody to help them with SEO, potentially in-house. I think you see this less from agencies, these kinds of job requests. But I think, particularly for in-house things, they'll be asking for everything under the moon because they know that they need digital marketing support. And so they'll try to throw everything all together, not realizing that social media is a specialism. And there's a whole different ecosystem for social media. And I think that sometimes this can be a sign that the team is less experienced in their digital marketing journey or less sophisticated in their digital marketing journey. It might mean that they need more guidance. And I think also if you see this job description, if you do get to interview, let's say this is a job description and you're like, oh my gosh, but actually the salary's okay, and there's other things that might work. You can also talk to them about some of this. You can say, I can offer you this, but I would recommend that, you get somebody else to do that part. Or I know a great consultant. Mordy Oberstein: What we're pointing out might not be like, don't apply for the job, or this is a terrible company. It's not what we're saying at all. These would be things to red flag to ask at a job interview, let's say. I mean, I think there are certain things, there are enormous red flags that maybe you shouldn't apply altogether. I don't think we're getting into those. I think those are relatively obvious, but I think it's a common theme. One of them, another one that I saw was talking about, you love technical SEO, can quickly identify issues, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And another bullet point was, excellent writer, you believe grammar editing is not subjective. A lot of heavy detail, wait a second. My point of view is sometimes those are very different people, very technical SEO and someone who's really into content writing, personal experience only here. And that's a little bit biased. Those two things, generally, it's a real unicorn to find somebody who does both of those at that level. Crystal Carter: Right, right. There will definitely be some overlap. And you want somebody who's a good communicator. But if you've got, but I think that depending on the job title for that, you've got somebody who's super technical and you also want somebody who's a super writer. I mean, that person is going to be worth a lot, is going to be very expensive. It's what I say. Mordy Oberstein: And if that is you, you're listening to this ask for a lot of money, I think. Crystal Carter: Right, right. That's what I'm saying. Mordy Oberstein: It's very rare to find somebody who's so in depth into technical grammar and technical SEO. At the same time. Crystal Carter: And I think that there's a difference between, so people who are working in semantic SEO, again, will also be doing some work that will include some understanding of grammar and stuff, but maybe not necessarily with the stylistic, I think more of the LLM functioning of grammar. And I think that if you're that person, then you are worth a lot of money. And if you are that team, then you should expect to be paying that person well to be able to do that. And it might even make more sense to split that job between somebody who is one or the other, potentially supported by an agency or supported by a freelancer or supported by a consultant or something to that effect. Mordy Oberstein: And by the way, if you're listening to this and you're an SEO agency or in-house and you're listing the job listing, you might write things like that because from your point of view, those are things that you're concerned about. And I think it's a matter of just wording them in a way where it's clearly understood. That's something you want, you're focused on. But this is the main part of the job. And I think a great example of one is something similar that I saw was it talked about being successful in the role that you need to be comfortable moving between high level strategy, in the weeds work. And it's for an SEO manager, it wasn't for an SEO strategist. And I think if I were applying for this job, I would be wanting to clarify, well, what exactly is the role? And again, this comes back to the same sort of thematic theme. Sometimes it's a lot and certain things do and don't mesh, being high level strategy and then being in the weeds, it's a very different mindset. Forget the hours in the day, how do I get all that done? It's a very different mindset of, okay, how do I be a super efficient updating all the title tags and how do I make sure this whole high level strategy thing is working are different ways of thinking. So if you're creating this listing, I might want to phrase it in a way where you're making it clear that you don't expect that person to do all of the things. Crystal Carter: Right. I think that that's something to think about. I think when you're speaking to agencies, so if you are somebody who's looking for an SEO job and you see a job listing like that, I think call them up, have a chat. Have a chat, because I think the other thing is there's a lot of flexibility, particularly from an agency point of view, there's a lot of flexibility with regards to agency roles, because an agency will be made up of a team. They might have a specific person in mind, but if you have a lot of the skills and if you have some of them that are high priority, then there's very often a lot of space to negotiate what's required and what's not required. But for instance, for that both strategic and in the weeds thing, you're absolutely right that they're individuals, they tend to be individual skills. But also, I mean, it's possible to do some of that, but it will also have to do with how much time you're giving. Mordy Oberstein: And that's what you need to clarify. Crystal Carter: So you need to clarify, what is the workload? How are we doing this? How many clients should I be expecting to be managing at the same time? Because there's no way that you could possibly be in the weeds on 15 clients at a time and do your strategy at the same time. And also think about what is the team framework. Because if you have a situation where you're expected to be the one man band per client, or whether or not you have assistance or a technologist that works in your team or whether you have developers at your disposal or that sort of thing, that will change what the role is and what the demands are on your role. Because I think, with SEO, there's a million things you could do. And as an SEO, an account manager, you need to think about prioritizing those things and what resources you have available will impact your effectiveness and whether or not, what becomes a top priority. And if you want to be successful in the job, you need to be able to manage that well. Mordy Oberstein: And again, a job listing, you're trying to really, if you're creating a job with, and we've never done this before, but you're really trying to mesh all these 4 million points that you're thinking about into basically an email. And it's hard to get that right. So while these might be red flags, just because there's a red flag there, again, it's something for you to think about and discuss. It doesn't necessarily mean, whoa, bad place to work. It's hard to get that listing right. So inquire. Crystal Carter: Right, absolutely inquire. And I think also we see fairly often that there are people who tend to be from marginalized communities who are less likely to apply for a job if they don't have all the qualifications, like statistically speaking, apparently it's quite common for people to not apply if they don't have all the qualifications. Whereas there are people who are from more privileged communities or whatever you want to call it, who tend to be more likely to be like, "Yeah, I'll like throw my hat in the ring. We'll see what happens." And I think that if you see jobs that have these sorts of things, try to clarify with them and try to make sure that you aren't selling yourself short if it is an opportunity that you think might work for you, but also think about some of the other elements that you can bring, even if it's not listed. And think about some of the things that you are not willing to do, even if they are listed. And so if they've listed a bunch of things, just say in the interview, I don't do that, but I do this really well. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point because again, in the format of a job listing, it's very hard to indicate what you are prioritizing and what you're not prioritizing. You're just listing all of the things basically. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Precisely. Mordy Oberstein: It's exactly why. Now with that, if you want to see what's happening on the SERP, the top of the SERP, new things, new changes, you would have to read the news in order to know that. Crystal Carter: The news. Mordy Oberstein: The news, the SEO news, and what better time than I think than for us to dive into the snappy news. Crystal Carter: The snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. INP has arrived, sort of kind of. A little while ago we told you that Google was going to replace first input delay, better known as FID as one of the core web vitals and replace it with INP interaction to next paint. Long story short, FID is very easy to pass because it doesn't require a lot to get that first input. INP is a little more, let's call it, thorough. Anyway, per met southern over at Search Engine Journal. Google's search console adds INP to core web vitals report. So basically, Google is starting to add INP to the Google search console core web vital reporting as it will replace FID in March of 2024. So new data in GSC, but not part of the ranking equation yet. And just a reminder, don't freak out, in my honest opinion, as the data tends to show that core web vitals has not been a major factor in sites improving losing rankings. Obviously there are cases where it does, but as Google has said, it's more when there is a tiebreaker scenario that core web vitals really factors into that extent. Speaking of freaking out, by the way, per the King of SEO news, Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google search ranking volatility exploding. Where is the confirmed algorithm update? Where's the cream filling? Usually I don't report on these, but this time the movement is so extensive and so unusual from beyond what we normally see with these unconfirmed updates that I thought I would share it here. It's not just, by the way, I'm not just seeing this in the SEO weather tools like the Summer sensor in actual sites that I'm monitoring. I'm seeing a lot of extensive movement. It's hotter than usual for a unconfirmed algorithm update. My SEO sense, if you want to call that my spidey sense but in the SEO sense, is tingling. Seeing this makes me feel like Google is prepping for a bigger, wider, official Google update coming, which is why I guess Barry's asking, where is the confirmed algorithm update? Famous last words, by the way, famous last words. And with that, that is this week's snappy news. And again, what a lovely edition of the Snappiest of the Snappiest of Snappys of New's. Crystal Carter: So snappy. I really enjoyed how snappy it was. Mordy Oberstein: That's what I aim for when I do it. I really, I want to snap like a snow pea, like a really good crisp snow pea. It's like Snap. Crystal Carter: Oh, you're right. That is nice. Mordy Oberstein: They call Snap peas. I don't know, maybe I'm confusing this. Crystal Carter: No, I know what you mean though. Mordy Oberstein: You know what I'm talking about? Crystal Carter: I know what you mean. I know what, the other one that I think of is of is like a nice crisp apple. I love a nice crisp apple. Mordy Oberstein: That does make a nice snap. It does make a nice snap. If only this pocket were about vegetables and fruits that make nice snaps. But there is something to it, right? There's something to it... Crystal Carter: That's true. Mordy Oberstein: The sound of a carrot. Crystal Carter: This is true. We should just start a podcast that's just us eating vegetables. Mordy Oberstein: But I feel like might not be what our target audience is really after. I don't know. I speculate. Crystal Carter: Right. Okay. Okay. We can do some research. Mordy Oberstein: What they might be after is who they could follow on social media for more SEO awesomeness. And this week I have my favorite, one of my favorites, I should say my favorite because Barry Schwartz is also a favorite. It's like Ty, like Barry Schwartz level favorite. It's Carolyn Leiden who's like my SEO BFF. I love Caroline Leiden. Why is she a great follower? Because she's a great person and you'll get great parenting tips, but you'll also get tips about your SEO career because Carolyn is at aficionado at giving advice on SEO career, negotiating for yourself in your career, how to negotiate. She had a newsletter, at one point, all about this. So a great follow at Carolyn Leiden on Twitter about advancing your SEO career and getting a career tips and advice. Crystal Carter: She's a fantastic follow and such an anchor and a wonderful, wonderful part of the SEO community. She's really encouraging and supportive and just fantastic. And she's done so much for the community over the years and it's, she's a fantastic, fantastic follow. Mordy Oberstein: I cannot more highly recommend a follow, so extra emphasis on Follow Carolyn Leiden over at Carolyn Leiden on Twitter. We'll link to her profile in the show notes. Carolyn, we love you. You're amazing. Keep at it. By the way, she does share a lot of job listings, so it's a good follow, practically speaking, if you're looking for a job. Crystal Carter: And her discussions around salary are fantastic. So she had her salary newsletter and I think they're available in archive about negotiations and about making sure that you, she's very frank about it. She's like, get your money, get your money, go and get paid. Go and get your money. Get paid for what you do. And it's really important because I think that SEO salaries can vary significantly. So make sure that you're doing your best for you. Mordy Oberstein: So cha ching. It's a good follow, cha ching, cash register sound. I can't do that sound. I don't know how to, I'm not the guy from Police Academy. I can't make sounds. Crystal Carter: Oh gosh. He's great. Mordy Oberstein: He's wonderful. What happened with that guy? 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 with the new episodes we dive into, does Speed Experience still matter? Short answer, yes, but we'll see why we're asking the question, if you tune in next week. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check out all the great content and webinars we have on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . 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Back UX for SEO checklist Consult this checklist to ensure you’re considering all aspects of user experience and creating people-first content. Get resource Full name* Agency name Business email* I want to receive news and updates from the Wix SEO team. * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix’s Privacy Policy . Get resource Use this checklist to: Create people-first content Increase conversion rates Attract more qualified traffic Improve user experience Ola King SEO and UX Consultant LinkedIn Facebook X Instagram A multi-disciplinary problem-solver, Ola King uses design-thinking to make digital spaces more accessible. He's applied his SEO and UX expertise on Moz’s product team as a consultant and by creating the Notion SEO Growth Kit. He’s also contributed to Moz's Whiteboard Friday series, hosted 2 MozCon conferences, and presented at several SEO conferences. More about this topic Read this post on getting more from your SEO by improving UX and conversions for more information. Share this resource Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

How Wix Blog and Bookings drive consistent business through organic search "Wix gave us the infrastructure to turn SEO into our most reliable growth engine." 1,381% Increase in organic traffic 202% Increase in blog conversions 1,066% Increase in bookings When Lana Zevnik first launched her Amsterdam beauty clinic, Lana Skyn , she relied almost entirely on paid ads to drive bookings. But with rising costs and limited scalability, she knew she needed a more sustainable approach. Switching from Squarespace to Wix helped her clinic achieve nearly a 1,400% increase in organic traffic and transform SEO into her primary growth driver. The business Zevnik's beauty clinic specializes in advanced aesthetic treatments in a competitive market. The clinic needs to stand out through both the quality of their services and through strategic visibility. “Lana informed us that she had a high spend on social media ads, and we believed that part of this budget could be shifted to a more sustainable, long-term channel,” says Giomero Brand , founder and CEO of Unnamed Project, a global marketing agency based in the Netherlands, who led this project. Giomero Brand (right) with colleague Jamie van der Velden (left) Zevnik agreed that she needed a long-term solution that could deliver consistent bookings without the ongoing ad spend—and she was willing to take a chance on a new approach. The SEO challenge Beyond the traffic challenge, the business faced a measurement problem. Lana Skyn’s booking system lived outside of the website, making it nearly impossible to track the full customer journey from blog post to consultation to conversion. Without clear data on what was working, optimizing for growth felt like guesswork. The solution Zevnik partnered with unnamedproject.nl to rebuild the Lana Skyn website on Wix. Wix offered exactly what she needed: intuitive SEO tools , seamless content publishing, and integrated bookings functionality that could tie everything together. Wix Blogs served multiple purposes: the Lana Skyn team shared educational posts with clients during consultations to build trust and answer common questions. They also used the Wix SEO Assistant to optimize blogs for search. “The valuable, easy-to-understand, educational content made it very clear to Google and LLMs that the business had real expertise in its services, which strongly supported rankings,” Brand says. "The blog function became one of our biggest strategic advantages," Brand adds. " Its seamless SEO integration allowed us to publish quickly and effectively, while also helping us build trust early on. Lana could clearly see the process, the intent behind each piece of content, and how SEO would translate into real bookings, not just traffic.” Brand credits this seamless collaboration with the client for part of their success. “Having a client closely involved in the SEO trajectory significantly improves collaboration and has a very positive impact on SEO when done correctly,” he says. “When certain blogs required Zevnik’s review, she could easily access them in draft mode.” From there, “we could quickly tweak design and content to align with Google’s newest preferences or to run A/B tests.” The real turning point came when Zevnik implemented Wix Bookings in April 2025 to replace her external booking system. That way, she could track the complete user journey from blog post to service page to confirmed appointment. "Wix Bookings removed the last barrier between clicks and conversions," Brand says. "It gave us clean data and a fully measurable user journey that proved the true impact of organic search. By July, our first fully integrated month, total orders had increased sharply. The new booking flow removed friction, improved user experience, and directly boosted conversions." The results Within 18 months, Zevnik’s Wix website delivered results that exceeded her most optimistic projections: Organic traffic grew from 135 to over 2,000 visitors per month Monthly bookings increased from 3 to 35 Paid ads now account for less than 10% of total traffic Blog CTA clicks jumped from 232 to 702 "Wix unified the entire ecosystem," Brand says. "Content, bookings, tracking, and on-site behavior all lived in one place, making it possible for a small-budget campaign to operate with the precision and efficiency of a much larger one." The results were so convincing that Zevnik progressively increased her SEO budget—first doubling it, then tripling it. What began as a leap of faith became the foundation of her clinic's growth strategy. Today, SEO replaced paid ads as her primary customer acquisition channel. On top of that, Unnamed Project also won an industry award for "integrating SEO into both content and clinical practice to drive strong traffic, conversions, and client trust," according to the Global Search Awards . "Wix gave us the infrastructure to turn SEO into our most reliable growth engine,” Brand says. “It's not just about rankings anymore—it's about sustainable, measurable business growth." Learn more about how Wix's integrated SEO tools and booking features can help grow your business, and explore our SEO Learning Hub for the latest insights from industry experts. Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . 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How do you effectively manage an SEO campaign? What exactly qualifies as an SEO campaign? (The answer might surprise you!) Wix’s Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein explore how to start, manage, and finish SEO campaigns. Dive into tips on setting the right expectations and how to create synergy across multiple teams when running an SEO campaign. Special guest Jeremy Moser, founder and CEO of uSERP, shares his experience running all sorts of teams from SEO to content marketing and how to manage them all for an effective SEO campaign and beyond. It’s all things SEO campaigns on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Back How to shape an SEO campaign How do you effectively manage an SEO campaign? What exactly qualifies as an SEO campaign? (The answer might surprise you!) Wix’s Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein explore how to start, manage, and finish SEO campaigns. Dive into tips on setting the right expectations and how to create synergy across multiple teams when running an SEO campaign. Special guest Jeremy Moser, founder and CEO of uSERP, shares his experience running all sorts of teams from SEO to content marketing and how to manage them all for an effective SEO campaign and beyond. It’s all things SEO campaigns on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 36 | May 3, 2023 | 37 MIN 00:00 / 37:15 This week’s guests Jeremy Moser Jeremy is founder of uSERP, performance-driven SEO agency that works with massive brands such as Nextiva, Monday, Robinhood, and more. 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 grouping new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO branding here at Wix. And I'm joined by the incredible, fabulous, the amazing, the great, the good, the great and the good, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter The present on the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: No. I was like, you do the good, the bad. I'm like, no, no, no, can't say that. Crystal Carter That's a classic though. Mordy Oberstein: I will love the wa, wa, wa, but I'm not going to call you ugly. That'd be a horrible thing to say. Crystal Carter It would be a horrible thing. Mordy Oberstein: No, completely not true. No, that'd be horrible. Crystal Carter That would be not nice. Mordy Oberstein: You know what I need to do? I need to have the thesaurus open when I do that intro. And next time, that's what I'm doing. Run through all the adjectives. Crystal Carter Fun fact, when I was a kid, I was sure that a thesaurus was a type of dinosaur because you have Brontosaurus, Apatosaurus. And when I saw thesaurus, I was like, that must be a kind of dinosaur. Mordy Oberstein: From the Jurassic period. Crystal Carter I found out that it was a book. And I was like, oh, okay. Mordy Oberstein: That's way less exciting. Crystal Carter I mean fewer teeth, absolutely. But it was probably more useful than a dinosaur, to be fair. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. Not to a five-year-old. Crystal Carter That's such a shame. Mordy Oberstein: My kids, two of them are in the dinosaur phase. Crystal Carter I love dinosaurs. Also, dinosaurs, when your kids are into dinosaurs, it's great because dinosaurs are unlicensed. So you can get your kid any kind of off brand dinosaur and they're like hooray. Whereas if they're into, I don't know- Mordy Oberstein: Jurassic Park. Crystal Carter Like Minecraft or Roblox or something, and then you get them something, they're like, this is not the main brand thing where it's like one T-Rex is the same as another T-Rex. It does not matter. So yeah, dinosaurs- Mordy Oberstein: It's so true. Crystal Carter Fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: The only downside is pronouncing the names in the book. So you're reading the kid a book and you sound like an idiot, like chezasaurus. Crystal Carter What's it? Archaeopteryx. I think I've pronounced that correctly. I have no idea. Mordy Oberstein: Because they're also really into dinosaurs, but at a different level now. So I'll be reading the little ones book and the older ones will be like, "That's not how you pronounce it." Crystal Carter Oh, it's also when people are like, "Oh, a Pterodactyl is a dinosaur." I'm like, "No it's not." Mordy Oberstein: It's not. I know that. I know that now. Crystal Carter It's a flying wizard, I think you'll find, actually. Mordy Oberstein: I have been corrected numerous times. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Jurassic Park. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where our marketing dashboards let you have a bird's eye view of all your marketing efforts, track email campaigns, TLDR Google Search Console data, Google Business Profile Analytics, along with your marketing calendar. It's all inside the Wix marketing dashboard and it can help you manage your campaigns as today, we're talking about how to shape an SEO campaign. Crystal Carter How to shape an SEO campaign, and someone might say, and there it is. Mordy Oberstein: Little bit of titanium white here. There might be little clouds there. We're talking about how to focus your SEO energy as we discussed the different types of SEO campaigns, how to successfully manage SEO campaigns, and what often factors into things going wrong so that we can help you prevent things going wrong. Also, uSERP founder, Jeremy Moser, moseys on over to share his wisdom on running multiple teams with different goals for the same client when managing SEO campaigns. Plus we'll have a wee bit of fun with Google's also ask feature and of course with the snappiest of SEO news for you and who will should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So place the placard on the lawn and put on a derby hat, kiss someone's baby because episode number 36 of the SERP's Up podcast is campaigning for your SEO knowhow. Crystal Carter I see what you did there? I was like, like, "What is... Oh, okay." It was a whole journey for me, that metaphor. Mordy Oberstein: This is as political as I'll get on this podcast, but I like nothing about political campaigns except the derby hats. Why are those gone? Those the one thing, the little circle hats, those straw circle hats people used to wear back in, I don't know, the 1800s. Crystal Carter Oh yeah, I suppose that was a thing. Mordy Oberstein: That was a thing. It's gone. Those you got to bring those back. Those seem kind of cool. Crystal Carter Yeah, absolutely. And I think, yeah, I don't know, there's a lot to it. They're always interesting political campaigns. Mordy Oberstein: That's to put it mildly. Well, today we're talking as we quickly pivot it away from politics... Crystal Carter We're talking about SEO campaigns, we're talking about SEO campaigns. So we are talking about how to shape an SEO campaign, why they matter, what I even mean when I'm talking about SEO campaigns. And essentially, when I think of an SEO campaign, I mean that of something that's like a sprint or a chunk of dedicated work for a strategic goal. So a lot of times with SEO, you might be generally maintaining your general visibility across the website or for technical SEO, you might be generally maintaining the technical integrity of the website as you go along a sort of webmaster, website maintenance sort of situation. And for content, you might just have a regular program of content. We publish two blogs a month or something like that. But sometimes you will have a campaign, a dedicated campaign for a particular strategy where you have a strategic core to the things that you're doing. And this will apply to businesses of all sizes. And I generally break these up into three types of SEO campaigns. You have your sort of launch, which is where you're trying to launch a brand or a product or a new season or something. And this will generally include things like content creation, UX elements, like you might add a new feature to the website or something like that. And else you might think about strategic links and PR and that sort of thing. But the general goal of it is to make a big splash in one shot with lots of stuff happening and getting lots of traffic and attention to the website at once. And you might think about lots of different ways to do this. Another type of SEO campaign might be seasonal. So this is still a sort of time sort of thing, but it's more about making a big splash at the right time. So it might be that you're trying to do something for the holiday season or you're trying to do something for the vacation season, or you're trying to do something for an awareness day for instance. I know that there are some companies where they know that on a certain awareness day, they're going to get a lot of traffic, they're going to get a lot of things coming through. And so you need to get things going there. Another thing you might want to think about is a sort of competitive positioning campaign. So this might be a little bit more of a long-term thing. But I've definitely used this campaign particularly for local... The times I've used it was for a local SEO campaign. So there was a particular keyword and we needed to do general SEO across the whole website, but we also had a particular campaign focus on a particular keyword and a particular sort of SEO positioning that was the local name or the name of the location and lawyers or whatever. So we were like, we need to own that SERP. And we did a targeted campaign, pushing lots of different things to their, back links and content and general static page optimization around that. And essentially, you are going hard on this particular term or this particular effort until you have washed out the competition. So it's a big splash until you've washed out the competition. And these are all really interesting things and there's various different ways that you can approach it. One I saw recently was a good one from Crystal Horton who was talking about a campaign that they did across the local SEO to sort of get a lot of more visibility for an HVAC company that had been in business for 17 years. And again, they'd been online for ages doing online stuff, but they looked up and they were like, we need to be more competitive in this particular space. And Crystal and her team went all in on this particular element and they got some great results. So she recorded that three weeks that they had two weeks later they were number one on Google, and then they were booked out for three weeks straight, generating over $100,000 in revenue. And that's the kind of impact that a campaign can have is that if you target your campaign in the right space, you can get a big impact that achieves your strategic goals and has general value to your overall SEO activity. Mordy Oberstein: And a lot of times you are actually doing a campaign without realizing it. The mini campaigns. For example, if you're, hey, you know what, there's a a topic that yeah, we're kind of ranking, it's like page two, page three, why don't we beef that up? Why don't we focus in on that? So that functions, it might not be a full-blown campaign, but it functions very much like a campaign does. So if you're listening to this podcast, "I never done an SEO campaign before," well maybe you have just a micro. Crystal Carter Right, right. And I think also that if you're looking at that, so let's say you have this sort of, we are ranking 25 and you're like, "We could totally get this." And this is something that I've done before. So we had a client and it was off season and they were at a theme park and it was the offseason. So it was winter and most of their traffic was coming in the summer. And then I'm like, "Hey, we're ranking 30 now, but I bet we can get ourselves up too much more competitive by the time the summer rolls around." And so we started pushing and pushing and pushing on this particular set of keywords around vacation rentals and stuff like that. By the time the summer came around, we were already up there. The other thing that happens, if you're planning to do a particular targeted mini campaign is it's a really good opportunity to get some of the other social and the other digital channels involved. So if you know that you're going to be emphasizing, let's say, I don't know, National Dog Day or something like that because you're a pet store or something, and let's say National Dog Day is four months away and you know we're going to go after this keyword, then you can say, "Hey, social media team, we are planning to do this and this on the SEO side. Can you promote these blogs that we've got coming on, on social? Can you promote it? Can we do that?"And your sales team will probably be like, "Oh, hey, we could also do a little sales promotion, 50% off on dog collars or something at the same time as well." It's like, cool. Now we've got three channels that are all hitting that. And you say to your newsletter people who are constantly looking for content because you got to fill those newsletters, "Hey, we're getting some graphics done, we're getting this done." So then you can take an SEO focus and you can expand it out to a wider campaign and get a lot of good traction. The benefits of this is that users are everywhere, and SEO is really about connecting with users. So users are everywhere. If they see you on email, they see you on social, they see you on wherever. And maybe they might not remember, they're like, "I knew there was this pet store that was doing something for dog day, I can't remember what it was." And they'll Google it. And if you've got the stuff on your website and you've got the stuff on your Facebook and you've got the stuff on your Google business profile that says, "Hey, we are the place for National Dog Day" or whatever, then they'll find you. So all of those little bits of information will all filter in to users so that you're in the forefront of user's mind around this particular campaign or particular keyword. Mordy Oberstein: And that's a really great point because one of the benefits of creating things as in campaign form is that it helps you organize things. I don't know if I really need to do it as a dedicated campaign, but if you're trying, especially in a larger organization, if you're trying to organize teams who tried to organize focus, in and of itself, it's a great way to create internal focus within your team and with other teams. And I think one of the things you hit on there before, which is really, really important is that we want to have X done by X date. Crystal Carter Yes. Mordy Oberstein: So there are basic things that go into setting up a, I'll call it a functional, as opposed to a dysfunctional SEO campaign. And one of them is having clear goals, having clear timelines, having clear ways of understanding which pages are important to. Goals, timelines. I'm going to say pages, what are your important pages? What are your important keywords? And then how am I going to track this? Crystal Carter Yes, yes, yes. So here's another example. I remember I had a client and they had a regular event. Because this is the other thing, you have I think it's a little garden furniture- Mordy Oberstein: I love garden furniture, by the way. It's is my favorite kind of furniture. Crystal Carter Particularly if you live in a seasonal place. So you have garden furniture. So if you have something that's particularly a seasonal campaign or something like that, it's like your garden furniture. You know you have it, you know you're going to use it every year. You need to figure out what you're going to do when it's not time for you to use it, whether you're going to put it in your shed or your garage or whatever it is. And then when it rolls out, you need to make sure that it's ready to go. So this is something that I've done before. So that timeline, the pages, et cetera, I had a client who had a regular Halloween event. And so way in the summertime I'm looking at and I'm like, okay, we have this Halloween page, this Halloween page, that page, this page, that page and that page. And we know that by the time Halloween rolls around, we need to have those pages up scratch, updated, working good, working well, all of that sort of stuff. Cool. So we had that sort of stuff. So by the time Halloween came, everything was optimized, everything was redirected, everything was here, here, here, here, here. So when they were ready with their full marketing campaign, the SEO was right at the top, right at the top, ready to go. And that timing, that focus, et cetera. And it also helps you set priorities. You can say, "Hey, we're doing this in November." And they'll be like, well we have this. We are doing this November. We have this and this setup." I'm once again asking for your support. We need support. Mordy Oberstein: If you don't, you're getting a horse's head in your bed. But that part of it, it's the summertime now. By the time Halloween rolls around, my greatest piece of advice to you, if you're working with a campaign style of anything particular with SEO campaigns, is turn on that type A part of your personality and dig deep to find it and turn that switch on. Because all of that, all of those type A kind of skills come into play when you're working on an SEO campaign. I feel like I'm running through a checklist today. What are your goals? How are you going to reach those goals? What do you need to do in order to get there? What are the problems that are going to happen along the way? The best part of being a type A personality here is anticipating what's going to go wrong along the way, particularly when you're working with other teams. What are the roadblocks going to be? What are the dependencies going to be? And what are the timings on those dependencies going to be? And understand that that's going to be problematic and that's going to have to be reshaped. And having another, if you're real type A, you'll have a secondary route when things go wrong to figure out, if you're not going to go that way- Crystal Carter Plan B. Mordy Oberstein: You have a plan B to go ahead and do this. Because unless you plan this thing out, like it's nobody's business, this campaign is not going to work, especially when it's complex and it's involving other types of pages, other types of teams, other types of stakeholders, you have to be able to, in minute detail. Crystal Carter And that planning gets you buy-in. Right? That planning gets you money. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. No one's going to buy into this plan of yours if they don't understand how it's going to work, when it's going to work. And they really believe that it's going to work because they've seen the stages of development. Crystal Carter Right. And if you show up to with a full Gantt chart and a full research things, like I've researched this and not only will we do this, will we do that. I had a campaign that I was running with a client for a coffee client or something, and it was something they'd never done before. But I looked around and I could see that in the particular audience, there was a gap here that they could fill with if they did this, this, this, this and this. And I had a full Gantt chart, like how do we get from here to here in this time? And I was like, we need this, this, this, this, this and this, all of that sort of stuff. And they'd never done it before, ever. But because it was so clearly, meticulously articulated. Mordy Oberstein: Also known as meticulated. Crystal Carter Because it was so clearly laid out, they were like, "Yeah, I get that. I can see that." Because that's the other thing is people can't always see everything unless you lay it out really clearly. Mordy Oberstein: And especially true when we're talking about SEO campaigns, so seasonality finally, everyone knows Black Fridays coming around, we're going to ahead. But sometimes these campaigns are over the span of a year or two years. And then, I've been involved with things where we're trying to grow, let's say a blog long term, and there's many things that go into that, many, many things like the brand awareness, the authority, the back links, the way we're breaking into the niche, all of these different kind of factors. And those are very, very slow, long-term kind of things. And you have to have a long-term plan in order to strategize to the point where you understand that these are the things that we're going to need to do and these are the creative ways we're going to go about doing it. Because otherwise, you won't even know how to get started with the thing. Crystal Carter And I think the other thing that you're mentioning is a few things about managing internal stakeholders, because for a long term campaign like that, you need to keep people enthused. You need to keep people in your team on board with what you're doing. So being able to report, "Hey, we've made these green shoots. Hey, we improved by 10%. Hey, we improved by 50%. Hey, we've got more of this moving forward." That's going to help you keep people engaged in the campaign over a long-term process, which again, can very often happen with SEO, if you're planning a whole content thing, a whole knowledge base thing. The initial sort of like, yeah, we launched sort of thing. How do you keep that going? Mordy Oberstein: How do you keep that going? That's really the thing. You launched the new product, launched a new blog, but then it fizzles out. I've seen a gazillion times. Crystal Carter Right. So you need to pump it. These new, not skateboards, surfboards, they're like aqua foil surfboards or something, and people can surf backwards. I was at the beach and I saw somebody, I was like, is that man surfing backwards? And they're these different... Anyway, they pump them. It has to do with what I understand. Mordy Oberstein: Remember LA Gear pumps and Reebok pumps. Anyway, now I'm totally dating. Crystal Carter Yes. So basically they pump their legs and then they can just keep riding on the wave and they ride on the momentum underwater. But you have to keep- Mordy Oberstein: You have to keep momentum. Crystal Carter You have to keep momentum and you have to keep pumping your thing so that it stays front of mind. Mordy Oberstein: That's really my top thing, where do SEO campaigns go wrong? Is that you lose that momentum, which we're going to talk about in a separate podcast altogether, which it's a little teaser for that. But keeping that momentum, or the lack thereof is one of the big reasons why SEO campaigns fail. I'll say other than that, unrealistic expectations, unrealistic timelines. Because you might get the initial buy-in like, wow, that sounds super awesome, let's do that. But it's completely unrealistic. And once people realize that that's unrealistic, you lose credibility. And once you lose credibility, you have no hope, or very little hope. I shouldn't be so doomsdayish. Crystal Carter Yeah, I think that being able to forecast what you can expect from the campaign is really useful. Being able to set expectations before you get going is really important in your campaign. And being able to demonstrate how it's adding value to not only the specific campaign pages for instance, but also to the wider website or digital presence of the brand is really, really useful. Mordy Oberstein: And that's where that planning comes into play because setting those expectations, you're going to theoretically very often get pushback. Why can't we move more aggressive here? And you need to be able to say, "Well, let me show you the plan, and here's why. If you're more aggressive, it won't work. It will fail." So they go hand in hand, setting the realistic expectations, and the keyword being realistic, depends on your ability to plan the thing out, to show why that's realistic. Because most of the time, other stakeholders are going to want to be more aggressive because that's their job. You have to realize their job is to push you to be more aggressive to grow the company. So if you're going to say, okay, and with SEP, it's very, very important in my opinion, to be realistic. And if you're not, it's usually coming down. If you're not successful in that, it usually comes down to showing a failure to show what the planning stage is and why this is realistic. Crystal Carter And it can be very, very tempting to be like, "Yeah, it's going to be the best thing since sliced bread." Mordy Oberstein: No, don't because it will not. Six months from now you will see hockey stick growth. Crystal Carter Right, it'll be fine, it'll be fine. Mordy Oberstein: Slow incremental growth in a strong, significant, slightly aggressive way is where do you want to go? Crystal Carter Right. Mordy Oberstein: Realistic. Crystal Carter These are the things, like lower your expectations, people. Mordy Oberstein: That's what I told my wife. Now, doubling back on what we're talking about, your point about your dealing with multiple teams, getting multiple buy-ins, having the multiple teams support you, if you're in the position where you're managing those multiple teams, that is tricky because different teams have different goals and different KPIs and different priorities. So to help us navigate that, we have the founder and CEO of uSERP, Jeremy Moser is here to talk to you about how do you manage multiple teams with different goals when running both an SEO and content marketing campaign or whatever kind of campaign simultaneously, at the same time, for perhaps the same client. Here's Jeremy. Jeremy Moser: The biggest keys I've found in managing multiple teams across SEO and content marketing is pulling the wisdom from both teams and really utilizing that across the board to make decisions. So for example, if you're running two campaigns around SEO specifically, and then content marketing as well, which aren't super interchangeable but often related, the content marketing team will have really powerful insights into the types of content that consumers engage with the most. And so these insights are super valuable from a direct SEO perspective as you can understand what people like, what they engage with and what's actually converting for the brand. Meaning it becomes way, way, way easier to focus your SEO efforts on real data and not just kind of keyword search volume estimates or other shiny objects like that. So the key to managing multiple teams like this with differing goals is to treat them less as two teams, but as two key functions of the same end goal. So that both are aligned in how they can achieve those rankings, but also create content that people genuinely want to engage with. And so things that can help are typically appointing representatives from each team so that all voices are heard, outlining clear goals and KPIs across both teams early on is really key. And then obviously, creating a workflow that everyone adopts where you can outline stages, who takes ownership and all of that. Content marketing teams are really, really good at capturing and creating new ideas and understanding what resonates with ideal customers. And SEOs are really great at helping that content get traction. So systemizing your approach with a good workflow ensures that each team's really able to focus on what they do best and they can move the needle together rather than trying to do something that's a little more of a disjointed approach where content is then stuffed for SEO at the last second. We've all been there, SEOs, or pure SEO content has then tried to be published directly on socials and falls flat. So I recommend highly getting both teams as integrated as possible so that you can get the best outcome. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Jeremy. And thank you Jeremy for that. It is super complicated, isn't it? Crystal Carter So complicated. So complicated because everybody wants to do what's best for them. But it's also important to remember that we're a team. We need to move as a team and that we'll get better results as a team. Mordy Oberstein: And every organization needs that person. They need that person, able to keep in mind the whole team, not just my team. I am so guilty of this. I am all about at Wix, I am not like the SEO. What is good for the SEO. I'm saying to somebody, a little insight into me, I'm somebody who needs to be reined in and Mordy, there's a whole company, there's not just SEO. And you need that person. I appreciate that, though. As somebody who's not always the best at that, I appreciate having that person to rein me in and show the wider goal. Crystal Carter Yeah. And I think that it's, I don't know, we talk a lot about sports or whatever, it's better to get a ring. The whole team gets a ring than one person is like the MVP. Mordy Oberstein: Right. It's not about personal stats in sports unless you're playing golf, which is not a real sport. It's about championships. And as a Yankee fan, I don't want to say championship, I say championships. Crystal Carter Mordy's feeling a little bit emboldened because it's the starting of the season. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's the start of baseball season, we're recording this, and I am worried about the championship, let alone the championships. Crystal Carter It's fine, it's fine. Mordy Oberstein: It's problematic. Crystal Carter It's all good. Mordy Oberstein: Thinking of things that are not problematic, I don't know, that's not a pivot at all. But we have to get off the Yankees before I really just go down into an entire sports wormhole. Talking about talking about SEO campaigns, I thought it would perhaps be both helpful and aligned if we had a look at how Google's people also ask box at four questions that when you expand them, you get an answer to that question with the URL to explore more from that website and how it can help with your e-commerce campaigns, or maybe your seasonal e-commerce campaigns. Crystal Carter Indeed, indeed, indeed, indeed, indeed. This is the time to think about it. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. So here's some fun with people also ask. So in this particular case, I thought it would be interesting to go take a look at what Google is doing around the keyword summer sales on clothes. Crystal Carter Very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. If I'm running a campaign around summer sale for my clothes that I'm looking to buy, you can see how much I shop for clothes and know about clothes shopping. Crystal Carter Okay. So one of the questions is, what date is best to buy clothes? That's a terrible question. Mordy Oberstein: This is not a question you should use. Crystal Carter It's a terrible question. A better question is what is the best time to shop for summer clothes? Mordy Oberstein: That's a great question. Crystal Carter That's a great question. Now I think the best time to shop for summer clothes is May. That's what I think. Mordy Oberstein: I think October for the next year, because they're on sale again because it's obviously, so you buy a year in advance. That's where the type A personality comes in. Crystal Carter Mordy, I don't think you understand. Some people put on a winter coat, and so you might not even fit the clothes. Mordy Oberstein: I don't do this because my kids are growing and I don't... By the way, as much as I joke, I am the one who buys the kids clothes. Crystal Carter Okay. Mordy Oberstein: So this is very pertinent for me. I don't do that. What I try to do is before the season starts, because I order online and then you want to make sure you have time to return it, in case that things don't fit. So yeah, April, May, I just bought now for the summer. So it's late March, early April, but I bought it because it was a holiday coming up, so I wanted to get them clothes for that. I don't know why I'm telling you all this. Normally, I would buy it in the clothes end of April, early April because it gets hot early here. Crystal Carter Okay. Mordy Oberstein: The point is the question is very on target because if you're trying to target your audience with your summer sale campaign, all right July. July. Maybe it needs to be earlier because people are going to be shopping earlier. Crystal Carter Right. Now here's a very interesting thing, and this is a great use for people also ask, and I use this a lot when I'm trying to figure out whether or not we should go for a keyword or whether or not we should create some content around a certain, whether there's a content opportunity there. And I'm looking at the answer that they have for what is the best time to shop for summer clothes. And I think it's a terrible answer. Mordy Oberstein: What is it? Crystal Carter The answer that they've got is August is when you find bathing suits. Mordy Oberstein: It makes no sense. August, it's all over. Crystal Carter August is when you buy and find the best bathing suits, summer clothes and sandals on sale as summer starts to come to a close. That's a terrible answer. Mordy Oberstein: That's my point from earlier. But no one's doing that except crazy people like me. I don't even do that. Crystal Carter And the one that they're linking to there is best times to go shopping on Investopedia. Now if I am somebody who is selling summer clothes and I would like to create some content around summer clothes, to me that is an opportunity because I can do better than that with a piece of content that actually answers the question and is actually dedicated to that answer. And if I am in that niche where I sell summer clothes, let's say I'm Tommy Bahama. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know who that is. Crystal Carter They make good Panama hats and shirts for summer things. Mordy Oberstein: They have baseball shirts? Crystal Carter No, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Crystal Carter Come on now. Okay, anyway, so let's say I have sell resort wear or something. Mordy Oberstein: Resort wear. Crystal Carter Yeah. So let's say- Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to Fantasy Island. Crystal Carter I can look at that and I can go, not only am I in that vertical, but also I can answer that question better and I'm more likely to rank for that. The other thing that's really useful for seeing if those things are good is so you click through to that article and check when it was written. So I'm looking at that and I can see that that was written in April, 2022 or it was updated in April, 2022. Mordy Oberstein: I will tell you a trick with that. What you should really do with that piece of content is go the way back machine and see if it was really updated or not because a piece might be years old and all they did was write updated 2022. If you think I'm joking, I have seen this a thousand times. Crystal Carter When people say it say top tips for 2023 and they've changed nothing. Mordy Oberstein: If all they changed was the title tag, the H1 and the little line after the author's name and it says updated in, and you could go the way back machine, you could see literally nothing else has changed. Crystal Carter Right. So this comes to the fact that Google thinks about recency when they're talking about, when they're trying to show which content where. Mordy Oberstein: It is a factor. Crystal Carter So if you're seeing that you're closer to the vertical, that your domain has better vertical authority and you can see that you can write something more recently and you can write something that more directly answers the question, then that is a sign that maybe you should actually put together that content and there's an opportunity there. Mordy Oberstein: 1000%. At the same time, again, I'm looking at these questions by the way. So my idea with people also ask, I like to thematically take a look away, what's the message? What message people also ask are you trying to send me? And when I look at the questions, all four questions are... Here are the four. I know I have different questions than you because we're in different countries. But mine are when summer clothes go on sale, what month is cheapest to buy clothes, when clothing goes on sales, what is summer clothes season? All of the questions, all four questions have to do with when. When, when when. Which means people are really interested in when. It also means that when is probably a really complicated question. Meaning, so you might think, oh I know when is best, Mordy and Crystal said they shop in May. So May must be best. Maybe it is for us. Maybe it's a really complicated question that depends very much on what it is you're selling, your target audience. Maybe you're selling it to the elderly and they're planning this out in January. Crystal Carter Right. Mordy Oberstein: Whatever it is, it means to me that all four questions are all about when the running your summer clothes campaign, means that you need to do some real research. You're probably going to do well if you go beyond the four questions here and do some actual research. Crystal Carter You could do something around how to plan your summer wardrobe and when's a good time for sales? When's a good time to buy? When's a good time to buy ahead? When's a good time for resort wear or something like that? You could really get into that. And if you could- Mordy Oberstein: Have you tried Tony Bahamas resort wear? Crystal Carter Tommy. Tommy. Mordy Oberstein: Tommy, sorry. Sorry Tony. Crystal Carter I don't know if there's someone called about Tony. Mordy Oberstein: There's got to be a guy named Tony Bahamas. Crystal Carter We should find him on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to ask him about his resort wear. Well, speaking about resort wear, you know what there's no resort wear in, the SEO news. I guarantee you there is no SEO news. This week about Tony Bahama and his resort wear. Crystal Carter Tony Bahama. Mordy Oberstein: Tony Bahama and his resort wear. Hi, I'm a boomer. Crystal Carter Bermuda, Jamaica, ooh, I want to take you. Mordy Oberstein: Bermuda, Bahama, Tony. Okay, well with that going completely off the rails. Here's this week's Snappy News. I'm going to go buy a Hawaiian shirt now. I feel like I want to go buy a Hawaiian shirt. I used to own a really nice Hawaiian shirt, it's my favorite shirt. And I own zero Hawaiian shirts now. Crystal Carter I'll tell you who does wear, who has a few Hawaiian shirts is George. And I'll tell you what, George is very dapper in his Hawaiian shirt- Mordy Oberstein: They look very nice. Crystal Carter He wore it to MozCon, and yeah, it's a good shirts, it's a good shirt. I'll tell you another type of resort wear shirt I always like is the Havana shirt. The ones with the lines and the lines on the side and the pockets. Mordy Oberstein: I love that. Yes. Crystal Carter There's a little bit of that. I'm also very like, what is it? Buena Vista Social Club, I love that look. Mordy Oberstein: It's a very '50s kind of look. Crystal Carter That sort of cabana shirt or Havana shirt with the flat cap. Mordy Oberstein: Love that. That's great. Speaking of shirts, it reminds me, I need to order a new Yankees jersey. I need a Yogi Berra jersey. Anyway, an away Yogi Berra. It doesn't matter. As I tried to prevent going down a baseball wormhole yet again, this by the way folks, now that is baseball season, Crystal's probably cringing and oh my God, here come all like the decks and everything with baseball. It is coming. Here's who you should be following for more social awesomeness for around SEO this week, our follow of the week is Re:signal's Kevin Gibbons. Re:signal, by the way, have a great newsletter. Kevin and team focus on predominantly on e-com SEO. Crystal Carter Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why I thought this makes sense because when I hear SEO campaign, I automatically think seasonality, automatically makes me think of e-com, which automatically makes me think of Kevin and the Re:signal team, all the people over at the Re:signal team. Crystal Carter Re:signal are great. They've provide some fantastic resources and everyone I've met from there has been super, super clever and super kind and just wonderful. So yeah,- Mordy Oberstein: They had a great event recently also. I did not attend. I wanted to attend because I have serious FOMO looking at it on Twitter. Crystal Carter Fantastic event. And yeah, they're a great team. So yeah, do follow Kevin. Mordy Oberstein: Do follow Kevin, sign up for their newsletter. It's @KevGibbo on Twitter, we'll link to that in the show notes as well, which brings us to the end of our podcast. Crystal Carter I'm so sad. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not sad because I'm campaigning for you to listen next week. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. That was a swing and a connection, home run, pivot. Crystal Carter Yes. Oh yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: That's the crack of the bat. The sweet sound of the crack of the bat. Have to move on. 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 at the new episode as we dive into harnessing SEO for lead generation. Look forward 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 SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Jeremy Moser Kevin Gibbon Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub uSERP Resignal SEO Agency The Searchlight Newsletter News: Google: Page Experience Is A Ranking Signal, Not A Ranking System Google Analytics To Show UA3 Data For A Year After It Stops Collecting Data On July 1, 2023: Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Jeremy Moser Kevin Gibbon Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub uSERP Resignal SEO Agency The Searchlight Newsletter News: Google: Page Experience Is A Ranking Signal, Not A Ranking System Google Analytics To Show UA3 Data For A Year After It Stops Collecting Data On July 1, 2023: 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 grouping new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO branding here at Wix. And I'm joined by the incredible, fabulous, the amazing, the great, the good, the great and the good, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter The present on the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: No. I was like, you do the good, the bad. I'm like, no, no, no, can't say that. Crystal Carter That's a classic though. Mordy Oberstein: I will love the wa, wa, wa, but I'm not going to call you ugly. That'd be a horrible thing to say. Crystal Carter It would be a horrible thing. Mordy Oberstein: No, completely not true. No, that'd be horrible. Crystal Carter That would be not nice. Mordy Oberstein: You know what I need to do? I need to have the thesaurus open when I do that intro. And next time, that's what I'm doing. Run through all the adjectives. Crystal Carter Fun fact, when I was a kid, I was sure that a thesaurus was a type of dinosaur because you have Brontosaurus, Apatosaurus. And when I saw thesaurus, I was like, that must be a kind of dinosaur. Mordy Oberstein: From the Jurassic period. Crystal Carter I found out that it was a book. And I was like, oh, okay. Mordy Oberstein: That's way less exciting. Crystal Carter I mean fewer teeth, absolutely. But it was probably more useful than a dinosaur, to be fair. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. Not to a five-year-old. Crystal Carter That's such a shame. Mordy Oberstein: My kids, two of them are in the dinosaur phase. Crystal Carter I love dinosaurs. Also, dinosaurs, when your kids are into dinosaurs, it's great because dinosaurs are unlicensed. So you can get your kid any kind of off brand dinosaur and they're like hooray. Whereas if they're into, I don't know- Mordy Oberstein: Jurassic Park. Crystal Carter Like Minecraft or Roblox or something, and then you get them something, they're like, this is not the main brand thing where it's like one T-Rex is the same as another T-Rex. It does not matter. So yeah, dinosaurs- Mordy Oberstein: It's so true. Crystal Carter Fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: The only downside is pronouncing the names in the book. So you're reading the kid a book and you sound like an idiot, like chezasaurus. Crystal Carter What's it? Archaeopteryx. I think I've pronounced that correctly. I have no idea. Mordy Oberstein: Because they're also really into dinosaurs, but at a different level now. So I'll be reading the little ones book and the older ones will be like, "That's not how you pronounce it." Crystal Carter Oh, it's also when people are like, "Oh, a Pterodactyl is a dinosaur." I'm like, "No it's not." Mordy Oberstein: It's not. I know that. I know that now. Crystal Carter It's a flying wizard, I think you'll find, actually. Mordy Oberstein: I have been corrected numerous times. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Jurassic Park. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where our marketing dashboards let you have a bird's eye view of all your marketing efforts, track email campaigns, TLDR Google Search Console data, Google Business Profile Analytics, along with your marketing calendar. It's all inside the Wix marketing dashboard and it can help you manage your campaigns as today, we're talking about how to shape an SEO campaign. Crystal Carter How to shape an SEO campaign, and someone might say, and there it is. Mordy Oberstein: Little bit of titanium white here. There might be little clouds there. We're talking about how to focus your SEO energy as we discussed the different types of SEO campaigns, how to successfully manage SEO campaigns, and what often factors into things going wrong so that we can help you prevent things going wrong. Also, uSERP founder, Jeremy Moser, moseys on over to share his wisdom on running multiple teams with different goals for the same client when managing SEO campaigns. Plus we'll have a wee bit of fun with Google's also ask feature and of course with the snappiest of SEO news for you and who will should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So place the placard on the lawn and put on a derby hat, kiss someone's baby because episode number 36 of the SERP's Up podcast is campaigning for your SEO knowhow. Crystal Carter I see what you did there? I was like, like, "What is... Oh, okay." It was a whole journey for me, that metaphor. Mordy Oberstein: This is as political as I'll get on this podcast, but I like nothing about political campaigns except the derby hats. Why are those gone? Those the one thing, the little circle hats, those straw circle hats people used to wear back in, I don't know, the 1800s. Crystal Carter Oh yeah, I suppose that was a thing. Mordy Oberstein: That was a thing. It's gone. Those you got to bring those back. Those seem kind of cool. Crystal Carter Yeah, absolutely. And I think, yeah, I don't know, there's a lot to it. They're always interesting political campaigns. Mordy Oberstein: That's to put it mildly. Well, today we're talking as we quickly pivot it away from politics... Crystal Carter We're talking about SEO campaigns, we're talking about SEO campaigns. So we are talking about how to shape an SEO campaign, why they matter, what I even mean when I'm talking about SEO campaigns. And essentially, when I think of an SEO campaign, I mean that of something that's like a sprint or a chunk of dedicated work for a strategic goal. So a lot of times with SEO, you might be generally maintaining your general visibility across the website or for technical SEO, you might be generally maintaining the technical integrity of the website as you go along a sort of webmaster, website maintenance sort of situation. And for content, you might just have a regular program of content. We publish two blogs a month or something like that. But sometimes you will have a campaign, a dedicated campaign for a particular strategy where you have a strategic core to the things that you're doing. And this will apply to businesses of all sizes. And I generally break these up into three types of SEO campaigns. You have your sort of launch, which is where you're trying to launch a brand or a product or a new season or something. And this will generally include things like content creation, UX elements, like you might add a new feature to the website or something like that. And else you might think about strategic links and PR and that sort of thing. But the general goal of it is to make a big splash in one shot with lots of stuff happening and getting lots of traffic and attention to the website at once. And you might think about lots of different ways to do this. Another type of SEO campaign might be seasonal. So this is still a sort of time sort of thing, but it's more about making a big splash at the right time. So it might be that you're trying to do something for the holiday season or you're trying to do something for the vacation season, or you're trying to do something for an awareness day for instance. I know that there are some companies where they know that on a certain awareness day, they're going to get a lot of traffic, they're going to get a lot of things coming through. And so you need to get things going there. Another thing you might want to think about is a sort of competitive positioning campaign. So this might be a little bit more of a long-term thing. But I've definitely used this campaign particularly for local... The times I've used it was for a local SEO campaign. So there was a particular keyword and we needed to do general SEO across the whole website, but we also had a particular campaign focus on a particular keyword and a particular sort of SEO positioning that was the local name or the name of the location and lawyers or whatever. So we were like, we need to own that SERP. And we did a targeted campaign, pushing lots of different things to their, back links and content and general static page optimization around that. And essentially, you are going hard on this particular term or this particular effort until you have washed out the competition. So it's a big splash until you've washed out the competition. And these are all really interesting things and there's various different ways that you can approach it. One I saw recently was a good one from Crystal Horton who was talking about a campaign that they did across the local SEO to sort of get a lot of more visibility for an HVAC company that had been in business for 17 years. And again, they'd been online for ages doing online stuff, but they looked up and they were like, we need to be more competitive in this particular space. And Crystal and her team went all in on this particular element and they got some great results. So she recorded that three weeks that they had two weeks later they were number one on Google, and then they were booked out for three weeks straight, generating over $100,000 in revenue. And that's the kind of impact that a campaign can have is that if you target your campaign in the right space, you can get a big impact that achieves your strategic goals and has general value to your overall SEO activity. Mordy Oberstein: And a lot of times you are actually doing a campaign without realizing it. The mini campaigns. For example, if you're, hey, you know what, there's a a topic that yeah, we're kind of ranking, it's like page two, page three, why don't we beef that up? Why don't we focus in on that? So that functions, it might not be a full-blown campaign, but it functions very much like a campaign does. So if you're listening to this podcast, "I never done an SEO campaign before," well maybe you have just a micro. Crystal Carter Right, right. And I think also that if you're looking at that, so let's say you have this sort of, we are ranking 25 and you're like, "We could totally get this." And this is something that I've done before. So we had a client and it was off season and they were at a theme park and it was the offseason. So it was winter and most of their traffic was coming in the summer. And then I'm like, "Hey, we're ranking 30 now, but I bet we can get ourselves up too much more competitive by the time the summer rolls around." And so we started pushing and pushing and pushing on this particular set of keywords around vacation rentals and stuff like that. By the time the summer came around, we were already up there. The other thing that happens, if you're planning to do a particular targeted mini campaign is it's a really good opportunity to get some of the other social and the other digital channels involved. So if you know that you're going to be emphasizing, let's say, I don't know, National Dog Day or something like that because you're a pet store or something, and let's say National Dog Day is four months away and you know we're going to go after this keyword, then you can say, "Hey, social media team, we are planning to do this and this on the SEO side. Can you promote these blogs that we've got coming on, on social? Can you promote it? Can we do that?"And your sales team will probably be like, "Oh, hey, we could also do a little sales promotion, 50% off on dog collars or something at the same time as well." It's like, cool. Now we've got three channels that are all hitting that. And you say to your newsletter people who are constantly looking for content because you got to fill those newsletters, "Hey, we're getting some graphics done, we're getting this done." So then you can take an SEO focus and you can expand it out to a wider campaign and get a lot of good traction. The benefits of this is that users are everywhere, and SEO is really about connecting with users. So users are everywhere. If they see you on email, they see you on social, they see you on wherever. And maybe they might not remember, they're like, "I knew there was this pet store that was doing something for dog day, I can't remember what it was." And they'll Google it. And if you've got the stuff on your website and you've got the stuff on your Facebook and you've got the stuff on your Google business profile that says, "Hey, we are the place for National Dog Day" or whatever, then they'll find you. So all of those little bits of information will all filter in to users so that you're in the forefront of user's mind around this particular campaign or particular keyword. Mordy Oberstein: And that's a really great point because one of the benefits of creating things as in campaign form is that it helps you organize things. I don't know if I really need to do it as a dedicated campaign, but if you're trying, especially in a larger organization, if you're trying to organize teams who tried to organize focus, in and of itself, it's a great way to create internal focus within your team and with other teams. And I think one of the things you hit on there before, which is really, really important is that we want to have X done by X date. Crystal Carter Yes. Mordy Oberstein: So there are basic things that go into setting up a, I'll call it a functional, as opposed to a dysfunctional SEO campaign. And one of them is having clear goals, having clear timelines, having clear ways of understanding which pages are important to. Goals, timelines. I'm going to say pages, what are your important pages? What are your important keywords? And then how am I going to track this? Crystal Carter Yes, yes, yes. So here's another example. I remember I had a client and they had a regular event. Because this is the other thing, you have I think it's a little garden furniture- Mordy Oberstein: I love garden furniture, by the way. It's is my favorite kind of furniture. Crystal Carter Particularly if you live in a seasonal place. So you have garden furniture. So if you have something that's particularly a seasonal campaign or something like that, it's like your garden furniture. You know you have it, you know you're going to use it every year. You need to figure out what you're going to do when it's not time for you to use it, whether you're going to put it in your shed or your garage or whatever it is. And then when it rolls out, you need to make sure that it's ready to go. So this is something that I've done before. So that timeline, the pages, et cetera, I had a client who had a regular Halloween event. And so way in the summertime I'm looking at and I'm like, okay, we have this Halloween page, this Halloween page, that page, this page, that page and that page. And we know that by the time Halloween rolls around, we need to have those pages up scratch, updated, working good, working well, all of that sort of stuff. Cool. So we had that sort of stuff. So by the time Halloween came, everything was optimized, everything was redirected, everything was here, here, here, here, here. So when they were ready with their full marketing campaign, the SEO was right at the top, right at the top, ready to go. And that timing, that focus, et cetera. And it also helps you set priorities. You can say, "Hey, we're doing this in November." And they'll be like, well we have this. We are doing this November. We have this and this setup." I'm once again asking for your support. We need support. Mordy Oberstein: If you don't, you're getting a horse's head in your bed. But that part of it, it's the summertime now. By the time Halloween rolls around, my greatest piece of advice to you, if you're working with a campaign style of anything particular with SEO campaigns, is turn on that type A part of your personality and dig deep to find it and turn that switch on. Because all of that, all of those type A kind of skills come into play when you're working on an SEO campaign. I feel like I'm running through a checklist today. What are your goals? How are you going to reach those goals? What do you need to do in order to get there? What are the problems that are going to happen along the way? The best part of being a type A personality here is anticipating what's going to go wrong along the way, particularly when you're working with other teams. What are the roadblocks going to be? What are the dependencies going to be? And what are the timings on those dependencies going to be? And understand that that's going to be problematic and that's going to have to be reshaped. And having another, if you're real type A, you'll have a secondary route when things go wrong to figure out, if you're not going to go that way- Crystal Carter Plan B. Mordy Oberstein: You have a plan B to go ahead and do this. Because unless you plan this thing out, like it's nobody's business, this campaign is not going to work, especially when it's complex and it's involving other types of pages, other types of teams, other types of stakeholders, you have to be able to, in minute detail. Crystal Carter And that planning gets you buy-in. Right? That planning gets you money. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. No one's going to buy into this plan of yours if they don't understand how it's going to work, when it's going to work. And they really believe that it's going to work because they've seen the stages of development. Crystal Carter Right. And if you show up to with a full Gantt chart and a full research things, like I've researched this and not only will we do this, will we do that. I had a campaign that I was running with a client for a coffee client or something, and it was something they'd never done before. But I looked around and I could see that in the particular audience, there was a gap here that they could fill with if they did this, this, this, this and this. And I had a full Gantt chart, like how do we get from here to here in this time? And I was like, we need this, this, this, this, this and this, all of that sort of stuff. And they'd never done it before, ever. But because it was so clearly, meticulously articulated. Mordy Oberstein: Also known as meticulated. Crystal Carter Because it was so clearly laid out, they were like, "Yeah, I get that. I can see that." Because that's the other thing is people can't always see everything unless you lay it out really clearly. Mordy Oberstein: And especially true when we're talking about SEO campaigns, so seasonality finally, everyone knows Black Fridays coming around, we're going to ahead. But sometimes these campaigns are over the span of a year or two years. And then, I've been involved with things where we're trying to grow, let's say a blog long term, and there's many things that go into that, many, many things like the brand awareness, the authority, the back links, the way we're breaking into the niche, all of these different kind of factors. And those are very, very slow, long-term kind of things. And you have to have a long-term plan in order to strategize to the point where you understand that these are the things that we're going to need to do and these are the creative ways we're going to go about doing it. Because otherwise, you won't even know how to get started with the thing. Crystal Carter And I think the other thing that you're mentioning is a few things about managing internal stakeholders, because for a long term campaign like that, you need to keep people enthused. You need to keep people in your team on board with what you're doing. So being able to report, "Hey, we've made these green shoots. Hey, we improved by 10%. Hey, we improved by 50%. Hey, we've got more of this moving forward." That's going to help you keep people engaged in the campaign over a long-term process, which again, can very often happen with SEO, if you're planning a whole content thing, a whole knowledge base thing. The initial sort of like, yeah, we launched sort of thing. How do you keep that going? Mordy Oberstein: How do you keep that going? That's really the thing. You launched the new product, launched a new blog, but then it fizzles out. I've seen a gazillion times. Crystal Carter Right. So you need to pump it. These new, not skateboards, surfboards, they're like aqua foil surfboards or something, and people can surf backwards. I was at the beach and I saw somebody, I was like, is that man surfing backwards? And they're these different... Anyway, they pump them. It has to do with what I understand. Mordy Oberstein: Remember LA Gear pumps and Reebok pumps. Anyway, now I'm totally dating. Crystal Carter Yes. So basically they pump their legs and then they can just keep riding on the wave and they ride on the momentum underwater. But you have to keep- Mordy Oberstein: You have to keep momentum. Crystal Carter You have to keep momentum and you have to keep pumping your thing so that it stays front of mind. Mordy Oberstein: That's really my top thing, where do SEO campaigns go wrong? Is that you lose that momentum, which we're going to talk about in a separate podcast altogether, which it's a little teaser for that. But keeping that momentum, or the lack thereof is one of the big reasons why SEO campaigns fail. I'll say other than that, unrealistic expectations, unrealistic timelines. Because you might get the initial buy-in like, wow, that sounds super awesome, let's do that. But it's completely unrealistic. And once people realize that that's unrealistic, you lose credibility. And once you lose credibility, you have no hope, or very little hope. I shouldn't be so doomsdayish. Crystal Carter Yeah, I think that being able to forecast what you can expect from the campaign is really useful. Being able to set expectations before you get going is really important in your campaign. And being able to demonstrate how it's adding value to not only the specific campaign pages for instance, but also to the wider website or digital presence of the brand is really, really useful. Mordy Oberstein: And that's where that planning comes into play because setting those expectations, you're going to theoretically very often get pushback. Why can't we move more aggressive here? And you need to be able to say, "Well, let me show you the plan, and here's why. If you're more aggressive, it won't work. It will fail." So they go hand in hand, setting the realistic expectations, and the keyword being realistic, depends on your ability to plan the thing out, to show why that's realistic. Because most of the time, other stakeholders are going to want to be more aggressive because that's their job. You have to realize their job is to push you to be more aggressive to grow the company. So if you're going to say, okay, and with SEP, it's very, very important in my opinion, to be realistic. And if you're not, it's usually coming down. If you're not successful in that, it usually comes down to showing a failure to show what the planning stage is and why this is realistic. Crystal Carter And it can be very, very tempting to be like, "Yeah, it's going to be the best thing since sliced bread." Mordy Oberstein: No, don't because it will not. Six months from now you will see hockey stick growth. Crystal Carter Right, it'll be fine, it'll be fine. Mordy Oberstein: Slow incremental growth in a strong, significant, slightly aggressive way is where do you want to go? Crystal Carter Right. Mordy Oberstein: Realistic. Crystal Carter These are the things, like lower your expectations, people. Mordy Oberstein: That's what I told my wife. Now, doubling back on what we're talking about, your point about your dealing with multiple teams, getting multiple buy-ins, having the multiple teams support you, if you're in the position where you're managing those multiple teams, that is tricky because different teams have different goals and different KPIs and different priorities. So to help us navigate that, we have the founder and CEO of uSERP, Jeremy Moser is here to talk to you about how do you manage multiple teams with different goals when running both an SEO and content marketing campaign or whatever kind of campaign simultaneously, at the same time, for perhaps the same client. Here's Jeremy. Jeremy Moser: The biggest keys I've found in managing multiple teams across SEO and content marketing is pulling the wisdom from both teams and really utilizing that across the board to make decisions. So for example, if you're running two campaigns around SEO specifically, and then content marketing as well, which aren't super interchangeable but often related, the content marketing team will have really powerful insights into the types of content that consumers engage with the most. And so these insights are super valuable from a direct SEO perspective as you can understand what people like, what they engage with and what's actually converting for the brand. Meaning it becomes way, way, way easier to focus your SEO efforts on real data and not just kind of keyword search volume estimates or other shiny objects like that. So the key to managing multiple teams like this with differing goals is to treat them less as two teams, but as two key functions of the same end goal. So that both are aligned in how they can achieve those rankings, but also create content that people genuinely want to engage with. And so things that can help are typically appointing representatives from each team so that all voices are heard, outlining clear goals and KPIs across both teams early on is really key. And then obviously, creating a workflow that everyone adopts where you can outline stages, who takes ownership and all of that. Content marketing teams are really, really good at capturing and creating new ideas and understanding what resonates with ideal customers. And SEOs are really great at helping that content get traction. So systemizing your approach with a good workflow ensures that each team's really able to focus on what they do best and they can move the needle together rather than trying to do something that's a little more of a disjointed approach where content is then stuffed for SEO at the last second. We've all been there, SEOs, or pure SEO content has then tried to be published directly on socials and falls flat. So I recommend highly getting both teams as integrated as possible so that you can get the best outcome. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Jeremy. And thank you Jeremy for that. It is super complicated, isn't it? Crystal Carter So complicated. So complicated because everybody wants to do what's best for them. But it's also important to remember that we're a team. We need to move as a team and that we'll get better results as a team. Mordy Oberstein: And every organization needs that person. They need that person, able to keep in mind the whole team, not just my team. I am so guilty of this. I am all about at Wix, I am not like the SEO. What is good for the SEO. I'm saying to somebody, a little insight into me, I'm somebody who needs to be reined in and Mordy, there's a whole company, there's not just SEO. And you need that person. I appreciate that, though. As somebody who's not always the best at that, I appreciate having that person to rein me in and show the wider goal. Crystal Carter Yeah. And I think that it's, I don't know, we talk a lot about sports or whatever, it's better to get a ring. The whole team gets a ring than one person is like the MVP. Mordy Oberstein: Right. It's not about personal stats in sports unless you're playing golf, which is not a real sport. It's about championships. And as a Yankee fan, I don't want to say championship, I say championships. Crystal Carter Mordy's feeling a little bit emboldened because it's the starting of the season. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's the start of baseball season, we're recording this, and I am worried about the championship, let alone the championships. Crystal Carter It's fine, it's fine. Mordy Oberstein: It's problematic. Crystal Carter It's all good. Mordy Oberstein: Thinking of things that are not problematic, I don't know, that's not a pivot at all. But we have to get off the Yankees before I really just go down into an entire sports wormhole. Talking about talking about SEO campaigns, I thought it would perhaps be both helpful and aligned if we had a look at how Google's people also ask box at four questions that when you expand them, you get an answer to that question with the URL to explore more from that website and how it can help with your e-commerce campaigns, or maybe your seasonal e-commerce campaigns. Crystal Carter Indeed, indeed, indeed, indeed, indeed. This is the time to think about it. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. So here's some fun with people also ask. So in this particular case, I thought it would be interesting to go take a look at what Google is doing around the keyword summer sales on clothes. Crystal Carter Very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. If I'm running a campaign around summer sale for my clothes that I'm looking to buy, you can see how much I shop for clothes and know about clothes shopping. Crystal Carter Okay. So one of the questions is, what date is best to buy clothes? That's a terrible question. Mordy Oberstein: This is not a question you should use. Crystal Carter It's a terrible question. A better question is what is the best time to shop for summer clothes? Mordy Oberstein: That's a great question. Crystal Carter That's a great question. Now I think the best time to shop for summer clothes is May. That's what I think. Mordy Oberstein: I think October for the next year, because they're on sale again because it's obviously, so you buy a year in advance. That's where the type A personality comes in. Crystal Carter Mordy, I don't think you understand. Some people put on a winter coat, and so you might not even fit the clothes. Mordy Oberstein: I don't do this because my kids are growing and I don't... By the way, as much as I joke, I am the one who buys the kids clothes. Crystal Carter Okay. Mordy Oberstein: So this is very pertinent for me. I don't do that. What I try to do is before the season starts, because I order online and then you want to make sure you have time to return it, in case that things don't fit. So yeah, April, May, I just bought now for the summer. So it's late March, early April, but I bought it because it was a holiday coming up, so I wanted to get them clothes for that. I don't know why I'm telling you all this. Normally, I would buy it in the clothes end of April, early April because it gets hot early here. Crystal Carter Okay. Mordy Oberstein: The point is the question is very on target because if you're trying to target your audience with your summer sale campaign, all right July. July. Maybe it needs to be earlier because people are going to be shopping earlier. Crystal Carter Right. Now here's a very interesting thing, and this is a great use for people also ask, and I use this a lot when I'm trying to figure out whether or not we should go for a keyword or whether or not we should create some content around a certain, whether there's a content opportunity there. And I'm looking at the answer that they have for what is the best time to shop for summer clothes. And I think it's a terrible answer. Mordy Oberstein: What is it? Crystal Carter The answer that they've got is August is when you find bathing suits. Mordy Oberstein: It makes no sense. August, it's all over. Crystal Carter August is when you buy and find the best bathing suits, summer clothes and sandals on sale as summer starts to come to a close. That's a terrible answer. Mordy Oberstein: That's my point from earlier. But no one's doing that except crazy people like me. I don't even do that. Crystal Carter And the one that they're linking to there is best times to go shopping on Investopedia. Now if I am somebody who is selling summer clothes and I would like to create some content around summer clothes, to me that is an opportunity because I can do better than that with a piece of content that actually answers the question and is actually dedicated to that answer. And if I am in that niche where I sell summer clothes, let's say I'm Tommy Bahama. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know who that is. Crystal Carter They make good Panama hats and shirts for summer things. Mordy Oberstein: They have baseball shirts? Crystal Carter No, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Crystal Carter Come on now. Okay, anyway, so let's say I have sell resort wear or something. Mordy Oberstein: Resort wear. Crystal Carter Yeah. So let's say- Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to Fantasy Island. Crystal Carter I can look at that and I can go, not only am I in that vertical, but also I can answer that question better and I'm more likely to rank for that. The other thing that's really useful for seeing if those things are good is so you click through to that article and check when it was written. So I'm looking at that and I can see that that was written in April, 2022 or it was updated in April, 2022. Mordy Oberstein: I will tell you a trick with that. What you should really do with that piece of content is go the way back machine and see if it was really updated or not because a piece might be years old and all they did was write updated 2022. If you think I'm joking, I have seen this a thousand times. Crystal Carter When people say it say top tips for 2023 and they've changed nothing. Mordy Oberstein: If all they changed was the title tag, the H1 and the little line after the author's name and it says updated in, and you could go the way back machine, you could see literally nothing else has changed. Crystal Carter Right. So this comes to the fact that Google thinks about recency when they're talking about, when they're trying to show which content where. Mordy Oberstein: It is a factor. Crystal Carter So if you're seeing that you're closer to the vertical, that your domain has better vertical authority and you can see that you can write something more recently and you can write something that more directly answers the question, then that is a sign that maybe you should actually put together that content and there's an opportunity there. Mordy Oberstein: 1000%. At the same time, again, I'm looking at these questions by the way. So my idea with people also ask, I like to thematically take a look away, what's the message? What message people also ask are you trying to send me? And when I look at the questions, all four questions are... Here are the four. I know I have different questions than you because we're in different countries. But mine are when summer clothes go on sale, what month is cheapest to buy clothes, when clothing goes on sales, what is summer clothes season? All of the questions, all four questions have to do with when. When, when when. Which means people are really interested in when. It also means that when is probably a really complicated question. Meaning, so you might think, oh I know when is best, Mordy and Crystal said they shop in May. So May must be best. Maybe it is for us. Maybe it's a really complicated question that depends very much on what it is you're selling, your target audience. Maybe you're selling it to the elderly and they're planning this out in January. Crystal Carter Right. Mordy Oberstein: Whatever it is, it means to me that all four questions are all about when the running your summer clothes campaign, means that you need to do some real research. You're probably going to do well if you go beyond the four questions here and do some actual research. Crystal Carter You could do something around how to plan your summer wardrobe and when's a good time for sales? When's a good time to buy? When's a good time to buy ahead? When's a good time for resort wear or something like that? You could really get into that. And if you could- Mordy Oberstein: Have you tried Tony Bahamas resort wear? Crystal Carter Tommy. Tommy. Mordy Oberstein: Tommy, sorry. Sorry Tony. Crystal Carter I don't know if there's someone called about Tony. Mordy Oberstein: There's got to be a guy named Tony Bahamas. Crystal Carter We should find him on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to ask him about his resort wear. Well, speaking about resort wear, you know what there's no resort wear in, the SEO news. I guarantee you there is no SEO news. This week about Tony Bahama and his resort wear. Crystal Carter Tony Bahama. Mordy Oberstein: Tony Bahama and his resort wear. Hi, I'm a boomer. Crystal Carter Bermuda, Jamaica, ooh, I want to take you. Mordy Oberstein: Bermuda, Bahama, Tony. Okay, well with that going completely off the rails. Here's this week's Snappy News. I'm going to go buy a Hawaiian shirt now. I feel like I want to go buy a Hawaiian shirt. I used to own a really nice Hawaiian shirt, it's my favorite shirt. And I own zero Hawaiian shirts now. Crystal Carter I'll tell you who does wear, who has a few Hawaiian shirts is George. And I'll tell you what, George is very dapper in his Hawaiian shirt- Mordy Oberstein: They look very nice. Crystal Carter He wore it to MozCon, and yeah, it's a good shirts, it's a good shirt. I'll tell you another type of resort wear shirt I always like is the Havana shirt. The ones with the lines and the lines on the side and the pockets. Mordy Oberstein: I love that. Yes. Crystal Carter There's a little bit of that. I'm also very like, what is it? Buena Vista Social Club, I love that look. Mordy Oberstein: It's a very '50s kind of look. Crystal Carter That sort of cabana shirt or Havana shirt with the flat cap. Mordy Oberstein: Love that. That's great. Speaking of shirts, it reminds me, I need to order a new Yankees jersey. I need a Yogi Berra jersey. Anyway, an away Yogi Berra. It doesn't matter. As I tried to prevent going down a baseball wormhole yet again, this by the way folks, now that is baseball season, Crystal's probably cringing and oh my God, here come all like the decks and everything with baseball. It is coming. Here's who you should be following for more social awesomeness for around SEO this week, our follow of the week is Re:signal's Kevin Gibbons. Re:signal, by the way, have a great newsletter. Kevin and team focus on predominantly on e-com SEO. Crystal Carter Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why I thought this makes sense because when I hear SEO campaign, I automatically think seasonality, automatically makes me think of e-com, which automatically makes me think of Kevin and the Re:signal team, all the people over at the Re:signal team. Crystal Carter Re:signal are great. They've provide some fantastic resources and everyone I've met from there has been super, super clever and super kind and just wonderful. So yeah,- Mordy Oberstein: They had a great event recently also. I did not attend. I wanted to attend because I have serious FOMO looking at it on Twitter. Crystal Carter Fantastic event. And yeah, they're a great team. So yeah, do follow Kevin. Mordy Oberstein: Do follow Kevin, sign up for their newsletter. It's @KevGibbo on Twitter, we'll link to that in the show notes as well, which brings us to the end of our podcast. Crystal Carter I'm so sad. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not sad because I'm campaigning for you to listen next week. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. That was a swing and a connection, home run, pivot. Crystal Carter Yes. Oh yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: That's the crack of the bat. The sweet sound of the crack of the bat. Have to move on. 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 at the new episode as we dive into harnessing SEO for lead generation. Look forward 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 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 . 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Aoife McIlraith is owner and MD of Luminosity Digital marketing agency and founder of Searchmastermind.org and Speakerlineup.com. With 22+ years of international marketing expertise, Aoife helps brands get the right content to the right audience at the right time to drive sales. Aoife McIlraith Managing Director, Luminosity Digital Aoife McIlraith is owner and MD of Luminosity Digital marketing agency and founder of Searchmastermind.org and Speakerlineup.com. With 22+ years of international marketing expertise, Aoife helps brands get the right content to the right audience at the right time to drive sales. Articles & Resources 17 May 2024 Judges share how to write a successful industry awards entry 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