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How is AI reshaping the world of content creation and SEO? With Wix's Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter “prompting” the conversation, they look into the evolving landscape of AI in marketing with Garrett Sussman, Director of Marketing at iPullRank and Paula Mejia, VP of Marketing Enterprise at Wix. How are AI search engines changing user behavior? With natural language queries and personalized results challenging traditional SEO, AI is revolutionizing content production, refreshing strategies, and pushing the boundaries of what marketing teams can achieve. Plus, get the lowdown on the latest AI tools in Wix Studio and how they’re making a splash without overwhelming your workflow. Back AI & The Future of Search Engines How is AI reshaping the world of content creation and SEO? With Wix's Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter “prompting” the conversation, they look into the evolving landscape of AI in marketing with Garrett Sussman, Director of Marketing at iPullRank and Paula Mejia, VP of Marketing Enterprise at Wix. How are AI search engines changing user behavior? With natural language queries and personalized results challenging traditional SEO, AI is revolutionizing content production, refreshing strategies, and pushing the boundaries of what marketing teams can achieve. Plus, get the lowdown on the latest AI tools in Wix Studio and how they’re making a splash without overwhelming your workflow. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 107 | October 23, 2024 | 55 MIN 00:00 / 52:55 This week’s guests Paula Ximena Mejia Paula is the Vice President of Enterprise Marketing at Wix Studio. She is responsible for growth, brand and product marketing for this audience. With seven years at Wix, Paula has led various marketing efforts in the areas of customer success, eCommerce and inbound marketing, catering to the platform’s 250+ million users worldwide. Garrett Sussman Garrett Sussman is the Demand Generation Manager at SEO Agency iPullRank. He’s been in the content marketing and SEO game for the past 10+ years. He's the host of The SEO Weekly and the Rankable Podcast. Iced coffee, comic book movies, and Philly sports fuel his soul. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to serps. Aloha. Mahalo. Put your serps up podcast. We're pushing out some grooving insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Morty oversting, the head of SEO brand here at Wix. And I'm joined by the always cutting edge, innovative new emerging tech of the SEO communications world, or head of SEO communications here at Wix and Wix studio, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. I try not to cut up too much. I've been known to cut a rug from time to time. I've always liked that turn of phrase. Mordy Oberstein: It was better than cutting the cheese, so. Crystal Carter: Oh no, we're not doing that on this podcast. Mordy Oberstein: It's like a podcast, guys. What a bad rap for cheese. Like, cheese is wonderful. Like, why would I get her, like cut the cheese. Please, please cut me some cheese. Crystal Carter: I mean, I've had some smelly cheese in my time. Like there are some cheeses that like really go for it. Mordy Oberstein: It's like fancy people's cheese. Like, I'm not talking about that. Like cheddar and mozzarella, right? Maybe some monster, right? Crystal Carter: We keep it simple. We keep it like, like classy. Yeah, that's what it works. Mordy Oberstein: The Surface up podcast is brought to you by Cheez whiz and not by cheese, but by Wix Studio, where you can only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight, over@wix.com SEO Learn Newsletter. But where you can also spin up some AI images, create title tags and meta descriptions using AI and more. Look for it wherever you do stuff inside of Wixtudicause all over the place. It's everywhere. AI is everywhere inside of Wix Studios. I'm trying to say is today we're talking about preparing for the future as AI search engines and AIO reviews aiositive set to dominate the skies perhaps maybe. And as the chat GPTs of the world rule the seas, why an entity first approach to SEO show rule the day when looking to get your URL's into AI outputs. Why there are no shortcuts, cheats and or hacks to reigning supreme in AI results. Mordy Oberstein: So sorry. Not heading yonder past the mountain views and gazing out on AI search engines beyond Google as AI SEO influencer, an actual real life human being, Garrett Sussmann pipes in on how AI search engines will change user behavior. Plus, we talked to Wix Studios Paula Mejia about what AI abilities move the needle for large marketing teams. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO and AI awesomeness. So as AI search engines and outputs with URL's of all sorts set to ascend towards user preference, sovereignty, and how ye can knight thyself master of the realm. That is. LLM on this, the Serps up podcast. I win all medieval times in y'all, which like, it's such a weird thing, medieval. Mordy Oberstein: You show up to watch, like, people jousting while you're eating a cheeseburger. I've never been there, so I don't know, but it seems weird. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I kind of always wanted to go to the knights of roundtable in Las Vegas. I don't know, mostly to hear the terrible english accents. Like people in Las Vegas going, hear ye, hear ye. Mordy Oberstein: Like, I'm not from England. Clearly they don't do that all the time. Crystal Carter: What? Have terrible english accents? Mordy Oberstein: No, like I thought, like, you know, if I'm an english person, I'm going into, I don't know, like a restaurant. I'm trying to get the waiter's attention. I'll be, hear ye, hear ye, thy waiter. They don't do that. Crystal Carter: Only for special occasions. Mordy Oberstein: Ah, okay. They don't have like a bella ringing? Crystal Carter: No, only for special occasions. In England, what you do find is there are sometimes places where they have a lord mayor and the lord mayor has bling, has ridiculous necklaces, this huge necklace and wears a cape and stuff. It's amazing because they're supposed to have all this decorum, but they wear all. Mordy Oberstein: This bling that I'm talking about touristy Englands for me. So. All right, all right. It's the subject of basically every marketing team's meetings, blog posts, social media. It's the subject of all the posters on trees, whatever, is basically how do I get my site mentioned? And when possible, link to an AI output like search, GPT, chat GPT, and everyone's favorite classic, the AI overview. And it seems to me that everyone is looking for some sort of like optimization hack. I cannot tell you how many times people are like, yeah, how can I get in there quickly? And the answer is, there's no hack. It's a lot of work to get in there, and it's going to be a lot of real digital marketing, presence, brand presence, building, that's the only way of getting in there. Mordy Oberstein: And for SEOs, it's a different kind of optimization and a different kind of way of thinking, because again, it's really entity based. If you go to chat GPT and you're like, what are the best places to get a cheeseburger? It's going to say McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's. Because McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's are everywhere. Those are the known quantities. Those are the known entities. And they didn't, McDonald's didn't get there. But doing something like SEO hack, they got it because they've been around forever and they're everywhere because it's not like, I don't know, it's not like links or title tags or crawl weights or whatever. It's good old entity building or in my day when I walk to school, uphill both ways. Mordy Oberstein: So we call brand building, or I like to call it momentum building because fundamentally getting inside of these outputs means being the entity related to the input. And there's no hack for that. And that's where I like to start this conversation. Crystal Carter: Yeah, so this is something that I've looked into and I'll be speaking at Brighton SEO. I can't remember if this goes out before then or after that about this as well. And one of the things is that essentially within these systems, they're using entities to understand because from a large language model they're using entities to understand relationships to things, to understand language. Right. So a prime example that I use when I'm speaking to people is I put in the, there's a great tool if you're trying to understand entities. And we've got some great resources on the Wix SEO learning hub about entities and about the relationship between entities and search. So we have, Michelle Fortin's written a great one about entity relationships and we also have some other resources around that as well. So if you really want to get into that, and also I think Gus Pelosi has a great article about the knowledge graph and how that all works and that all backs up all of these sort of things. Crystal Carter: And one of the tools that I use when I'm looking at entity relationships, and it's really great because it's free to use and you can see it, lays it out really clearly, is something called Textrazr. Textrazr is old school. It's an oldie but a goodie. And what you can do is you can pop in a piece of text and it will pull out all of the entities that can see and all the entities that are related to it and how they're related, et cetera, et cetera. One of the ones that is a classic example that I use all the time is the Barbie movie description. The Barbie movie description doesn't mention anything about a doll. It says, like, barbie and Ken go on a hilarious adventure to save Barbie land, something to that effect. And when you pop that into textrazure, one of the entities it pulls out is Mattel and fashion doll and barbie. Crystal Carter: And it doesn't say mattel, it doesn't say fashion doll. It doesn't say. It doesn't say Barbie the doll. But because you have the word barbie and the word can in close proximity and you have the word Barbie land, the machine learning is able to, is able to identify that those entities are latent in there. So if, similarly, if you go into something like Chachi pt, if you go into perplexity, quad Gemini, et cetera, and you say, name me a fashion doll, what they will do is they'll say Barbie, right? Because they understand that Barbie, that the entity of Barbie is related to a fashion doll. Now, it's very tricky if you don't have a legacy ip like Barbie. Barbie's been going for like 70 years or something like that. Like, you know, the pre Internet in there, all of that sort of stuff. Crystal Carter: It's very tricky to sort of sharp your entity. However, Wix, which has been around for. I think we're coming. We're like old, old man Internet Wix. Mordy Oberstein: 1617 years, 18 years, something like that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's 18 years. It'll be 20. It'll be 20 years in 2026. And Wix on our knowledge graph says we are cloud based cms. If you go into chats and say, name me a cloud based cms, guess what it'll say Wix, right? Because that's part of our entity. This is really important for a couple of reasons. One is because people try to rank on Chachi BT, but what they forget is that, like, it's not that you have to wait for the updates, right? It's not live, live data. They do have links in there, but they're not like brand new live updating links. Crystal Carter: It's kind of like, I'm gonna date myself here. It's kind of like the phone book. Remember when the phone book would come out and they release it either once a year, right? Mordy Oberstein: Big ass books. Crystal Carter: Now, if Aardvark taxis only started up in January and they dropped the phone book in December, guess what? Aardvark taxis isn't in the phone book. But the next time they drop the phone book, Aardvark Taxis is going to be top of the top of the phone book, right? So what you have to do is sometimes you have to wait for the next drop of chat GBT. So when it first came out, I think it was dated to 2022. I think now it's up to 2023. And I think that as they go on, they'll get quicker and quicker and, like, the gaps between their data updates will be between the training models will get smaller. So when chat GBT first dropped, I was like, hello? And they were like, hi. I was like, who is Crystal Carter? And they said, who? And I said, who is Crystal Carter? They were like, I don't know who you are. And it's like, okey dokey. Crystal Carter: And me and my little ego sat back down. So then I recently said to chat GPT, I was like, when was the last time you updated your data? What training data are you working up to? What was the last time you updated it? And they said, oh, 2023, blah blah, blah. And I said, okay, so who is Crystal Carter? And they were like, crystal Carter is head of SEO communications at Wix, blah blah blah blah, right? Because between then and between now, I've done a lot more stuff around my entity to build up my name around that particular stuff. Like, there's stuff on websites, there's stuff on articles, talks and this, that and the other, and that will update it. Similarly, I've had people who are like, oh, we just launched this product last month and we're not on track BT. I'm like, yeah. Cause chat GBT isn't up to last month, it's up to now. If you want to check an entity on something that's brand new, you need to look at some of the live scrape, the more like sort of hybrid ones that are like that are. Crystal Carter: They have augmented data. So they have a training set that's supported by live augmented data. Something like Copilot, right? So you launched your thing a month ago, check it on Copilot. Ask Copilot who is. Who is this? And if you're doing okay on that, then when chat BT up to updates, you're probably going to see yourself in there, right? But it's worth thinking about, but it's worth understanding, like, which models they are. So if you're. If your team is going, we're not ranking on chat GBT, we're not showing on chat to BT, understand the parameters, because there's some, some cases where, like, you're just ain't gonna. It's not, you're not gonna, you're not, because you just launched that, right. Crystal Carter: However, it's also the case of understanding, like how. How chatty BT understands that entity and understands where you are within that entity as well. So understanding, like some of these things is really, really important. And understanding how you can be unique in your entity. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I mean, look, let's assume for a second that chat GPT updated every day. It's updated every day. Fine. It doesn't. Right. As you mentioned, if you're, if you're asking, why are we not showing in there? How do we get in there? And then you're asking yourself that again next week, or even, like, I'll even say, like, next month, you're on the wrong track, in my opinion. Like, you, I don't think you understand how this works. It's momentum. Mordy Oberstein: Like, you need to generate digital momentum, which, by the way, can be offline, but you need to start, like, partnering with people. You need to start interacting. You need to start engaging, you need to start getting people talking about you, even if you have a strong entity. So, like, Google can understand who I am because I have a website, I have a LinkedIn profile of yada, yada, yada. You're not just trying to get them to understand, like, that you existed, right? You're trying to get in there from some kind of commercial way, like, what are the best soft drinks? It's gonna be coke, sprite, whatever. Even if it's not just as simple, like, as it's not simple either. But it's not as a matter of getting, like getting the knowledge graph to understand that you exist and to understand who you are. It's getting them to understand who you are and then getting them to understand that you're relevant enough to show us one of the top results in their output. Mordy Oberstein: And the only way to do that is to have that broader momentum that keeps building, by the way, that keeps building upon itself. Because if you don't and someone else will, and even if you are the top hot dog vendor, that when someone's best hot dog vendor in New York City, you might not be that again in six months from now, if the other hot dog vendor down the cart, down the cart, down the street with his cart, is building up all the momentum, and now it is the known entity or the hot entity around this, it comes down to you taking a different kind of mentality. How do I, how do I make connections? How do I get other people to talk about me? And how do I keep the momentum going? It's not a simple one to one linear optimization, like even a knowledge panel theoretically might be, which is also it's. Crystal Carter: Not, I think, from a practical point of view that that comes down to having, having like a paper trail, essentially having, having a paper trail. So one of the things that's worth thinking about is like, if there is somebody else within your sector, within your search ecosystem, I guess you would say, who is already a known entity to chat GBT and you're trying to get yourself aligned, like into chat GBT, it's worth prioritizing those links. So, for instance, like, if you were to think about Barbie, for instance, Barbie's gonna want to make sure that Mattel is already on there, right? If Mattel's already on there, then that great, that's a great place to start. So you need to make sure that you also are like very, very clearly articulated within the Mattel website within, and that you're associated with Mattel because you are, for instance, like one of the good example that I give for where Google gets a little confused and there's, there's some disambiguation that needs, needs acquiring, is like, if you were to say something like, Steve McQueen is a man known for his films, right? There are two Steve McQueen's who are men known for their films, right? There's Steve McQueen from the sixties, and there's Steve McQueen who's like a Turner Prize winning director from now, right? And what would be important if you were to disambiguate those particular entities? For instance, if you just said, who's Steve McQueen? Who is Steve McQueen? For instance, so that Google understands there are two, for instance, you need to make sure that they're very distinct, very clear named entities that are already known by these LLMs. So, for instance, Steve McQueen has a Turner Prize, or the current Steve McQueen has a Turner Prize as an Academy Award. It's worth mentioning in a bio, for instance, for, for Steve McQueen on his website and in any art, any podcasts, any, you know, awards, things that he does, any, any appearances anywhere where he's mentioned online that he has a Turner Prize, has, it has an Academy Award, for instance, because that will align with those particular entities. And then you would think when it says who's, who's somebody who's won an Academy Award, it would say McQueen. What I've seen a few times is I've spoken to agency owners, for instance, who are like, we're trying to get on chat GPT, and we haven't had any luck. Crystal Carter: We can't see why we're not on chat CPT. We ask, like, can you name a good agency in Paris? And we can't see ourselves on chat CPT. Well, I had a look at some, like, top agencies who have great, great, great work. They do wonderful, wonderful things. And one of the things that I saw was that everybody has the same bio. Like, everybody has the same, like, sort of the same, like, usp, like by line, tagline, whatever. They're like, we are a global agency serving top brands in, you know, over 100 countries on some incredible campaigns, but you could literally copy and paste that onto, like, seven different, like, top tier agencies, for instance. Like, it's the same one. Crystal Carter: So when Google's like, can you name me an agency? Like, they're, they're, they don't necessarily need to name someone specific or, sorry, not Google. Like, if you're looking at an LLM, like, they, they don't necessarily name someone specific because there's not anything specific to differentiate you. So when you're thinking about, about your entities, make sure that you're aligning yourself with named entities. So that. So that when you're, when someone's doing a search on an Llmde, on a generative search tool, like perplexity, like quad, like copilot or whatever, that when they're showing up, you're also showing up. And it's worth thinking about that in relation to your brand in relationship to the partnerships that you develop in relationship to the sort of online paper trail that you're developing across the web. Mordy Oberstein: You mentioned something that I want to piggyback on or swing back around on, and it's a website. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Like, I'm obviously interested in selling websites because that's how I feel my family. But yeah, I think a lot of, a lot of this is like, if you're, if you're listening to this and you're not a big brand and you're doing, and you're doing a podcast, are you doing a podcast? I'm gonna, I'm gonna run this, actually, right now. I'm gonna type. I am gonna search for Yankees podcast and best Yankees podcast and chat GPT at million bucks. This is what happens. I'm going to predict, okay, if I run best Yankees podcast into chat GPT, the results that are going to come up are the ones with the largest, like, web presence, and it's gonna be the ones that actually have a website even though they're more popular ones on YouTube. So let's run this great. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: There's a Yankees podcast I listen to. His father was actually a professional baseball player for the New York Yankees, Gary Sheffield. Gary Sheffield junior is called Yankees unloaded. It's a great pocket. It's one of my favorite Yankees podcasts, and there are many. And in fact, oh, this is perfect. Okay. They don't show up. Mordy Oberstein: In fact, the Yankees announcer and this might be an entity thing, actually has a radio show which on ESPN, which mainly talks about the Yankees, and he's not even here because they don't have websites. You know who's here? There's someone called talking Yanks. They're a whole like, network of podcasts, basically, and a bunch of their subsidiaries, like, they're like, they're like, I don't know what you call their sub brand podcasts. They're here because they all have websites. All of the podcasts that actually have a website and are connected via websites, those are the ones that show up here because you have to give the LLM something to grab onto. If you're just on your podcast platform, on Spotify, if you're just on YouTube, or if you're on Spotify and YouTube, there's nothing to grab onto. So if you are a smaller brand and you're like, what do I do here? The first thing to do is get, is honestly get off of social for five minutes and build a website. Crystal Carter: I think the important thing to remember is that. So chat GPT, one of the founding things for their model, one of the founding pieces of data for their model is a common crawl. So common crawl is one of the things it was based off of early, early on. And so, yeah, that's web scraping. If you're thinking about copilot, for instance, that's Bing and that's chat GPT. If you're thinking about perplexity, they have their own bot that goes around and across the web. It goes around and across web. And perplexity is listing things as well. Crystal Carter: They're also on the web. So it's worth thinking about that as well. It's also worth considering which elements are thinking about where they get their data from. So we know that Google is getting information from Reddit, for instance, and they're using that to train to train their models, including Gemini. We know that chat GBT is aligned with Bing, and you're using Bing search results as well. So, for instance, if you're not ranking in Bing, that's something to consider as well. But I think that it's worth looking at how these models work in order to align that with you. And they are listing links to websites. Crystal Carter: So the chat PBT four, which is the one that's free for most people, is listing websites where they can sometimes and then also perplexity is listing web listing links all the time as well. For instance, when you look in GA four, you can see the traffic that's coming into your sites. Jess Schultz recently shared a really good regex for finding it's really simple to use for finding all of the traffic that you're getting from LLMs. And Chachi BT is leading the charge in many, many cases, but perplexity is actually coming in significantly regularly. Mordy Oberstein: I mean, it's interesting, but yeah, and. Crystal Carter: It'S coming in regularly for a lot of folks, and I've seen it on some occasions where it's actually surpassing chat pt for certain queries. So I think that's worth understanding as well where you're getting a little bit of traction and where you can build. But they are sending traffic to websites and I think that it's worth getting on these LLMs if you're not already. Don't just log in to Google yourself, use them so that you understand how they work. Mordy Oberstein: If we're talking about perplexity, it kind of brings up something we asked Garrett Sussmann over at ipol rank, how will AI search engines change user behavior? Is this the death of Google? It's not, but it's interesting because it's a conversation that we wanted to have for a long time that a lot of SEOs are having is how are AI search engines going to change user behavior? So here's Garrett on how AI search engines will change user behavior. Garrett Sussman: How will AI search engines change user behavior? That is a meaty question. And you know what? Nobody knows. However, let's dive into this and think about it. So right now, current 2024, nothing stealing market share from Google, it's still like 90 some percent. We're talking perplexity. Search, GPT, even Bing's copilot, they're really not being used to the extent that they're making a marginal difference. However, just thinking about AI search engines and the way that they understand natural language so much better than traditional old school search engines, it could potentially be a game changer that we should delve into. No, but honestly, you think about the way that we used to use search engines, basic keywords. Garrett Sussman: We were trained by the search engines and their capabilities, but now they really can understand so much more context with the advent of mum and, and these types of algorithms that are making things so much more complex that they understand these nuance of language. So what happens when people feel more and more comfortable using these AI search engines? Well, we're going to use natural language. We're going to have longer tailed search terms. We're going to be able to talk like humans to ask our queries. We're going to be able to infuse our own biases, confirmation bias, into the actual searches we make, which as SEOs is extremely challenging and problematic because these AI search engines are going to search for more personalized results that are very, very, very specific and potentially pulled from all different types of content and other queries and other links. Remember, it expands on the queries. It's not just exactly what you're asking. In addition to that, rank tracking is going to be so much more difficult. Garrett Sussman: I mean, you're not going to be able to track a singular keyword because they're going to be so many variations. So do I think this is going to happen in the near future? Like twelve months? No, probably not. Unless, you know, we have some major antitrust trial where, you know, the american government decides that Google has to break up and there are consequences maybe faster than that, but chances are we're not going to see any actual user behavior change for another two 3510 years until people really become used to using these AI search engines and they trust the results so that they actually start to talk to them like real people. It's meaty. It's fascinating. Nobody knows, but I cannot wait to watch and see how we start to interact with this technology and it becomes more mainstream over time. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Garrett. Make sure to give Garrett a follow over on LinkedIn and on Twitter at Garrett Sussman or X. What do you want to call it? It's such an interesting conversation. He made a great point, or interesting point. It is a great point and an interesting point about the accuracy. Like for example, I actually looked up like best SEO podcast and Garrett had the rankable podcast. They got his name wrong as a host. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So will the format allow you to deep dive the way you want to deep dive? I feel like for a top level query or top level search, like, yeah, it's probably like that's a no brainer. Like, you're going to see people going to the chat GPTs of the world, but for deeper investigations, like, I don't know, how do I deal with kidney? Like, I don't know if I want to go to chat DBT for that. But really looking to get like a balanced look and really dive into the topic. Maybe it's not the easiest way to explore, I don't know. But the accuracy thing, I know it's great, but there's, there's, there's still, and it's definitely better than it was before, but there are still a lot of instances where it's not exactly accurate. And if you're going to be like, well, I have to pick a search engine, which am I going to go to? Even like, no, 80% of the time might be great. That 20% is still going to weigh on people's minds. I feel like I, I feel like. Crystal Carter: Though, that main Google search is not always accurate either. So I feel like what I tend to use in terms of as a user, because I use multiple search engines is I go to Google and I can't find what I need or if I don't even know where to start, right? If I'm like, I don't even know what this is called, I don't know what this is. I need a thing that will help me to do this. And then they'll say, well, you might need one of this, this, this and this. And I'm like, okay, well, what is that? And then they'll explain that. The LLM will explain the information there. But he was talking about like conversational topics. When you go to Copilot, they have the microphone as the easiest thing for you to use. Crystal Carter: Like it's, it's really high priority. When you use the copilot app, the microphone is super useful and you literally just say what you want and then it will spit out something, something that you need. And I think that that's having the microphone as a central search tool is going to make you more likely to speak more conversationally, like Garrett is talking about. Similarly, within with Bing recently, they, they opened up their chat bar, like, you know, when you need to go onto it and it's like, oh, I think it's like 2000 characters or something they opened it up to. And all of these LLMs keep expanding the character count that you can add in for what you need. So I've had it before where I'm trying to troubleshoot a piece of code and before you were able to only able to put in a certain amount and then you'd sort of top off at the characters. And now I can put in pretty much the whole document and say, I have this documentation, I have this piece of code. Please can you help me debug it? And then it will help you to pull those things out. Crystal Carter: So I think that when we're thinking about search and how people are going from some of these tools into a website, I think the trust factor is important. I think for ymyl stuff, it's super, super important. I was looking at some financial question or something and I said, if my income is this, how much should I invest in this? If my income is this, how could. And then it was like, it was like, you should. And then the number that I put on the income or whatever, they were like, the whole number is what you should invest in the thing. And I'm like, that's terrible advice. Luckily, I'm not a complete moron, but if somebody was to just follow that advice wholesale, they would be putting their entire savings into whatever this investment thing is and would have nothing. And the thing that's fascinating about that is that if you go onto, I mean, break the fourth wall, I was looking at Cedars type types, things where you look at supporting smaller companies, startups and stuff. Crystal Carter: And if you go on one of those websites, it has disclaimers all over the website that's like, be careful. Investment is risky. Make sure you've read all the terms and conditions. Do not invest everything. Blah, blah, blah. If you go to buy a credit card, they say, please be careful about all of these stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Like, credit cards are coffee, coffee is hot, please be careful. Right? Crystal Carter: There's all of these different disclaimers, but in chat and copilot, there was nothing. It was just like, go, like, invest all of the, everything that you want, like, make all this money, like, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, guys, like, where are the, you know, you should understand it's. Mordy Oberstein: Not always there yet. That's kind of the thing. It's not always there yet. And that it's a bad association. Like, it's all about it. These kind of things of trust is all about associations. It's a bad association. I don't think it's there yet. Mordy Oberstein: I do think though, like, what's interesting or perhaps different about, let's say, like Google's use of AI versus like, going to chat. If the Google's a overview doesn't give you what you want, or it's a little bit wonky or whatever it is, you have the actual results right underneath it. So even though the results sometimes aren't always right, they're diverse. So like, the top results, not what you want, the second one might be so like that. That diversity of sources, I don't think is something that's ever going to go away. I think it's like inbuilt in what we want is when we want to look at a topic. And I wonder if, I mean, I searched GBT something different, but like the chat GPTs of the world, that kind of format, what really lend itself to what people ultimately really want. Again, it's a lot. Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot to discuss there. Who knows what we're talking about? AI products. We have a little treat for you because we know someone who knows a lot about AI products. No matter what AI search engines you might be using or what it might mean for user behavior, there's no doubt that the technology has already impacted your marketing team and one way, shape, form or another, I completely botched that idiom. And it's fine. I'm okay with it. I'm hallucinating right now. I'm AI. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, the question is, in what way should AI move large scale marketing teams or big organizations, or even small ones too, into action? To help us end this, we're going across the wix verse with our very own vp of marketing enterprise, Paula Mejia. And this very special, as I already mentioned, across the Wix verse. Three, two, one, ignition. Crystal Carter: Lift up. Mordy Oberstein: Paula, welcome to the show. Paula Mejia: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here, you guys. Mordy Oberstein: I'm terrified right now. It's Monday morning. This is like one of the first things, like, I'm actually doing with, like, you're the first person I'm speaking to this week. Paula Mejia: Oh, that's so. Actually, you are also, other than my children, who woke up at like. Mordy Oberstein: No, I spoke to my wife and children. Like, those are not people. That's family. Crystal Carter: We had a silent school run. I don't know about you guys, my kids. Mordy Oberstein: I don't have a silent anything. I'm lying. Crystal Carter: We didn't at all. There was lots of shouting. Mordy Oberstein: There's lots of shouting. That sounds. Crystal Carter: Where are your socks? Where are they? Anyway? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my God, the socks, right? What the hell with the socks and the shoes? Crystal Carter: Takes forever for anyway. Mordy Oberstein: I love system. Paula Mejia: I have a system. So outside of marketing our enterprise solution, I have systems for finding socks. I will share it with you separately. Crystal Carter: No, please share it now. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Yeah. Paula Mejia: Those like grocery bags that are like, the sustainable ones that are like nets? Crystal Carter: Yes. Paula Mejia: You know? Okay. I have three kids, and they're really young, so they have similarly sized feet, which is part of the problem because I'm like this. I don't know whose sock this is, and somehow it doesn't fit everyone. So anyway, so I got three of those nets and I hang them next to the laundry. So, so each net has a name, and then I put all the socks in their corresponding child's net. And then I have a basket on the side for all the pairless socks. And so they just live there until like two weeks. And if you don't find your match within that time frame. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's smart. That's smart. Paula Mejia: You go, you are done. I don't want anything to do with you. It's not very environmentally friendly, but like, I just can't with the, like one sock. Crystal Carter: You can recycle them at TK Maxx. Shout out to TK Maxx. You can recycle the spare socks at TK Maxx. Yes, you can. And also, this is one of the reasons why Paula does what she does, because she finds solutions for things. She finds solutions not just for socks, but for your whole enterprise. She's very good at this kind of. Mordy Oberstein: Thing, which is what we should be talking about. So AI for large marketing teams, I'll start with this off. I feel like there's been a little bit of pushback in the, in the digital marketing space, especially in larger organizations around AI. It was neat, it was awesome. We tried to implement it and it didn't exactly go as we thought it would, or we lack differentiation. We're worried about what it's going to mean for all these different concerns that maybe you don't have at the SMB level, but you might have at the enterprise level. What are you seeing out there in the enterprise ether? Paula Mejia: Yeah, no, I totally hear that. So I think before you assess the impact that AI has had for marketing teams today, I would just first look at what marketing teams, and especially leaders of marketing team, they're feeling. And what they're feeling is a ton, a ton of pressure. So I think marketing has evolved a lot over the last couple of years, and the list of responsibilities for marketing teams just keeps getting bigger and bigger. So where you used to be responsible for brand and growth, now you're responsible for, you know, ginormous P and ls. But you have less budget, you have less resources. All sorts of additional business metrics are kind of, of part of the KPI's for marketers. And marketing takes a lot of time, and it's really not that easy to do, even though a lot of people think it looks easy. Paula Mejia: And this is why I think you also see ten years of like, senior executives in marketing being quite short compared to others. So I think the average tenure, first CMO is two years, whereas everyone else in the C suite is more than five. So you kind of enter this world of like, pressure, pressure, pressure, less resources, deliver more, and in comes AI for marketers, right? And everyone is like, oh my God, a little scared. Maybe it'll take some more jobs, but it should bring a ton of efficiency, right? You should be able to create content like that. There should be no problem. It should be super great. And yet that kind of sense of urgency and lack of support, I would say organizationally, still is very much felt for marketers. And I think right now the reason is that AI feels a bit like a false promise to marketing teams in terms of the efficiencies it can deliver. Paula Mejia: Because while it's being used to varying degrees in different organizations, as you said, where it is being used, it's mostly in small kind of slivers of content creation. So aspiring partner for your content writer, maybe editing certain pieces of your blogs, occasionally being used and designed to make the process a bit more efficient. But it isn't an integrated part of your marketing process. It's kind of bits and bolts. And then you look at kind of the process of going live with a marketing campaign and it's, you know, it's like a full, it's a huge thing that involves many levels of approval. Often it's, let's call it gate kept by technology that may or may not be set up in a way to make you more efficient. And this is obviously the area that Wix studio addresses the best. So what I often tell people to look at before they even look at the AI solution is, is what are the processes and systems in place your marketing team has? And are those the right ones to make it more efficient? Because right now, if you use AI to create more thought leadership content or a campaign, but you can't get to market quickly enough because you're depending on a developer or the technical person that works on your DXP, it doesn't matter if you create that content really fast, but no one will see it. Paula Mejia: And marketing content. Tell me if you guys agree. I don't think that there's such a thing as like Evergreen content anymore. I think most marketing content now is a very specific shelf life. So I see a lot of marketers under this pressure to create more. And the creation process is kind of getting there, but then the getting to the market with that thing you created is not being enabled by AI. And so this is part of the gap that I think we absolutely have to bridge and something that we're working on at Wix Studio to do so teaser. That's the new product that's coming out next year. Paula Mejia: But basically what we understood is, okay, you know, Wix generally, and Wix Studio has kind of solved the problem of creating sites at speed, creating digital assets at speed at the highest quality. Crystal Carter: Right. Paula Mejia: So that's kind of the end, right? And the beginning is more the content creation, which as I said, right now feels quite strange in terms of how AI can support you. And my content writers use club and my designer uses whatever synesthesia promotion video. So how do you kind of integrate all those things together? And this is, that's the idea. This is what we're working on, a platform, a marketing suite, let's call it, that enables marketing teams to create the highest quality assets that are enabled by AI. Crystal Carter: And I think that this is something I really like about the approach. So when you go into Wix studio, there's AI everywhere, but it's not overwhelming. Like I use Grammarly all the time and Grammarly is constantly trying to push AI on me and I'm like, I don't want it. Just tell me how to spell receipt because I always put the e and the I in the wrong place. Just tell me how to spell it, please. Thank you. And whereas like with Wix, like what we have is we haven't, we have an opt in for all of the areas and we have, and with Wix Studio, we have it built into all of the different parts. So if you're stuck on a page and you need to get that page out and you're, you're like, I don't know how to write this about page. Crystal Carter: You can click the create with text. If you've got a bunch of products that are brand new and you need to get product descriptions on there so that you go to market, then we have tools that help you do that. We have tools that help you do stuff in the CMS that you're like, okay, I want to create a bunch of dynamic pages. We have templates for that. Go forth and do what you need to do. I've got this image that somebody sent me. It's a great image, but it's only this many megapixels and I need it to be bigger and I don't want to have to wait two weeks for them to send me another picture. I can upscale it in this part of the, the CMS as well. Crystal Carter: You don't want to have to wait four weeks for the developer to come back to you to make the page responsive. All of that sort of stuff, we have it built in at point of use so you don't have to go and search for another tool to find it because I think that that can be really tricky for marketing teams right now. There's this need to adopt. But also, every time you try to adopt something, there's the time to learn it, but then there's something else that comes out right after that. And then you're like, oh, I spent all this time learning this other AI tool and now there's this new one and it's sort of, there's so much technology coming out right now, it's difficult to keep up. Paula Mejia: Exactly. No, that's exactly right. Mordy Oberstein: The pressure to adopt, I think, is interesting. It's almost like, it's like a value in and of itself. Like, we have to be using AI, but so it creates this, like, almost like weird, weird pressure on these teams to start using AI. But then when you start actually think you mentioned before, when you start thinking about, like, where it's actually applicable and where it's not applicable, it's really, you know, I would say not few and far between, but it's really targeted. I feel this. Right. I have a ton of content to get out, but I also am, like, very, very careful about my messaging. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So it does work, but that it doesn't work. And, like, finding that sweet spot is so hard right now. Paula Mejia: I feel like, yeah, for sure. I think for me, it's really also important to say that when we talk about efficiency, I think it's often understood as, oh, marketers are just trying to put more and more content out there. And for me, it's less about. More and more about optimizing content you have. Crystal Carter: Right. Paula Mejia: Like, everything. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Paula Mejia: You need to be able to put things out and then iterate on it quickly. And what about. I need 17 different articles. I need to create the landing page that comforts best for my audience. So I need multiple versions generated quickly enough, which I think is very in line with what you said around your messaging. Like, it's about kind of getting that quality and efficiency at the right balance. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's why, like, reusing something that, where you can have, like a construct and have the AI reuse it in multiple places and you come in after the fact and kind of like, do your thing with that, with that construct, I think it's a great way to use AI. Crystal Carter: I think also when you're talking about building on the quality, like, there's the, you've mentioned evergreen content, and I think that our idea of evergreen content has definitely changed, partially because, like, the not trend cycle, but what's new, what's considered new content on Google, whatever is changing. Like, the gap between, like, and I, I talked about this at the beginning of the year. And then we're seeing it, seeing this play out is that the gap between content refreshes is getting much smaller because teams that are using AI, teams that have accelerated content updates. So, for instance, it might be that you put out a piece of content and then you look back at it and you're like, actually, I could put this into a table. You can use AI to take that paragraph. You drop that into your AI tool and say, make this into a table. And they can make it into a table. It's not rewriting. Crystal Carter: It doesn't have to hallucinate. You can check everything really quickly. You can pop that into the table and make the content better, more readable, accessible to more people. For instance, using tools like that, maybe you didn't have illustrations and maybe now you're able to do that, for instance, and repurposing content. Right. Paula Mejia: Like, we marketers have lots of ideas. You don't need to reinvent the wheel every time. You just need to get it to your audience, maybe in a different channel, make sure they didn't miss it on the channel that already existed. And repackaging content, that was good and that had an impact. Like, we need to be doing that. That's for sure. Our key to efficiency and making sure that our, our impact is higher. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we just recorded 100th episode of this podcast a few weeks ago. So we recorded in a stream. We did a live version of it recorded in Streamyard. And Streamyard gives you a way to, like, auto generate clips through AI to repurpose them, like, just exactly what you're looking for. Like, I don't want to have to go back through, manually create an audiogram if you can, you know, cut that out for me and it's, and it's decent. Give me 20 of them. If ten of them are good, then great. I still save a ton of time. Crystal Carter: Right, right. And I think that there are a lot of people who are talking about efficiency. PricewaterhouseCooper recently did a report and they were saying that that's the biggest gains that we're seeing right now, today. And then as we go forward, we should see more AI agents that are more specialized and more unique for things. Where are you seeing marketing teams make the most efficiency gains right now from AI? Paula Mejia: Yeah, I think in content creation, that's where I see it the most. But I think that the impact really lies in the, in the hands of the creator. You guys have seen some really bad execution events in the SEO world, and I've all like people who I'm just like I, you know, I'm not an expert, but that looks really not like. Mordy Oberstein: The right way to create. Paula Mejia: I think some people, like I said, have misunderstood the efficiency that AI can bring with the fact that you still really much are the gatekeeper of the quality of that content. So I think this is, this, you know, like I said, there's, there is a promise that AI has for marketers. And I know we're close, but I think we need to be responsible in the way we use it and make sure that it is up to the highest quality standards. And that's something that I think anyone who is concerned about the future of your job with AI, whether you're in content design or in a more managerial area in marketing, I don't think that they will replace you. I don't think AI was going to replace an individual, but I think people who use AI will take your job if you're not using it. That for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I agree. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Paula Mejia: I think for agencies, I don't know if this is something that's come up in some of your conversations in the past, but I've spoken with a lot of agencies, some of which are more hesitant to use AI than others. And I think customers of agencies are rising up and asking, how are you using AI to make my money go farther? Show me the ways in which you're employing this new technology, or I'm going to go to another agency that can. And I think that, like I said, marketing and advertising is an area of a lot of pressure. And I think AI, because everyone hears about it and hears efficiency, you will be, in a way, accountable for showing how you're using it, but also making sure the quality is of the right standard. Crystal Carter: I think the other thing is that. So I recently attended an event. There's a group in London called Agency Hackers, and they've got another one coming up at the beginning of the year called the robot, are coming. It's a great session. It's very hands on about AI and how people are using AI. I spoke to loads of agencies there about how they're using AI and how we use AI at Wix and how one of the things, so just to give us the wix first, a little bit behind the fourth wall or whatever, at Wix, like, and you posted about this, actually on your LinkedIn, Paula, about how, like, we had, we, you know, we regularly have, like, AI workshop days. Like, we have, like, what can we do with AI? Let's have, let's talk about, like, different things that we're doing with AI. We have like, you know, we have, you know, working groups where people are trying things, testing things, iterating with things, talking to each other about how they're, how they're using it. Crystal Carter: But what's really important, and one of the things I love about Wix is that, like, we test things and as a team, as a company, as a business, we're not afraid to like, try something and see what happens and learn from it. If you're an agency, enterprise business, any kind of business, if you're not using AI, then you're also not learning how to use AI. If you're not using it in any way, then you don't know, you know, what you can do or how you can do it. We had Dale Bertrande on for a great webinar a few months ago, and one of the things he was talking about was a really good way to get started is to use Chachi. He had a couple of, a couple of ways. One was to try to use Chachi PT for everything, and then you'll learn very quickly what you can't use it for. Another way was to give it your to do list and say, how can you help me with this? And that can be really useful as well. But testing iterating and not expecting it to be, not expecting it to be perfect the first time, so, so, so important, I think. Mordy Oberstein: I think you have to kind of realize, like, where it is and where it's not really applicable categorically. Like, if you're on the performance side, like, there's gonna be a lot more ways where it's really, really, really easy and much more linear to realizing how you can use AI. Let's say you're more like, on the brand side, and especially in a world where content has become much more conversational, that you're going to have a more of a difficult time using it, or I was a more difficult time. You're going to be a little more creative in how you're going to use it. I use it in the research phase. I can use it to write up to x points where you're going to have to be a little more cautious, a little more strategic about how you go about implementing it. And again, if you're a marketing manager listening to this and you have multiple teams under you, I think you need to realize that different types of teams are going to be able to use the AI in different ways in different moments. It's not a linear equation. Paula Mejia: Absolutely. I will say, though, about the brand component, at least our solution does allow marketing teams, especially with larger integrated marketing teams, where I keeping that consistent tone of voice across, whether it's a franchise model or just different localized teams, that does enable you to keep more consistency in place just by putting certain guardrails in terms of how changes are rolled out across all your sites, making sure that it's following certain brand guidelines. So there are some things kind of helping that brand consistency component that I think teams really need to be aware of. But yeah, back to your point, Crystal. I think something that marketers are also responsible for on top of brand awareness, growth, conversion, blah, blah, is a tech stack. Now, no matter what you do, you're a technology user. And if you're managing a team, you need to be up to date on what technology they're using. Are they using the right one? Are they using outdated technology? Do you have even just from an ROI perspective, do you have too many licenses for things that are not bringing you value? Like do your tech stack audits people, even if you're not really like, this is kind of like a realization I had. Paula Mejia: I was at an event recently that we hosted in London and I was talking to someone about their CRM and they're like, oh, we have three CRMs. And I almost fell out of my chair, girl. Crystal Carter: Why? Paula Mejia: And you know, it's like legacy and also different teams. We don't like there was a some kind of reason, but you know, from an efficiency and like data quality perspective, three CRM's not the way to go, you guys. Crystal Carter: This is like your sock. If you haven't found your socks in two weeks, if you haven't touched that CRM in two weeks, let it go. Mordy Oberstein: Having worked two different SEO tool providers, I can tell you like, there's a significant amount of their user base or people who are paying large amounts of money every month who don't log into the tool. Crystal Carter: It's like people who go to the gym or who have a gym membership and. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly, that's what. Yeah, that's the SEO equivalent. Right, Paula? Folks want to keep up to date with what you're doing on the enterprise side for marketers and AI. Where can they find you? Paula Mejia: You can find me on LinkedIn. That's my, that's my jam these days. Mordy Oberstein: So everybody's jammed these days because there's nowhere else to go. Paula Mejia: Also true. Mordy Oberstein: Also speaking truth on the serves up podcast. Thank you so much, Paula, for coming on and telling us about the enterprise product. And we'll see you out there. Paula Mejia: Yeah, happy to. Thanks so much. Have a good day. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure, you follow Paul Mejia over on LinkedIn. Paul is wonderful, you know, also wonderful, Barry's wonderful, and all the other people who cover the SEO news as well. Which brings us to this week's snappy news. Crystal Carter: In a major development that was the talk of the digital marketing world, Semrush has announced its acquisition of third Door Media, the parent company of search Engine Land. This acquisition also includes all of their door media's brands, including SMX, the search Marketing Expo, Martech.org, comma, the Martech Conference, and digital Marketing Expo. For anyone that's been keeping score, this is another jewel in the some rush SEO media crown alongside backlinko and traffic think tank, this is quite the media portfolio. In other news, Google has announced a significant leadership change. Nick Fox has been appointed as the new head of Google Search, succeeding Prabhakar Raghavan, who is transitioning to chief technologist. Fox has been at Google since 2003 and will now oversee the knowledge and information division, which includes search, ads, e commerce, products and other things. This leadership change comes amidst lots of competition and legal pressures as Google faces lots of challenges from lots of different angles. Speaking of Google challengers over there at Bing, Microsoft is integrating new AI features into their search platform, so you can expect to see AI enhanced summaries providing concise information from different online sources appearing in the knowledge panel section. Crystal Carter: Though these aren't quite widely available just now, you should expect to see them roll out in the near future. Also from Bing, there have been lots of reports that there are bugs within the Bing webmaster tools API and documentation. Ryan Siddle, for instance, highlighted at least five issues, including problems with setting country and region on site requests. Microsoft has responded, saying that they acknowledge the bugs and that they are actively working to fix them. So they've already got two scheduled. And that concludes the snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: That was wonderful. Thank you, Barry and all those who cover the news. When Eric Clapton wrote wonderful tonight, he was writing it about Barry. Indeed. I hope that makes you feel a little bit awkward, Barry, that's special kind of way. If we're talking about AI and we mentioned who can you follow the very beginning of this episode for more SEO and AI awesomeness? This then Eli Schwartz is your man. Eli spends a lot of time talking about SEO and AI. He did so on our 100th episode of the podcast, and he does so all over LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: A lot of thought provoking question about how AI will not just impact SEO practice, but impact the SEO industry and the amount of money you're able to earn as an SEO so check out Eli on LinkedIn. It's a lot of great content about that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think he's absolutely, absolutely great. And he did a webinar with us as well, which was really good as well, talking about all of these different tools and talking about how they impact. And he talks a lot about brand and about reputation as well. So he was joined by Anne Smarty for that webinar. Highly recommend checking it out. Mordy Oberstein: He's a good dude, and she's a good follow also. Wow, so many follows. Crystal Carter: So many follows. Check it out. Mordy Oberstein: How many follows? But where do you follow people now? Not an ex, I guess. I guess. Crystal Carter: LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's also weird. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's all we have, Morty. Mordy Oberstein: I know, I know. It's all that's left. It's problematic. Crystal Carter: I get more action on Instagram than I do on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not doing Instagram. I get a mix. It's funny to see what works well on X and what works well on LinkedIn. They're not the same thing. It's really interesting. Anyway, anyway, we can. Crystal Carter: That's a different podcast. Mordy Oberstein: That's a different. That's a different griping session. Thank you for joining us on the Surface up podcast. That sounded like Sean Connery podcasts. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into refreshing your SEO career. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix studio SEO learning hub, over@wix.com SEO learn looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content webinars on the Wix studio learning hub at, you guessed it, Wix.com SEO learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Mordy Oberstein: Until next time, peace of love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Garrett Sussman Paula Mejia Eli Schwartz Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App iPull Rank SEO Agency Wix Enterprise Solution News: Semrush acquires Search Engine Land Nick Fox New Lead Of Google Search; Replaced Prabhakar Raghavan Bing Search Adding Al-Enhanced Summary Several Bugs Within Bing Webmaster Tools API & Documentation Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Garrett Sussman Paula Mejia Eli Schwartz Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App iPull Rank SEO Agency Wix Enterprise Solution News: Semrush acquires Search Engine Land Nick Fox New Lead Of Google Search; Replaced Prabhakar Raghavan Bing Search Adding Al-Enhanced Summary Several Bugs Within Bing Webmaster Tools API & Documentation Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to serps. Aloha. Mahalo. Put your serps up podcast. We're pushing out some grooving insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Morty oversting, the head of SEO brand here at Wix. And I'm joined by the always cutting edge, innovative new emerging tech of the SEO communications world, or head of SEO communications here at Wix and Wix studio, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. I try not to cut up too much. I've been known to cut a rug from time to time. I've always liked that turn of phrase. Mordy Oberstein: It was better than cutting the cheese, so. Crystal Carter: Oh no, we're not doing that on this podcast. Mordy Oberstein: It's like a podcast, guys. What a bad rap for cheese. Like, cheese is wonderful. Like, why would I get her, like cut the cheese. Please, please cut me some cheese. Crystal Carter: I mean, I've had some smelly cheese in my time. Like there are some cheeses that like really go for it. Mordy Oberstein: It's like fancy people's cheese. Like, I'm not talking about that. Like cheddar and mozzarella, right? Maybe some monster, right? Crystal Carter: We keep it simple. We keep it like, like classy. Yeah, that's what it works. Mordy Oberstein: The Surface up podcast is brought to you by Cheez whiz and not by cheese, but by Wix Studio, where you can only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight, over@wix.com SEO Learn Newsletter. But where you can also spin up some AI images, create title tags and meta descriptions using AI and more. Look for it wherever you do stuff inside of Wixtudicause all over the place. It's everywhere. AI is everywhere inside of Wix Studios. I'm trying to say is today we're talking about preparing for the future as AI search engines and AIO reviews aiositive set to dominate the skies perhaps maybe. And as the chat GPTs of the world rule the seas, why an entity first approach to SEO show rule the day when looking to get your URL's into AI outputs. Why there are no shortcuts, cheats and or hacks to reigning supreme in AI results. Mordy Oberstein: So sorry. Not heading yonder past the mountain views and gazing out on AI search engines beyond Google as AI SEO influencer, an actual real life human being, Garrett Sussmann pipes in on how AI search engines will change user behavior. Plus, we talked to Wix Studios Paula Mejia about what AI abilities move the needle for large marketing teams. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO and AI awesomeness. So as AI search engines and outputs with URL's of all sorts set to ascend towards user preference, sovereignty, and how ye can knight thyself master of the realm. That is. LLM on this, the Serps up podcast. I win all medieval times in y'all, which like, it's such a weird thing, medieval. Mordy Oberstein: You show up to watch, like, people jousting while you're eating a cheeseburger. I've never been there, so I don't know, but it seems weird. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I kind of always wanted to go to the knights of roundtable in Las Vegas. I don't know, mostly to hear the terrible english accents. Like people in Las Vegas going, hear ye, hear ye. Mordy Oberstein: Like, I'm not from England. Clearly they don't do that all the time. Crystal Carter: What? Have terrible english accents? Mordy Oberstein: No, like I thought, like, you know, if I'm an english person, I'm going into, I don't know, like a restaurant. I'm trying to get the waiter's attention. I'll be, hear ye, hear ye, thy waiter. They don't do that. Crystal Carter: Only for special occasions. Mordy Oberstein: Ah, okay. They don't have like a bella ringing? Crystal Carter: No, only for special occasions. In England, what you do find is there are sometimes places where they have a lord mayor and the lord mayor has bling, has ridiculous necklaces, this huge necklace and wears a cape and stuff. It's amazing because they're supposed to have all this decorum, but they wear all. Mordy Oberstein: This bling that I'm talking about touristy Englands for me. So. All right, all right. It's the subject of basically every marketing team's meetings, blog posts, social media. It's the subject of all the posters on trees, whatever, is basically how do I get my site mentioned? And when possible, link to an AI output like search, GPT, chat GPT, and everyone's favorite classic, the AI overview. And it seems to me that everyone is looking for some sort of like optimization hack. I cannot tell you how many times people are like, yeah, how can I get in there quickly? And the answer is, there's no hack. It's a lot of work to get in there, and it's going to be a lot of real digital marketing, presence, brand presence, building, that's the only way of getting in there. Mordy Oberstein: And for SEOs, it's a different kind of optimization and a different kind of way of thinking, because again, it's really entity based. If you go to chat GPT and you're like, what are the best places to get a cheeseburger? It's going to say McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's. Because McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's are everywhere. Those are the known quantities. Those are the known entities. And they didn't, McDonald's didn't get there. But doing something like SEO hack, they got it because they've been around forever and they're everywhere because it's not like, I don't know, it's not like links or title tags or crawl weights or whatever. It's good old entity building or in my day when I walk to school, uphill both ways. Mordy Oberstein: So we call brand building, or I like to call it momentum building because fundamentally getting inside of these outputs means being the entity related to the input. And there's no hack for that. And that's where I like to start this conversation. Crystal Carter: Yeah, so this is something that I've looked into and I'll be speaking at Brighton SEO. I can't remember if this goes out before then or after that about this as well. And one of the things is that essentially within these systems, they're using entities to understand because from a large language model they're using entities to understand relationships to things, to understand language. Right. So a prime example that I use when I'm speaking to people is I put in the, there's a great tool if you're trying to understand entities. And we've got some great resources on the Wix SEO learning hub about entities and about the relationship between entities and search. So we have, Michelle Fortin's written a great one about entity relationships and we also have some other resources around that as well. So if you really want to get into that, and also I think Gus Pelosi has a great article about the knowledge graph and how that all works and that all backs up all of these sort of things. Crystal Carter: And one of the tools that I use when I'm looking at entity relationships, and it's really great because it's free to use and you can see it, lays it out really clearly, is something called Textrazr. Textrazr is old school. It's an oldie but a goodie. And what you can do is you can pop in a piece of text and it will pull out all of the entities that can see and all the entities that are related to it and how they're related, et cetera, et cetera. One of the ones that is a classic example that I use all the time is the Barbie movie description. The Barbie movie description doesn't mention anything about a doll. It says, like, barbie and Ken go on a hilarious adventure to save Barbie land, something to that effect. And when you pop that into textrazure, one of the entities it pulls out is Mattel and fashion doll and barbie. Crystal Carter: And it doesn't say mattel, it doesn't say fashion doll. It doesn't say. It doesn't say Barbie the doll. But because you have the word barbie and the word can in close proximity and you have the word Barbie land, the machine learning is able to, is able to identify that those entities are latent in there. So if, similarly, if you go into something like Chachi pt, if you go into perplexity, quad Gemini, et cetera, and you say, name me a fashion doll, what they will do is they'll say Barbie, right? Because they understand that Barbie, that the entity of Barbie is related to a fashion doll. Now, it's very tricky if you don't have a legacy ip like Barbie. Barbie's been going for like 70 years or something like that. Like, you know, the pre Internet in there, all of that sort of stuff. Crystal Carter: It's very tricky to sort of sharp your entity. However, Wix, which has been around for. I think we're coming. We're like old, old man Internet Wix. Mordy Oberstein: 1617 years, 18 years, something like that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's 18 years. It'll be 20. It'll be 20 years in 2026. And Wix on our knowledge graph says we are cloud based cms. If you go into chats and say, name me a cloud based cms, guess what it'll say Wix, right? Because that's part of our entity. This is really important for a couple of reasons. One is because people try to rank on Chachi BT, but what they forget is that, like, it's not that you have to wait for the updates, right? It's not live, live data. They do have links in there, but they're not like brand new live updating links. Crystal Carter: It's kind of like, I'm gonna date myself here. It's kind of like the phone book. Remember when the phone book would come out and they release it either once a year, right? Mordy Oberstein: Big ass books. Crystal Carter: Now, if Aardvark taxis only started up in January and they dropped the phone book in December, guess what? Aardvark taxis isn't in the phone book. But the next time they drop the phone book, Aardvark Taxis is going to be top of the top of the phone book, right? So what you have to do is sometimes you have to wait for the next drop of chat GBT. So when it first came out, I think it was dated to 2022. I think now it's up to 2023. And I think that as they go on, they'll get quicker and quicker and, like, the gaps between their data updates will be between the training models will get smaller. So when chat GBT first dropped, I was like, hello? And they were like, hi. I was like, who is Crystal Carter? And they said, who? And I said, who is Crystal Carter? They were like, I don't know who you are. And it's like, okey dokey. Crystal Carter: And me and my little ego sat back down. So then I recently said to chat GPT, I was like, when was the last time you updated your data? What training data are you working up to? What was the last time you updated it? And they said, oh, 2023, blah blah, blah. And I said, okay, so who is Crystal Carter? And they were like, crystal Carter is head of SEO communications at Wix, blah blah blah blah, right? Because between then and between now, I've done a lot more stuff around my entity to build up my name around that particular stuff. Like, there's stuff on websites, there's stuff on articles, talks and this, that and the other, and that will update it. Similarly, I've had people who are like, oh, we just launched this product last month and we're not on track BT. I'm like, yeah. Cause chat GBT isn't up to last month, it's up to now. If you want to check an entity on something that's brand new, you need to look at some of the live scrape, the more like sort of hybrid ones that are like that are. Crystal Carter: They have augmented data. So they have a training set that's supported by live augmented data. Something like Copilot, right? So you launched your thing a month ago, check it on Copilot. Ask Copilot who is. Who is this? And if you're doing okay on that, then when chat BT up to updates, you're probably going to see yourself in there, right? But it's worth thinking about, but it's worth understanding, like, which models they are. So if you're. If your team is going, we're not ranking on chat GBT, we're not showing on chat to BT, understand the parameters, because there's some, some cases where, like, you're just ain't gonna. It's not, you're not gonna, you're not, because you just launched that, right. Crystal Carter: However, it's also the case of understanding, like how. How chatty BT understands that entity and understands where you are within that entity as well. So understanding, like some of these things is really, really important. And understanding how you can be unique in your entity. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I mean, look, let's assume for a second that chat GPT updated every day. It's updated every day. Fine. It doesn't. Right. As you mentioned, if you're, if you're asking, why are we not showing in there? How do we get in there? And then you're asking yourself that again next week, or even, like, I'll even say, like, next month, you're on the wrong track, in my opinion. Like, you, I don't think you understand how this works. It's momentum. Mordy Oberstein: Like, you need to generate digital momentum, which, by the way, can be offline, but you need to start, like, partnering with people. You need to start interacting. You need to start engaging, you need to start getting people talking about you, even if you have a strong entity. So, like, Google can understand who I am because I have a website, I have a LinkedIn profile of yada, yada, yada. You're not just trying to get them to understand, like, that you existed, right? You're trying to get in there from some kind of commercial way, like, what are the best soft drinks? It's gonna be coke, sprite, whatever. Even if it's not just as simple, like, as it's not simple either. But it's not as a matter of getting, like getting the knowledge graph to understand that you exist and to understand who you are. It's getting them to understand who you are and then getting them to understand that you're relevant enough to show us one of the top results in their output. Mordy Oberstein: And the only way to do that is to have that broader momentum that keeps building, by the way, that keeps building upon itself. Because if you don't and someone else will, and even if you are the top hot dog vendor, that when someone's best hot dog vendor in New York City, you might not be that again in six months from now, if the other hot dog vendor down the cart, down the cart, down the street with his cart, is building up all the momentum, and now it is the known entity or the hot entity around this, it comes down to you taking a different kind of mentality. How do I, how do I make connections? How do I get other people to talk about me? And how do I keep the momentum going? It's not a simple one to one linear optimization, like even a knowledge panel theoretically might be, which is also it's. Crystal Carter: Not, I think, from a practical point of view that that comes down to having, having like a paper trail, essentially having, having a paper trail. So one of the things that's worth thinking about is like, if there is somebody else within your sector, within your search ecosystem, I guess you would say, who is already a known entity to chat GBT and you're trying to get yourself aligned, like into chat GBT, it's worth prioritizing those links. So, for instance, like, if you were to think about Barbie, for instance, Barbie's gonna want to make sure that Mattel is already on there, right? If Mattel's already on there, then that great, that's a great place to start. So you need to make sure that you also are like very, very clearly articulated within the Mattel website within, and that you're associated with Mattel because you are, for instance, like one of the good example that I give for where Google gets a little confused and there's, there's some disambiguation that needs, needs acquiring, is like, if you were to say something like, Steve McQueen is a man known for his films, right? There are two Steve McQueen's who are men known for their films, right? There's Steve McQueen from the sixties, and there's Steve McQueen who's like a Turner Prize winning director from now, right? And what would be important if you were to disambiguate those particular entities? For instance, if you just said, who's Steve McQueen? Who is Steve McQueen? For instance, so that Google understands there are two, for instance, you need to make sure that they're very distinct, very clear named entities that are already known by these LLMs. So, for instance, Steve McQueen has a Turner Prize, or the current Steve McQueen has a Turner Prize as an Academy Award. It's worth mentioning in a bio, for instance, for, for Steve McQueen on his website and in any art, any podcasts, any, you know, awards, things that he does, any, any appearances anywhere where he's mentioned online that he has a Turner Prize, has, it has an Academy Award, for instance, because that will align with those particular entities. And then you would think when it says who's, who's somebody who's won an Academy Award, it would say McQueen. What I've seen a few times is I've spoken to agency owners, for instance, who are like, we're trying to get on chat GPT, and we haven't had any luck. Crystal Carter: We can't see why we're not on chat CPT. We ask, like, can you name a good agency in Paris? And we can't see ourselves on chat CPT. Well, I had a look at some, like, top agencies who have great, great, great work. They do wonderful, wonderful things. And one of the things that I saw was that everybody has the same bio. Like, everybody has the same, like, sort of the same, like, usp, like by line, tagline, whatever. They're like, we are a global agency serving top brands in, you know, over 100 countries on some incredible campaigns, but you could literally copy and paste that onto, like, seven different, like, top tier agencies, for instance. Like, it's the same one. Crystal Carter: So when Google's like, can you name me an agency? Like, they're, they're, they don't necessarily need to name someone specific or, sorry, not Google. Like, if you're looking at an LLM, like, they, they don't necessarily name someone specific because there's not anything specific to differentiate you. So when you're thinking about, about your entities, make sure that you're aligning yourself with named entities. So that. So that when you're, when someone's doing a search on an Llmde, on a generative search tool, like perplexity, like quad, like copilot or whatever, that when they're showing up, you're also showing up. And it's worth thinking about that in relation to your brand in relationship to the partnerships that you develop in relationship to the sort of online paper trail that you're developing across the web. Mordy Oberstein: You mentioned something that I want to piggyback on or swing back around on, and it's a website. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Like, I'm obviously interested in selling websites because that's how I feel my family. But yeah, I think a lot of, a lot of this is like, if you're, if you're listening to this and you're not a big brand and you're doing, and you're doing a podcast, are you doing a podcast? I'm gonna, I'm gonna run this, actually, right now. I'm gonna type. I am gonna search for Yankees podcast and best Yankees podcast and chat GPT at million bucks. This is what happens. I'm going to predict, okay, if I run best Yankees podcast into chat GPT, the results that are going to come up are the ones with the largest, like, web presence, and it's gonna be the ones that actually have a website even though they're more popular ones on YouTube. So let's run this great. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: There's a Yankees podcast I listen to. His father was actually a professional baseball player for the New York Yankees, Gary Sheffield. Gary Sheffield junior is called Yankees unloaded. It's a great pocket. It's one of my favorite Yankees podcasts, and there are many. And in fact, oh, this is perfect. Okay. They don't show up. Mordy Oberstein: In fact, the Yankees announcer and this might be an entity thing, actually has a radio show which on ESPN, which mainly talks about the Yankees, and he's not even here because they don't have websites. You know who's here? There's someone called talking Yanks. They're a whole like, network of podcasts, basically, and a bunch of their subsidiaries, like, they're like, they're like, I don't know what you call their sub brand podcasts. They're here because they all have websites. All of the podcasts that actually have a website and are connected via websites, those are the ones that show up here because you have to give the LLM something to grab onto. If you're just on your podcast platform, on Spotify, if you're just on YouTube, or if you're on Spotify and YouTube, there's nothing to grab onto. So if you are a smaller brand and you're like, what do I do here? The first thing to do is get, is honestly get off of social for five minutes and build a website. Crystal Carter: I think the important thing to remember is that. So chat GPT, one of the founding things for their model, one of the founding pieces of data for their model is a common crawl. So common crawl is one of the things it was based off of early, early on. And so, yeah, that's web scraping. If you're thinking about copilot, for instance, that's Bing and that's chat GPT. If you're thinking about perplexity, they have their own bot that goes around and across the web. It goes around and across web. And perplexity is listing things as well. Crystal Carter: They're also on the web. So it's worth thinking about that as well. It's also worth considering which elements are thinking about where they get their data from. So we know that Google is getting information from Reddit, for instance, and they're using that to train to train their models, including Gemini. We know that chat GBT is aligned with Bing, and you're using Bing search results as well. So, for instance, if you're not ranking in Bing, that's something to consider as well. But I think that it's worth looking at how these models work in order to align that with you. And they are listing links to websites. Crystal Carter: So the chat PBT four, which is the one that's free for most people, is listing websites where they can sometimes and then also perplexity is listing web listing links all the time as well. For instance, when you look in GA four, you can see the traffic that's coming into your sites. Jess Schultz recently shared a really good regex for finding it's really simple to use for finding all of the traffic that you're getting from LLMs. And Chachi BT is leading the charge in many, many cases, but perplexity is actually coming in significantly regularly. Mordy Oberstein: I mean, it's interesting, but yeah, and. Crystal Carter: It'S coming in regularly for a lot of folks, and I've seen it on some occasions where it's actually surpassing chat pt for certain queries. So I think that's worth understanding as well where you're getting a little bit of traction and where you can build. But they are sending traffic to websites and I think that it's worth getting on these LLMs if you're not already. Don't just log in to Google yourself, use them so that you understand how they work. Mordy Oberstein: If we're talking about perplexity, it kind of brings up something we asked Garrett Sussmann over at ipol rank, how will AI search engines change user behavior? Is this the death of Google? It's not, but it's interesting because it's a conversation that we wanted to have for a long time that a lot of SEOs are having is how are AI search engines going to change user behavior? So here's Garrett on how AI search engines will change user behavior. Garrett Sussman: How will AI search engines change user behavior? That is a meaty question. And you know what? Nobody knows. However, let's dive into this and think about it. So right now, current 2024, nothing stealing market share from Google, it's still like 90 some percent. We're talking perplexity. Search, GPT, even Bing's copilot, they're really not being used to the extent that they're making a marginal difference. However, just thinking about AI search engines and the way that they understand natural language so much better than traditional old school search engines, it could potentially be a game changer that we should delve into. No, but honestly, you think about the way that we used to use search engines, basic keywords. Garrett Sussman: We were trained by the search engines and their capabilities, but now they really can understand so much more context with the advent of mum and, and these types of algorithms that are making things so much more complex that they understand these nuance of language. So what happens when people feel more and more comfortable using these AI search engines? Well, we're going to use natural language. We're going to have longer tailed search terms. We're going to be able to talk like humans to ask our queries. We're going to be able to infuse our own biases, confirmation bias, into the actual searches we make, which as SEOs is extremely challenging and problematic because these AI search engines are going to search for more personalized results that are very, very, very specific and potentially pulled from all different types of content and other queries and other links. Remember, it expands on the queries. It's not just exactly what you're asking. In addition to that, rank tracking is going to be so much more difficult. Garrett Sussman: I mean, you're not going to be able to track a singular keyword because they're going to be so many variations. So do I think this is going to happen in the near future? Like twelve months? No, probably not. Unless, you know, we have some major antitrust trial where, you know, the american government decides that Google has to break up and there are consequences maybe faster than that, but chances are we're not going to see any actual user behavior change for another two 3510 years until people really become used to using these AI search engines and they trust the results so that they actually start to talk to them like real people. It's meaty. It's fascinating. Nobody knows, but I cannot wait to watch and see how we start to interact with this technology and it becomes more mainstream over time. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Garrett. Make sure to give Garrett a follow over on LinkedIn and on Twitter at Garrett Sussman or X. What do you want to call it? It's such an interesting conversation. He made a great point, or interesting point. It is a great point and an interesting point about the accuracy. Like for example, I actually looked up like best SEO podcast and Garrett had the rankable podcast. They got his name wrong as a host. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So will the format allow you to deep dive the way you want to deep dive? I feel like for a top level query or top level search, like, yeah, it's probably like that's a no brainer. Like, you're going to see people going to the chat GPTs of the world, but for deeper investigations, like, I don't know, how do I deal with kidney? Like, I don't know if I want to go to chat DBT for that. But really looking to get like a balanced look and really dive into the topic. Maybe it's not the easiest way to explore, I don't know. But the accuracy thing, I know it's great, but there's, there's, there's still, and it's definitely better than it was before, but there are still a lot of instances where it's not exactly accurate. And if you're going to be like, well, I have to pick a search engine, which am I going to go to? Even like, no, 80% of the time might be great. That 20% is still going to weigh on people's minds. I feel like I, I feel like. Crystal Carter: Though, that main Google search is not always accurate either. So I feel like what I tend to use in terms of as a user, because I use multiple search engines is I go to Google and I can't find what I need or if I don't even know where to start, right? If I'm like, I don't even know what this is called, I don't know what this is. I need a thing that will help me to do this. And then they'll say, well, you might need one of this, this, this and this. And I'm like, okay, well, what is that? And then they'll explain that. The LLM will explain the information there. But he was talking about like conversational topics. When you go to Copilot, they have the microphone as the easiest thing for you to use. Crystal Carter: Like it's, it's really high priority. When you use the copilot app, the microphone is super useful and you literally just say what you want and then it will spit out something, something that you need. And I think that that's having the microphone as a central search tool is going to make you more likely to speak more conversationally, like Garrett is talking about. Similarly, within with Bing recently, they, they opened up their chat bar, like, you know, when you need to go onto it and it's like, oh, I think it's like 2000 characters or something they opened it up to. And all of these LLMs keep expanding the character count that you can add in for what you need. So I've had it before where I'm trying to troubleshoot a piece of code and before you were able to only able to put in a certain amount and then you'd sort of top off at the characters. And now I can put in pretty much the whole document and say, I have this documentation, I have this piece of code. Please can you help me debug it? And then it will help you to pull those things out. Crystal Carter: So I think that when we're thinking about search and how people are going from some of these tools into a website, I think the trust factor is important. I think for ymyl stuff, it's super, super important. I was looking at some financial question or something and I said, if my income is this, how much should I invest in this? If my income is this, how could. And then it was like, it was like, you should. And then the number that I put on the income or whatever, they were like, the whole number is what you should invest in the thing. And I'm like, that's terrible advice. Luckily, I'm not a complete moron, but if somebody was to just follow that advice wholesale, they would be putting their entire savings into whatever this investment thing is and would have nothing. And the thing that's fascinating about that is that if you go onto, I mean, break the fourth wall, I was looking at Cedars type types, things where you look at supporting smaller companies, startups and stuff. Crystal Carter: And if you go on one of those websites, it has disclaimers all over the website that's like, be careful. Investment is risky. Make sure you've read all the terms and conditions. Do not invest everything. Blah, blah, blah. If you go to buy a credit card, they say, please be careful about all of these stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Like, credit cards are coffee, coffee is hot, please be careful. Right? Crystal Carter: There's all of these different disclaimers, but in chat and copilot, there was nothing. It was just like, go, like, invest all of the, everything that you want, like, make all this money, like, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, guys, like, where are the, you know, you should understand it's. Mordy Oberstein: Not always there yet. That's kind of the thing. It's not always there yet. And that it's a bad association. Like, it's all about it. These kind of things of trust is all about associations. It's a bad association. I don't think it's there yet. Mordy Oberstein: I do think though, like, what's interesting or perhaps different about, let's say, like Google's use of AI versus like, going to chat. If the Google's a overview doesn't give you what you want, or it's a little bit wonky or whatever it is, you have the actual results right underneath it. So even though the results sometimes aren't always right, they're diverse. So like, the top results, not what you want, the second one might be so like that. That diversity of sources, I don't think is something that's ever going to go away. I think it's like inbuilt in what we want is when we want to look at a topic. And I wonder if, I mean, I searched GBT something different, but like the chat GPTs of the world, that kind of format, what really lend itself to what people ultimately really want. Again, it's a lot. Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot to discuss there. Who knows what we're talking about? AI products. We have a little treat for you because we know someone who knows a lot about AI products. No matter what AI search engines you might be using or what it might mean for user behavior, there's no doubt that the technology has already impacted your marketing team and one way, shape, form or another, I completely botched that idiom. And it's fine. I'm okay with it. I'm hallucinating right now. I'm AI. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, the question is, in what way should AI move large scale marketing teams or big organizations, or even small ones too, into action? To help us end this, we're going across the wix verse with our very own vp of marketing enterprise, Paula Mejia. And this very special, as I already mentioned, across the Wix verse. Three, two, one, ignition. Crystal Carter: Lift up. Mordy Oberstein: Paula, welcome to the show. Paula Mejia: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here, you guys. Mordy Oberstein: I'm terrified right now. It's Monday morning. This is like one of the first things, like, I'm actually doing with, like, you're the first person I'm speaking to this week. Paula Mejia: Oh, that's so. Actually, you are also, other than my children, who woke up at like. Mordy Oberstein: No, I spoke to my wife and children. Like, those are not people. That's family. Crystal Carter: We had a silent school run. I don't know about you guys, my kids. Mordy Oberstein: I don't have a silent anything. I'm lying. Crystal Carter: We didn't at all. There was lots of shouting. Mordy Oberstein: There's lots of shouting. That sounds. Crystal Carter: Where are your socks? Where are they? Anyway? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my God, the socks, right? What the hell with the socks and the shoes? Crystal Carter: Takes forever for anyway. Mordy Oberstein: I love system. Paula Mejia: I have a system. So outside of marketing our enterprise solution, I have systems for finding socks. I will share it with you separately. Crystal Carter: No, please share it now. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Yeah. Paula Mejia: Those like grocery bags that are like, the sustainable ones that are like nets? Crystal Carter: Yes. Paula Mejia: You know? Okay. I have three kids, and they're really young, so they have similarly sized feet, which is part of the problem because I'm like this. I don't know whose sock this is, and somehow it doesn't fit everyone. So anyway, so I got three of those nets and I hang them next to the laundry. So, so each net has a name, and then I put all the socks in their corresponding child's net. And then I have a basket on the side for all the pairless socks. And so they just live there until like two weeks. And if you don't find your match within that time frame. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's smart. That's smart. Paula Mejia: You go, you are done. I don't want anything to do with you. It's not very environmentally friendly, but like, I just can't with the, like one sock. Crystal Carter: You can recycle them at TK Maxx. Shout out to TK Maxx. You can recycle the spare socks at TK Maxx. Yes, you can. And also, this is one of the reasons why Paula does what she does, because she finds solutions for things. She finds solutions not just for socks, but for your whole enterprise. She's very good at this kind of. Mordy Oberstein: Thing, which is what we should be talking about. So AI for large marketing teams, I'll start with this off. I feel like there's been a little bit of pushback in the, in the digital marketing space, especially in larger organizations around AI. It was neat, it was awesome. We tried to implement it and it didn't exactly go as we thought it would, or we lack differentiation. We're worried about what it's going to mean for all these different concerns that maybe you don't have at the SMB level, but you might have at the enterprise level. What are you seeing out there in the enterprise ether? Paula Mejia: Yeah, no, I totally hear that. So I think before you assess the impact that AI has had for marketing teams today, I would just first look at what marketing teams, and especially leaders of marketing team, they're feeling. And what they're feeling is a ton, a ton of pressure. So I think marketing has evolved a lot over the last couple of years, and the list of responsibilities for marketing teams just keeps getting bigger and bigger. So where you used to be responsible for brand and growth, now you're responsible for, you know, ginormous P and ls. But you have less budget, you have less resources. All sorts of additional business metrics are kind of, of part of the KPI's for marketers. And marketing takes a lot of time, and it's really not that easy to do, even though a lot of people think it looks easy. Paula Mejia: And this is why I think you also see ten years of like, senior executives in marketing being quite short compared to others. So I think the average tenure, first CMO is two years, whereas everyone else in the C suite is more than five. So you kind of enter this world of like, pressure, pressure, pressure, less resources, deliver more, and in comes AI for marketers, right? And everyone is like, oh my God, a little scared. Maybe it'll take some more jobs, but it should bring a ton of efficiency, right? You should be able to create content like that. There should be no problem. It should be super great. And yet that kind of sense of urgency and lack of support, I would say organizationally, still is very much felt for marketers. And I think right now the reason is that AI feels a bit like a false promise to marketing teams in terms of the efficiencies it can deliver. Paula Mejia: Because while it's being used to varying degrees in different organizations, as you said, where it is being used, it's mostly in small kind of slivers of content creation. So aspiring partner for your content writer, maybe editing certain pieces of your blogs, occasionally being used and designed to make the process a bit more efficient. But it isn't an integrated part of your marketing process. It's kind of bits and bolts. And then you look at kind of the process of going live with a marketing campaign and it's, you know, it's like a full, it's a huge thing that involves many levels of approval. Often it's, let's call it gate kept by technology that may or may not be set up in a way to make you more efficient. And this is obviously the area that Wix studio addresses the best. So what I often tell people to look at before they even look at the AI solution is, is what are the processes and systems in place your marketing team has? And are those the right ones to make it more efficient? Because right now, if you use AI to create more thought leadership content or a campaign, but you can't get to market quickly enough because you're depending on a developer or the technical person that works on your DXP, it doesn't matter if you create that content really fast, but no one will see it. Paula Mejia: And marketing content. Tell me if you guys agree. I don't think that there's such a thing as like Evergreen content anymore. I think most marketing content now is a very specific shelf life. So I see a lot of marketers under this pressure to create more. And the creation process is kind of getting there, but then the getting to the market with that thing you created is not being enabled by AI. And so this is part of the gap that I think we absolutely have to bridge and something that we're working on at Wix Studio to do so teaser. That's the new product that's coming out next year. Paula Mejia: But basically what we understood is, okay, you know, Wix generally, and Wix Studio has kind of solved the problem of creating sites at speed, creating digital assets at speed at the highest quality. Crystal Carter: Right. Paula Mejia: So that's kind of the end, right? And the beginning is more the content creation, which as I said, right now feels quite strange in terms of how AI can support you. And my content writers use club and my designer uses whatever synesthesia promotion video. So how do you kind of integrate all those things together? And this is, that's the idea. This is what we're working on, a platform, a marketing suite, let's call it, that enables marketing teams to create the highest quality assets that are enabled by AI. Crystal Carter: And I think that this is something I really like about the approach. So when you go into Wix studio, there's AI everywhere, but it's not overwhelming. Like I use Grammarly all the time and Grammarly is constantly trying to push AI on me and I'm like, I don't want it. Just tell me how to spell receipt because I always put the e and the I in the wrong place. Just tell me how to spell it, please. Thank you. And whereas like with Wix, like what we have is we haven't, we have an opt in for all of the areas and we have, and with Wix Studio, we have it built into all of the different parts. So if you're stuck on a page and you need to get that page out and you're, you're like, I don't know how to write this about page. Crystal Carter: You can click the create with text. If you've got a bunch of products that are brand new and you need to get product descriptions on there so that you go to market, then we have tools that help you do that. We have tools that help you do stuff in the CMS that you're like, okay, I want to create a bunch of dynamic pages. We have templates for that. Go forth and do what you need to do. I've got this image that somebody sent me. It's a great image, but it's only this many megapixels and I need it to be bigger and I don't want to have to wait two weeks for them to send me another picture. I can upscale it in this part of the, the CMS as well. Crystal Carter: You don't want to have to wait four weeks for the developer to come back to you to make the page responsive. All of that sort of stuff, we have it built in at point of use so you don't have to go and search for another tool to find it because I think that that can be really tricky for marketing teams right now. There's this need to adopt. But also, every time you try to adopt something, there's the time to learn it, but then there's something else that comes out right after that. And then you're like, oh, I spent all this time learning this other AI tool and now there's this new one and it's sort of, there's so much technology coming out right now, it's difficult to keep up. Paula Mejia: Exactly. No, that's exactly right. Mordy Oberstein: The pressure to adopt, I think, is interesting. It's almost like, it's like a value in and of itself. Like, we have to be using AI, but so it creates this, like, almost like weird, weird pressure on these teams to start using AI. But then when you start actually think you mentioned before, when you start thinking about, like, where it's actually applicable and where it's not applicable, it's really, you know, I would say not few and far between, but it's really targeted. I feel this. Right. I have a ton of content to get out, but I also am, like, very, very careful about my messaging. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So it does work, but that it doesn't work. And, like, finding that sweet spot is so hard right now. Paula Mejia: I feel like, yeah, for sure. I think for me, it's really also important to say that when we talk about efficiency, I think it's often understood as, oh, marketers are just trying to put more and more content out there. And for me, it's less about. More and more about optimizing content you have. Crystal Carter: Right. Paula Mejia: Like, everything. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Paula Mejia: You need to be able to put things out and then iterate on it quickly. And what about. I need 17 different articles. I need to create the landing page that comforts best for my audience. So I need multiple versions generated quickly enough, which I think is very in line with what you said around your messaging. Like, it's about kind of getting that quality and efficiency at the right balance. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's why, like, reusing something that, where you can have, like a construct and have the AI reuse it in multiple places and you come in after the fact and kind of like, do your thing with that, with that construct, I think it's a great way to use AI. Crystal Carter: I think also when you're talking about building on the quality, like, there's the, you've mentioned evergreen content, and I think that our idea of evergreen content has definitely changed, partially because, like, the not trend cycle, but what's new, what's considered new content on Google, whatever is changing. Like, the gap between, like, and I, I talked about this at the beginning of the year. And then we're seeing it, seeing this play out is that the gap between content refreshes is getting much smaller because teams that are using AI, teams that have accelerated content updates. So, for instance, it might be that you put out a piece of content and then you look back at it and you're like, actually, I could put this into a table. You can use AI to take that paragraph. You drop that into your AI tool and say, make this into a table. And they can make it into a table. It's not rewriting. Crystal Carter: It doesn't have to hallucinate. You can check everything really quickly. You can pop that into the table and make the content better, more readable, accessible to more people. For instance, using tools like that, maybe you didn't have illustrations and maybe now you're able to do that, for instance, and repurposing content. Right. Paula Mejia: Like, we marketers have lots of ideas. You don't need to reinvent the wheel every time. You just need to get it to your audience, maybe in a different channel, make sure they didn't miss it on the channel that already existed. And repackaging content, that was good and that had an impact. Like, we need to be doing that. That's for sure. Our key to efficiency and making sure that our, our impact is higher. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we just recorded 100th episode of this podcast a few weeks ago. So we recorded in a stream. We did a live version of it recorded in Streamyard. And Streamyard gives you a way to, like, auto generate clips through AI to repurpose them, like, just exactly what you're looking for. Like, I don't want to have to go back through, manually create an audiogram if you can, you know, cut that out for me and it's, and it's decent. Give me 20 of them. If ten of them are good, then great. I still save a ton of time. Crystal Carter: Right, right. And I think that there are a lot of people who are talking about efficiency. PricewaterhouseCooper recently did a report and they were saying that that's the biggest gains that we're seeing right now, today. And then as we go forward, we should see more AI agents that are more specialized and more unique for things. Where are you seeing marketing teams make the most efficiency gains right now from AI? Paula Mejia: Yeah, I think in content creation, that's where I see it the most. But I think that the impact really lies in the, in the hands of the creator. You guys have seen some really bad execution events in the SEO world, and I've all like people who I'm just like I, you know, I'm not an expert, but that looks really not like. Mordy Oberstein: The right way to create. Paula Mejia: I think some people, like I said, have misunderstood the efficiency that AI can bring with the fact that you still really much are the gatekeeper of the quality of that content. So I think this is, this, you know, like I said, there's, there is a promise that AI has for marketers. And I know we're close, but I think we need to be responsible in the way we use it and make sure that it is up to the highest quality standards. And that's something that I think anyone who is concerned about the future of your job with AI, whether you're in content design or in a more managerial area in marketing, I don't think that they will replace you. I don't think AI was going to replace an individual, but I think people who use AI will take your job if you're not using it. That for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I agree. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Paula Mejia: I think for agencies, I don't know if this is something that's come up in some of your conversations in the past, but I've spoken with a lot of agencies, some of which are more hesitant to use AI than others. And I think customers of agencies are rising up and asking, how are you using AI to make my money go farther? Show me the ways in which you're employing this new technology, or I'm going to go to another agency that can. And I think that, like I said, marketing and advertising is an area of a lot of pressure. And I think AI, because everyone hears about it and hears efficiency, you will be, in a way, accountable for showing how you're using it, but also making sure the quality is of the right standard. Crystal Carter: I think the other thing is that. So I recently attended an event. There's a group in London called Agency Hackers, and they've got another one coming up at the beginning of the year called the robot, are coming. It's a great session. It's very hands on about AI and how people are using AI. I spoke to loads of agencies there about how they're using AI and how we use AI at Wix and how one of the things, so just to give us the wix first, a little bit behind the fourth wall or whatever, at Wix, like, and you posted about this, actually on your LinkedIn, Paula, about how, like, we had, we, you know, we regularly have, like, AI workshop days. Like, we have, like, what can we do with AI? Let's have, let's talk about, like, different things that we're doing with AI. We have like, you know, we have, you know, working groups where people are trying things, testing things, iterating with things, talking to each other about how they're, how they're using it. Crystal Carter: But what's really important, and one of the things I love about Wix is that, like, we test things and as a team, as a company, as a business, we're not afraid to like, try something and see what happens and learn from it. If you're an agency, enterprise business, any kind of business, if you're not using AI, then you're also not learning how to use AI. If you're not using it in any way, then you don't know, you know, what you can do or how you can do it. We had Dale Bertrande on for a great webinar a few months ago, and one of the things he was talking about was a really good way to get started is to use Chachi. He had a couple of, a couple of ways. One was to try to use Chachi PT for everything, and then you'll learn very quickly what you can't use it for. Another way was to give it your to do list and say, how can you help me with this? And that can be really useful as well. But testing iterating and not expecting it to be, not expecting it to be perfect the first time, so, so, so important, I think. Mordy Oberstein: I think you have to kind of realize, like, where it is and where it's not really applicable categorically. Like, if you're on the performance side, like, there's gonna be a lot more ways where it's really, really, really easy and much more linear to realizing how you can use AI. Let's say you're more like, on the brand side, and especially in a world where content has become much more conversational, that you're going to have a more of a difficult time using it, or I was a more difficult time. You're going to be a little more creative in how you're going to use it. I use it in the research phase. I can use it to write up to x points where you're going to have to be a little more cautious, a little more strategic about how you go about implementing it. And again, if you're a marketing manager listening to this and you have multiple teams under you, I think you need to realize that different types of teams are going to be able to use the AI in different ways in different moments. It's not a linear equation. Paula Mejia: Absolutely. I will say, though, about the brand component, at least our solution does allow marketing teams, especially with larger integrated marketing teams, where I keeping that consistent tone of voice across, whether it's a franchise model or just different localized teams, that does enable you to keep more consistency in place just by putting certain guardrails in terms of how changes are rolled out across all your sites, making sure that it's following certain brand guidelines. So there are some things kind of helping that brand consistency component that I think teams really need to be aware of. But yeah, back to your point, Crystal. I think something that marketers are also responsible for on top of brand awareness, growth, conversion, blah, blah, is a tech stack. Now, no matter what you do, you're a technology user. And if you're managing a team, you need to be up to date on what technology they're using. Are they using the right one? Are they using outdated technology? Do you have even just from an ROI perspective, do you have too many licenses for things that are not bringing you value? Like do your tech stack audits people, even if you're not really like, this is kind of like a realization I had. Paula Mejia: I was at an event recently that we hosted in London and I was talking to someone about their CRM and they're like, oh, we have three CRMs. And I almost fell out of my chair, girl. Crystal Carter: Why? Paula Mejia: And you know, it's like legacy and also different teams. We don't like there was a some kind of reason, but you know, from an efficiency and like data quality perspective, three CRM's not the way to go, you guys. Crystal Carter: This is like your sock. If you haven't found your socks in two weeks, if you haven't touched that CRM in two weeks, let it go. Mordy Oberstein: Having worked two different SEO tool providers, I can tell you like, there's a significant amount of their user base or people who are paying large amounts of money every month who don't log into the tool. Crystal Carter: It's like people who go to the gym or who have a gym membership and. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly, that's what. Yeah, that's the SEO equivalent. Right, Paula? Folks want to keep up to date with what you're doing on the enterprise side for marketers and AI. Where can they find you? Paula Mejia: You can find me on LinkedIn. That's my, that's my jam these days. Mordy Oberstein: So everybody's jammed these days because there's nowhere else to go. Paula Mejia: Also true. Mordy Oberstein: Also speaking truth on the serves up podcast. Thank you so much, Paula, for coming on and telling us about the enterprise product. And we'll see you out there. Paula Mejia: Yeah, happy to. Thanks so much. Have a good day. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure, you follow Paul Mejia over on LinkedIn. Paul is wonderful, you know, also wonderful, Barry's wonderful, and all the other people who cover the SEO news as well. Which brings us to this week's snappy news. Crystal Carter: In a major development that was the talk of the digital marketing world, Semrush has announced its acquisition of third Door Media, the parent company of search Engine Land. This acquisition also includes all of their door media's brands, including SMX, the search Marketing Expo, Martech.org, comma, the Martech Conference, and digital Marketing Expo. For anyone that's been keeping score, this is another jewel in the some rush SEO media crown alongside backlinko and traffic think tank, this is quite the media portfolio. In other news, Google has announced a significant leadership change. Nick Fox has been appointed as the new head of Google Search, succeeding Prabhakar Raghavan, who is transitioning to chief technologist. Fox has been at Google since 2003 and will now oversee the knowledge and information division, which includes search, ads, e commerce, products and other things. This leadership change comes amidst lots of competition and legal pressures as Google faces lots of challenges from lots of different angles. Speaking of Google challengers over there at Bing, Microsoft is integrating new AI features into their search platform, so you can expect to see AI enhanced summaries providing concise information from different online sources appearing in the knowledge panel section. Crystal Carter: Though these aren't quite widely available just now, you should expect to see them roll out in the near future. Also from Bing, there have been lots of reports that there are bugs within the Bing webmaster tools API and documentation. Ryan Siddle, for instance, highlighted at least five issues, including problems with setting country and region on site requests. Microsoft has responded, saying that they acknowledge the bugs and that they are actively working to fix them. So they've already got two scheduled. And that concludes the snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: That was wonderful. Thank you, Barry and all those who cover the news. When Eric Clapton wrote wonderful tonight, he was writing it about Barry. Indeed. I hope that makes you feel a little bit awkward, Barry, that's special kind of way. If we're talking about AI and we mentioned who can you follow the very beginning of this episode for more SEO and AI awesomeness? This then Eli Schwartz is your man. Eli spends a lot of time talking about SEO and AI. He did so on our 100th episode of the podcast, and he does so all over LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: A lot of thought provoking question about how AI will not just impact SEO practice, but impact the SEO industry and the amount of money you're able to earn as an SEO so check out Eli on LinkedIn. It's a lot of great content about that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think he's absolutely, absolutely great. And he did a webinar with us as well, which was really good as well, talking about all of these different tools and talking about how they impact. And he talks a lot about brand and about reputation as well. So he was joined by Anne Smarty for that webinar. Highly recommend checking it out. Mordy Oberstein: He's a good dude, and she's a good follow also. Wow, so many follows. Crystal Carter: So many follows. Check it out. Mordy Oberstein: How many follows? But where do you follow people now? Not an ex, I guess. I guess. Crystal Carter: LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's also weird. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's all we have, Morty. Mordy Oberstein: I know, I know. It's all that's left. It's problematic. Crystal Carter: I get more action on Instagram than I do on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not doing Instagram. I get a mix. It's funny to see what works well on X and what works well on LinkedIn. They're not the same thing. It's really interesting. Anyway, anyway, we can. Crystal Carter: That's a different podcast. Mordy Oberstein: That's a different. That's a different griping session. Thank you for joining us on the Surface up podcast. That sounded like Sean Connery podcasts. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into refreshing your SEO career. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix studio SEO learning hub, over@wix.com SEO learn looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content webinars on the Wix studio learning hub at, you guessed it, Wix.com SEO learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Mordy Oberstein: Until next time, peace of 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

Ross Simmonds is the founder of Foundation Marketing, a B2B SaaS Marketing agency that works with some of the worlds most successful brands. He's also the author of Create Once. Distribute Forever: How Great Creators Spread Their Ideas and How You Can Too. Ross Simmonds CEO of Foundation Marketing Ross Simmonds is the founder of Foundation Marketing, a B2B SaaS Marketing agency that works with some of the worlds most successful brands. He's also the author of Create Once. Distribute Forever: How Great Creators Spread Their Ideas and How You Can Too . Articles & Resources 16 Jan 2025 How to use AI to win at social media marketing in 2025 9 Apr 2024 Content distribution 101: What it is and how to use it Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Back SEO site audit template Carry out site audits for your clients with this SEO template from Wix and Semrush. 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 SEO template to: Ensure you focus on the most important metrics for your client Highlight the best-performing areas of the site Assess the site’s current rankings Identify relevant opportunities for optimization Outline solutions to improve current search performance Semrush Marketing SaaS platform LinkedIn Facebook X Instagram Semrush is a leading online visibility management SaaS platform that has been used by 10,000,000 digital marketers worldwide. Back in 2008, Semrush started as a small group of SEO and IT specialists united by one mission—to make online competition fair and transparent with equal opportunities for everyone. More about this topic Read this post on how to get started with an SEO site audit 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

Aleyda Solis is an SEO speaker, author, and the founder of Orainti, a boutique SEO consultancy advising top brands worldwide. She shares the latest SEO news and resources in her SEOFOMO newsletter, SEO tips in the Crawling Mondays video series, and a free SEO Learning Roadmap called LearningSEO.io. Aleyda Solis SEO Consultant and Founder at Orainti Aleyda Solis is an SEO speaker, author, and the founder of Orainti , a boutique SEO consultancy advising top brands worldwide. She shares the latest SEO news and resources in her SEOFOMO newsletter, SEO tips in the Crawling Mondays video series, and a free SEO Learning Roadmap called LearningSEO.io. Articles & Resources 4 Sept 2024 Intro to technical SEO: A guide to improving crawling and indexing for better rankings 20 Mar 2024 How to get technical SEO recommendations implemented 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

What does good E-E-A-T actually look like? What does E-E-A-T mean for your ability to rank on the Google SERP? Why did Google add ‘Experience’ to E-A-T? On this episode, Wix’s own Mordy Oberstien and Crystal Carter are joined by the fabulous Lily Ray to clarify the significance of Google’s “E-E-A-T ranking factors”, and how to demonstrate these qualifications to Google. We explore the elements laid out in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines that help bolster your website's E-E-A-T foundation, and teach you how to connect the dots when it comes to your brands credentials. Hope you're hungry, because there’s a lot to E-E-A-T today! We’re putting an emphasis on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness so you can showcase your website's true value this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back What does good E-E-A-T even mean? What does good E-E-A-T actually look like? What does E-E-A-T mean for your ability to rank on the Google SERP? Why did Google add ‘Experience’ to E-A-T? On this episode, Wix’s own Mordy Oberstien and Crystal Carter are joined by the fabulous Lily Ray to clarify the significance of Google’s “E-E-A-T ranking factors”, and how to demonstrate these qualifications to Google. We explore the elements laid out in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines that help bolster your website's E-E-A-T foundation, and teach you how to connect the dots when it comes to your brands credentials. Hope you're hungry, because there’s a lot to E-E-A-T today! We’re putting an emphasis on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness so you can showcase your website's true value this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 62 | November 15, 2023 | 42 MIN 00:00 / 41:59 This week’s guests Lily Ray Lily has been making waves in the SEO industry since 2010. Shifting from start-up to agency–she has helped develop and establish an award-winning SEO department at Amsive Digital, delivering high impact work for a long-list of notable clients, including several Fortune 500 companies. 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 and putting on some grouping insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by our always hungry for more SEO knowledge, our head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I'm also always hungry. I'm big into snacks and things. We have a lot of good snacks. We recently found these biscuits that have rosemary in them. They're incredibly what in England, people refer to as Moreish. As in if they say Pringles, once you pop, you can't stop. Similar thing with these particular snacks. Mordy Oberstein: Are they Triscuits? Those are amazing. Crystal Carter: They're not Triscuits, but I love Triscuits. I love me a Triscuit. That is the quality. You get a little cheese on there, oh. Mordy Oberstein: It's the best cracker. I don't know what the hell is wrong with the rest of the world for not being into Triscuits. It's ridiculous. Crystal Carter: Although, to be fair, sometimes Ritz does it. Sometimes it's a Ritz and I'm like, "Oh yeah." Mordy Oberstein: Ritz is fine. It's good with Herring. I know it's an old Jewish thing. Totally lost the audience with that one, but Triscuits are far superior. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. People who are listening, hit us with your favorite cheese accompanying snack tray. Mordy Oberstein: And it'll all makes sense why we're talking about food in a few moments. But first, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also showcase your years of experience to your clients with the advanced design and clients tools found in Wix Studio. Look for it over at wix.com/studio. Experience? You ask. What can that mean for today's topic? Well, I hope you're as hungry as we have something to eat today. That's right. We're taking off the oddly controversial, though lately less so, topic of experience, expertise, trustworthiness, and authoritativeness also known as EEAT. Was EAT, but now it's EEAT. That's a mouthful, whatever. We'll explore what does good EEAT actually look like? What does EEAT mean for the Google algorithm and your ability to rank? And why did Google add the extra E after all? To help us get two full scoops of EEAT, the world's best, Lily Ray of Amsive Digital will join us as we make our way to the proverbial salad bar in the sky, known as the SERP. Plus, we'll look at how Google goes all in on experience with its own features on the results page. And of course, we have the snap piece of SEO news for you and who you should be following for more awesomeness on social. So head over to the buffet and load up on free food like it's a famine. As episode number 63 of the SERP's UP podcast helps you stuff your faces with the lowdown on EEAT. That's EEAT. Crystal Carter: I hooked up a lot to chew on there, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice, nice., Nice. I'm really going to digest that for a while. Lily Ray: That was quite an intro and you guys make me laugh so much that I was like, "Should I go on mute? Should I not go on mute?" Because I'm just sitting here cracking up and it's amazing. So thanks for having me. This is- Mordy Oberstein: Lily, thanks for being here. Crystal Carter: So happy to have you here. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. You're a second time guest. You're our second, second time guest. Lily Ray: Isn't that right? Yeah, it was fun the first time, so that's why I said yes again. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I also noticed during our bit of banter in the front, I mentioned Ritz and you were shaking your head no. You were like … Lily Ray: Well, it's more like I love Ritz, but I'm just like, that's such a snack from childhood. So much butter. You know what I mean? But you're right, it's still a guilty pleasure for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's true. It's a little basic, but it does the job. I enjoy it. I enjoy it. But there we go. Lily Ray: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: They used to have a guy who's a kid, like Kosher knockoffs. This wasn't technically Kosher at one point, whatever. Now that I've experienced real Ritz, they were crumbly and not nearly as good. The level of expertise and trustworthiness around the cracker making of the knockoff was not nearly as good as the original. Which brings us to our topic, and I want to give a little bit of background... Pat in the back for that pivot. A little bit of background on what the heck EEAT is. So we're going to go on a little magical SEO history tour, cue up The Beatles, I guess. Because in March of 2018, Google released a medic update. It was I guess the August, 2018 core update, but they weren't calling it that then, which we call it now but it was called a medic update. And it was one of those, I don't know, moments in SEO history where something just started to be different. And one of the things that was different was the conversation around Your Money, Your Life websites, YMYL, and the impact that we saw on health websites and finance sites getting hit really hard during the medic update and the emphasis on site quality, meaning it became apparent that Google was able to assess and profile quality in brand new ways. And back then, literally a few weeks after the update rolled out, yours truly wrote a I'll call a prophetic blog post, which has been since deleted by the place that hosted it, salty point, around Google profiling site identity, a topic you hear a lot more about, and the website's really building upside identity and that sort of thing. And that really started emerging during or after, rather, the medic update and the subsequent core updates that followed and EAT... Well, at the time it was EAT because there was only expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, experience came later, really started becoming a focal point of the SEO dialogue. And eventually EAT became EEAT. But there's always the question of what was Google doing? What were they able to do? EEAT came from Google's quality radar guidelines, which are not part of the algorithm, but we were seeing things that look similar to what Google was talking about and the guidelines happen in the algorithm and EAT at the time and now EEAT really became part of the SEO equation and a little bit controversial because of that. So maybe let's take it from there. The algorithm and EEAT, is EEAT part of the algorithm? Lily Ray: Softball. Softball question. The way that Google talks about this, so they talk about there's many different signals that go into their evaluations, their EEAT evaluations. And those can be many, many different, let's say on page, off page direct, indirect signals about a brand, about a website, about content. And those signals factor into their evaluations of the EEAT, which of course then can impact rankings. So they're not going to tell you that EEAT is a direct ranking factor. In fact, they've said many times it's indirect. But if you think about it as a whole, as a concept, it is essentially a big, huge part of Google's algorithms and it depends on the query itself, how much it matters. So they've been very clear that for certain queries, it's extremely important. For other queries, maybe it's less important. But there's other statements from Google saying this matters for every query. So people like to get into these silly debates about whether or not it's important. But if you read pretty much all of Google's documentation from the last several years, it's by far the most common theme about how SEO works. But they have to keep it really vague for the same reasons they have to keep all of their information about ranking very vague. Because people think that it's something that can be faked and exploited and just like all these spammy approaches are trying to fake EEAT, which people are doing now and with some success in some cases. But yeah, Google's not going to tell us directly how it works. So in my perspective, yes, it's probably the single most important thing you should be thinking about for SEO, but it's not as simple as saying putting a keyword in your title tag is a ranking factor. Right? Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that part of this comes from... They had that piece of content that they said, "What site owners should know about Google's August, 2019 core update." And they talk loads about the EEAT and they link to your content there as well, and they talk about how important it is. And I think that, as you say, it's not a one pill sort of thing. It's not like you do one thing and then it's completely fixed. It's a holistic approach. And I think that that's certainly something that you've talked about for many years. I've been on your website, you have a section that says, "I talk about EEAT lot, and the reason why is because it's very complex." Lily Ray: Yeah, it's complex. And it's very hard for a lot of SEOs to wrap their heads around because a lot of SEO in years past has been more like you do one thing and you can see a result of that thing pretty clearly. So you can draw a conclusion, oh, I added this keyword to my title, or I changed my H1, or I improved page speed, and I'm pretty sure it led to these outcomes. With EAT and EEAT, it's hardly ever like that. So a lot of people made the mistake early on of saying, "Oh, I added an author name and I tested adding an author name and nothing happened." Because it's not how it works. Google has all the data in the entire world and they're using it in ways we probably cannot even wrap our heads around. So that in and of itself is probably not going to change how Google evaluates the EEAT of your site and your brand. Mordy Oberstein: That's always been my major hangup with the EEAT. I call it a matter of factor. Yeah, you have all these ranking signals like your keyword and your title tag and blah blah blah blah blah…. But looking at the quality of the website, its ability to transmit information in a expert led manner that results in it being trustworthy, it's very holistic, and it's very meta. It's like, okay, before we even get to a keyword in a title tag, what's the nature of this content? Is it applicable and is it quality? And that's before a ranking factor. It's prior to a ranking factor, and I think that confuses the heck out of SEOs. Lily Ray: Yeah, yeah. It's because they can't understand how Google's doing it, and they also can't imagine what's possible and what's not possible. So a lot of the times it's like Google can't possibly know who these authors are. Meanwhile, literally today, Glenn Gabe just posted, in Google Discover, they're putting author names in the thumbnail, and now you can click on the author name and it takes you to their knowledge graph. And Glenn found it for Barry Barry Schwartz, the author in the SEO community. So I'm like, "Okay, if they can't do it, why are they literally continuing to push products that show that they're trying to do it." Crystal Carter: Right. And they rolled out lots and lots more knowledge panels for people of all different levels of notoriety and the knowledge panels that they have for people who are big names, for instance, are much more robust these days. How have you seen that evolve? Lily Ray: Yeah, I think you're right. I think I've seen a lot more people this year saying, especially SEO people, like, "Hey, I put structured data around my name and now I have a knowledge panel." It's like, okay, well, that's a much easier barrier to entry than it was before. But you're right, Crystal, if you Google prominent people's names, it's like Google's gone so far into making it a beautiful search result with connecting all the different dots. Sometimes when I Google my own name, I'm like, "You chose that YouTube video to display at the very top of the page." It's like curating almost these personal websites for people, and they're absolutely building that out more over time. Mordy Oberstein: No, they're really smart about it. In mine, they show a picture of me when I was a kid that I once posted, I went, "Wow." Lily Ray: You're like, "Take that down." Mordy Oberstein: Really. To be honest to you, I look way better back then than I do now, so I'm going to leave it there. Lily Ray: You're going to keep it? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, keep it. So to piggyback off of that, what does good... Because we mentioned, okay, throw the author in there, have an author bio, but I feel like EEAT has... We've SEOed it, it became a checklist. We need to do this, I need to do that and I need to do that. But what does developing good EEAT actually look like? Lily Ray: Yeah, it's doing the hard work that nobody wants to do. Everybody wants a shortcut. A lot of people these days are saying, you'll see these people, "Oh, I created this fake mid-journey person and a fake author bio and got all these fake mentions and all these publications did it, did all these fake things and it's ranking." I'm like, "Yeah, it's ranking for now until Google sees enough of these patterns to the point where they launch another helpful content update and it doesn't work anymore." If you're willing to have something work for a month or three months or whatever, great, good for you. But sustainable long-term marketing and EEAT means all the things that have always contributed to building a trustworthy brand. So we work with our clients to say, who are the legitimate experts at your company? The people that actually know these things, are they looped into the content creation process? And the more that these people go and make themselves public speaking at events, doing interviews, making YouTube videos, doing TikTok, all this stuff, it all gets factored back into EEAT. Google loves those signals. Crystal Carter: So I've worked with clients on this who were in the medical space on one of the things you do a EEAT audit, and I presume that that's something that you do and many think that you do. And when I've done that sort of thing, it's sometimes very difficult to explain to clients what you're actually looking for because they're like, "But I thought you were going to look at the website." And you're like, "Yeah, kind of. Yes, but also your whole digital footprint." How do you talk to clients about that? Because one of the things I think people struggle with, they'll say, "Oh, well, we are qualified. Oh, well, we do have that certification." But they don't necessarily demonstrate it. So do you find it tricky for clients to get their head around that? Lily Ray: It's a great question. I mean, personally, I think it's one of the most fun and exciting areas of SEO when you start to believe in it and understand how it works. Because like you said, if they are truly qualified, then it's just a matter of connecting the dots and making that super easy for search engines to understand and users. All of this is mutually beneficial for search engines and users. That's one of the nice things about it. It's not like, "Oh, let's go buy a million shady links and spam the internet." Because it's good for SEO, but it's terrible for users. No, we're actually doing something that's good for the internet and brands as a whole. But to your question, Crystal, it's like if you go in the search quality rater guidelines, which have finally become trendy, Marie Haynes made this trendy and Olaf Kopp maybe and three other people five years ago, seven years ago. Now, suddenly the SEO industry's like, "Check out this nugget from page 18 of the search quality guidelines." I'm like, "It's no secret. It's been there the whole time." Mordy Oberstein: The main content should be clearly accessible on the page. Lily Ray: Yeah, guys. Found this great hack. Oh my God. Crystal Carter: I'm not going to lie. If you're new to SEO and you're interested in it, look up Google search quality rater guidelines. And honestly, Lily, you hit me to this and you were like, "Oh yeah." This and this. And I was like, "Okay, let me have a look myself." Literally printed it out and was going through that with the highlighter with all of this stuff that I used to carry it around dogeared, but it's a great read and it's super, super useful. It's also worth bookmarking because they just update the link. I was trying to compare one year to the other and it will go. There's a couple of people that do really good line by line what's changed. But yeah, it's a great document. We should link that in the share notes. Lily Ray: Yeah, it's hard to find. And one last thing about that, if you read the guidelines, the whole point of why I brought that up is because the first thing it says for quality raters to do is, which the document is intended for, is to research the reputation of websites outside of what the website says about itself, including a search operator that they can add to Google that literally looks at the website reputation without looking at the website, subtract the website's domain. So they're actually looking directly outside of the website to understand what other people are saying about the website, not the website itself. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's why I feel like there's so much of what goes into EEAT and branding and content marketing, right? You can do very mundane tasks like I mentioned before, but though the real work is really developing the brand. I think the point you made before about getting the people who work at your company involved in the content creation and promoting that content is, first off just leaving SEO aside, is a great brand marketing tactic. You want to show you as the expert and in order to do that, your people need to be out there talking about what makes them an expert. How many times is a random content marketing agency in Wichita, Kansas writing about whatever it is that you actually do and the actual experts are not actually involved in the content? If you're like, "What's the biggest thing you can do to build up your EEAT?" But make sure the content's really actually good. Crystal Carter: And accurate and factual. Lily Ray: Yeah, and beyond good. I think we'll talk about this soon, but now it's just true experience. So another thing the SEO community is trying to do with the onset of the new E, which I think we'll talk about is faking experience. And the amazing thing that Google's done and cornered people into doing, which I think is a great thing, is now you need that to rank. I mean, the data just shows it over and over with different types of algorithm updates or ranking systems. We had the review system, now we have the helpful content system. It's always saying the same thing now, which is, do you have true experience? So people are going into ChatGPT and saying, "Pretend I'm an SEO expert with real SEO experience and say this and this thing." And the answers, I'm like, "If you're a real SEO person with experience, you'll know the answers are not good." So people can tell the difference, right? Crystal Carter: And I think also you talked about being good for users and being good for the algorithm or whatever as well. I heard a radio advert the other day and it was like, "Here are real customers talking about their customer experience with our energy company." And it was literally slightly grainy phone calls of people going, "Oh, I had a great, thank you so much for your help. That was really helpful." And that sort of stuff. And I think TikTok is a classic venue for this. There's a lot of ugly videos on TikTok that are like, "Here's how I fixed the bicycle." Or "Here's how I did this thing." And I think people are really looking for something real that they can quantify as real because there's so much content everywhere. So I think that that experience level, I think that's a response to that. Do you agree? Or you're seeing something else? Lily Ray: Yeah, no, I think it's really clear. It's interesting in the past couple of weeks and months how so many people are so blindsided by what Google's doing because Google's been warning us for years about this. The feedback that Google's been getting about its algorithms and the quality of its results have been in mainstream media for a couple of years now. We think that Google provides a lot of very inauthentic results, a lot of results from brands that don't know what they're talking about. Too many brands are doing affiliate content. This is not authentic but we want to hear from real people. TikTok is the biggest threat to Google search. It has been clear for months and years the challenges that Google's facing. Now they're probably maybe over indexing on real experience with some of their ranking updates, but it should not come as a surprise to anyone that Google searchers in general want that classic old feeling of how Google used to be when you would get Joe Schmoe's website about fixing his bike. They're trying to go back there while still honoring many of the other signals that are important for search. Mordy Oberstein: That to me, by the way, is a mistake that I think people in the SEO industry make. Okay, so Google added an extra E to EEAT where it was originally expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, and then they added an E for experience. And SEO's like, "Oh, okay, now we've to optimize for experience." They're out thinking, where did the E come from? They didn't pull it out of a hat. Google realized that there's a new content trend. People are preferring content from actual people with actual experience. And in order for them to stay relevant, they need to figure out a way to include that in the algorithm. So it's not like, oh, I need to optimize for Google. No, you need to give people what they actually want, which is what Google's trying to do. So we've talked about this on Twitter a while back when they started doing the product review updates and now they're called the review updates. And Google said, "Okay, we want you to have actual experience with the toaster oven that you're using." How do they do that? And to me, it's not crazy complicated. The language structure you're going to use if you use the stupid toaster oven is going to be so different than if you didn't. So for example, you would write, great toaster oven, was really good on bread, if you didn't use it. But if you actually used it, you would be like, "I tried to put a steak in there and it did not work. Do not use this on steak." Lily Ray: Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I've been looking at sites that got hit by the recent helpful content update. And I'm not the most advanced set of algorithms on the planet. I'm just a person looking at sites one by one. So obviously, whatever Google's capable of doing is going to be a million times more sophisticated than what I'm doing. Okay, first of all, so many of the sites that were impacted have absolutely no experience. That's just obvious. Okay, we get it. You wrote a million pieces of content about all the great places to travel in the world. You've obviously never been there. There's no evidence, there's no author, there's nothing. That's obviously the most extreme example. But then you get these mid-range like, "Oh, I really enjoyed going to the restaurant. The breakfast was excellent. Highly recommend it. Try the pancakes." Okay, did you really go there? Mordy Oberstein: No, you did add the word I and we in a thousand times. I told Crystal this, I took that product review page and I went to the way back machine and it was clear. They try to mimic experience and it was not actual experience. And I went back and they used the word I and we eight times. Fast-forward to now, and they use it 150 times. Lily Ray: It's real experience. If I just put that word there a million times, people will never know. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So note to the audience, and I feel like if you're listening to this podcast and you're a smaller website, this is for you. You have actual experience, you have the ability to really give that experience over to your audience and create something different and valuable. But if you're listening to this and you're on an SEO, stuffing in we and our and I is not optimizing for the experience of EEAT. Lily Ray: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I think that's a great segue. I have a question. So the way I always describe for our Wix audience, and I know not everybody here is Wix user yet. But the way I like to describe it is Wix folks are doers, we like to do stuff, make websites, do stuff, et cetera. So if somebody was looking for something to do, I don't know if you'd be interested in this, going through each acronym. So a quick tip, is that ridiculous? Or something you could do to demonstrate experience on a website that almost anyone could do, what would be something you could recommend for someone? Lily Ray: Yeah, I mean, this is where it gets fun because presumably if you are making a website and marketing the website, presumably and hopefully it's because you actually like what you're doing, you know about what you're doing, you care about what you're doing. Of course, that's definitely not true for many people that are doing marketing on the internet. But if those things are true, assuming those things are true, share what you know. You know what I mean? What are the unique insights and experiences that you have? Me personally, I think you both as well. I can talk about SEO all day, every day. I have very strong opinions as everybody knows and I like to share them and people like to hear them. So do that. If you're a biker or a bike mechanic, what have you experienced? What frustrates you? What's the cool new bike? What's going on? And then of course you can map that to the different SEO tools that we use to say, okay, how should I write this headline? What keywords should I include on this page? How should I set up my content structure? But when you start from what you know, this is a very different way of thinking about SEO because most people start from the keywords themselves and then try to pretend that they know these things or research what other people have said. But I almost only write SEO content or content about SEO when there's something that I need to say and that's a lot. It's very frequent, but it doesn't happen not because my company's like, "Lily, we haven't heard from you in a while." I'm like, "Guys, it's Sunday night and something really big happened and I have an idea and I'm writing a blog." So think about it that way. Crystal Carter: So this is reminding me. So on Wix SEO hub, I have an article about user first SEO content ideas and I'm sure you must get this a lot as in your experience, you talk to SEOs all over the world. If anyone doesn't know, it's not really a conference if Lily's not there. No, I'm kidding. But every SEO conference is made better by Lily Ray. But yeah, there we go. Anyway, at conferences, you speak to SEOs all over the world and you must have lots of people asking you questions all the time about different things. So again, rather than keywords, if you're hearing people regularly asking you those questions, those are potentially users. That's potentially a place where you can validate your experience or the experiences of other people in order to create the content. So I think that that's something that folks can do as well. Listen to people who are talking to you. Lily Ray: Yeah, or your customers or your calls or your chats, right? Crystal Carter: Right. So we did experience. And expertise, what is a good win for expertise in terms of something that someone could work on, sort of a thing? Lily Ray: Yeah, I think this is when we start to get into things like author bios and building out a personal brand. Every place that one would expect you to be mentioned or recognized in your industry, make sure that you're there or make sure that it's clear that you're there. Here's a random example for me. I'm in Google Scholar. I was included in an academic journal where I've talked about SEO. That's extreme, but that's all the different places that you might expect somebody who's saying they're an expert in something to have expertise. So I just spoke at a recipe blogger conference last week. It's like, where are all the publications where you've been mentioned? Where did you go to culinary school? Right? Just connecting all those dots and making sure that they're all easy for people and search engines to see. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think one thing that I've seen is that, and I think you've mentioned this as well on Twitter, is LinkedIn for instance, even if you're not posting every single day on LinkedIn, if you have your LinkedIn, if you spent an hour going through your LinkedIn profile and making sure that's got your relevant qualifications and has the skill sets and all of that sort of stuff, Google pulls those results into the SERP, for instance. So that can be a good source of that as well. And then with regards to authority, is that one trickier? Lily Ray: Yeah, probably. I mean, the SEO industry will tell you because Gary-ish from Google- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the link thing. Lily Ray: One time said that it's links. Yeah. So Gary in maybe 2018 or 2019 said that page rank and links are the only things we really look at for EAT or something along those lines, and authority is largely driven by links. So of course, the SEO industry likes to misconstrue this into links are the only thing that matters, nothing else matters. Which is not true. But of course, similar to having the right credentials and experience listed in your online profiles, you do want to back up your legitimacy with links and also social media mentions. I can't say enough about when I share an article that I wrote on Twitter, it shows up in Google Discover the next day. So it's like Google's looking at these signals, even if they don't tell you the social media signals are ranking factors, they're looking at them, for sure. Crystal Carter: And what about trust? What's a good opportunity in terms of demonstrating trust online? Lily Ray: Yeah, this is where the trust pilots and the G2s and testimonials and online ratings and online reviews come in. There's so many different sites where you should be listed, building out a knowledge panel using Crunchbase, all these things. Just making sure that your brand is a legitimate brand. Other sites that were impacted by the recent algorithm updates, including the helpful content update, one of the first things that I noticed is a lot of these sites are obviously just blogs that someone bought because of the name. It's just obvious, right? So if you're bestpizzaslices.com, okay, great, you're going to write about the best pizza slices. I'm sure the content is fine, but that's not a brand. There's no evidence that you started a business. Who are you? Why should we trust you? So that's a silly example because I'm sure you can do fine with pizza slices, but you know what I mean? People are just buying domains and not investing any energy into making this a real brand because that's the whole point, they're churn and burn sites. So you have to show that you're a real brand. Mordy Oberstein: And all that bleeds over, right? Even the Google's graphic, the whole diagram, they have a Venn diagram and the E, and the A, and the T they overlap a little bit to make a one overall picture. So one of these things, again, that makes it hard is that it's not very linear. As Lily mentioned before, I just want to harbor on that point for a real quick second. It is a mindset. It is a way of thinking about producing content and websites and working with sites and content. And I think we're done. I think we've exhausted the topic for this particular episode. Lily, if people wanted to experience your expertise and experience in SEO, where could they find you? Lily Ray: Well, my new answer to this question is that Google me and pick wherever you want to follow me because there's a lot of different options. So it's Lily Ray, L-I-L-Y R-A-Y. Mordy Oberstein: That's the best answer I've heard. I know it's... Lily Ray: It's true. Mordy Oberstein: It's such a good answer in this whole mumble-jumbled world of social media. That is the best answer I've heard in a long time. Lily Ray: Pick your favorite. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, we'll link to Lily's various social media profiles and perhaps just the SERP. Lily Ray: Just the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, in the show notes. So look for the link to Lily's SERP in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Such an honor to have you with us. Thank you so much. Lily Ray: Thanks for having me. You guys are the best. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Lily. Bye. Thanks again, Lily. Experience is not just fodder for the algorithm. Google didn't pull it out of a magic hat and say, "Hey, let's focus on experience and expertise." Content trends impact search engines and Google saw experience and expertise are actual content trends that people want. Hence, you all are going to TikTok for information. Thus Google knows it itself needs to show experience and expertise in its own SERP features. So like that, with that, let's dive into what it all looks like on the SERP as we take a directional look at what Google is doing with a little segment we call going, going Google. Speaker 4: And it's going, going Google. It's out of here. Mordy Oberstein: Google does a lot of things to help give results within its own SERP feature the little boxes and doohickeys it offers that are not the actual results that pull in expertise and experience. In fact, Crystal, you found one of these and shared it with the great Barry Schwartz. Care to share that with us? Crystal Carter: Yes. So I found a mentioned in drop down, and I found this on the couple of top level searches, so broad search keywords. And essentially, I entered in something and then further down there was a brand and underneath the brand it would say mentioned in, and it mentioned a few different places where people have mentioned this particular topic. These are really useful for providing context. They also provide a little bit of a point of panic potentially if you might have something there where you're mentioned, did he not? So flattering way. So I think it's important for people to think about how their reputation is being managed across the web and to make sure that they're creating some great content that is actually about them. So people talking about them. This is essentially the authority piece. So I tend to say that when we think about authority, it's what other people are saying about you. So if you were applying for a job, you get references. You might say great things about yourself on your resume, but then you have your references. And if your references are your mom or your best friend, that'll give your employer one kind of impression. If your references are somebody that you worked with who also has a good reputation, for instance, that's going to give another impression. And it's the same with some of these online recommendations that Google's trying to get more people more comfortable for. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it really helps Google showcase the result that they're giving is expert driven, right? Other people are mentioning that website, then that website has some sort of expertise on whatever topic is that you're searching for. So it's Google saying, "Hey, let's make sure that you, the searcher, understand that this website is an expert because other people are saying that they are." Crystal Carter: Right. And that when you're looking at the SERP, I mean, it takes up a lot of real estate. So the one that I saw had a couple of different options. And I think that what's interesting is that it takes up probably double the space of a normal plain blue link, which is great because that's saying not only is this somebody who's got content on this, but they've got content and other people think that content is good. So I think that that is an absolute plus for people who have good brand knowledge or good topic knowledge on a particular topic. And I think that it's worth investing time in making yourself be seen as a very clear authority. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and on the flip side of that, from the experience angle, Google has a whole set of results where you can get a perspective from actual people, meaning you search for something like, are The Beatles good? It was the example we used in the previous episode. And you get a set of results of people sharing their opinions about The Beatles. It's really results based on experience. A lot of it coming from social media because that's a great place to see where people have their experiences and their thoughts on that from actual people. Crystal Carter: So one of the examples that I found was Coco Gauff. So after she won the US Open with plastic finish there. Well done Coco. So after she won that, there were people who also had opinions on that as well. So there was something that was specifically an opinion piece, for instance from CNN that was mentioned in The Perspective. But I think it's great to have the content earmarked so that essentially you're saying this is content that's objective or that's a news piece, core news and this is the opinion column area. In a newspaper, you'll have current events, you'll have some people who are making think pieces about what they think it might mean or what context they see in a particular news event, and then you'll have people who are just reporting what happened on that particular occasion. And both ideas are useful for you to get context of what's going on, but they're not exactly the same. So I think it's good that Google's saying, "Okay, these are opinions, they're interesting and things, but they're opinions." And I think that it provides context and provides a great way to get more information on the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: The point is, if you look at what Google's doing in their own SERP features, you can get a sense of what they're trying to focus on and what they're trying to do and what direction they're going, and it's the name of the segment going, going Google. So take a look at what Google's doing and take a look at what's changing on the results page and take a look at the change in testing that they're doing because that'll show you what they're looking for and what they're trying to do, what they think is valuable. Crystal Carter: Right. And one of the other ones that Glenn Gabe identified recently was within the Discover tab there, for instance, he found something that was talking about Google, Google search results, and it was an article written by Barry Schwartz and underneath the article it said, "Get the latest on Barry Schwartz." And when you click on it goes to Barry's knowledge graph. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Crystal Carter: So that is a good way that you're connecting the dots, and it's something I've talked about in terms of thinking about mobile optimization. I did a course recently for Semrush and I talked about how actually spending some time making sure the people on your team have good knowledge graphs, have good biographical entities, have good information across the web, is actually really useful for mobile, for EEAT, for all of those sorts of things. So Google wants to add citations essentially to the kind of content that they're giving. So they want to add context to the authors. They want to add context to the information the publishers that they're pointing people to. They want to give people more context for the kind of information that they're getting. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of Barry, of course, it is the perfect time for us to dive into this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Google SGE expands through 120 countries per Barry Schwartz override Search Engine Land. Basically, it's what I just said. Google's SGE, it's Search Generative Experience expands to 120 new countries. Which means that if you are in Angola, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil. Just reading off the list. Cambodia. Let's go to E, Ethiopia. G for, I don't know, Guam. In all of these countries, you can, in theory, access the SGE Google Search Generative Experience, which is super interesting. Google has stated that yes, this is still on beta, still being tested, but the expansion obviously indicates that Google is far more comfortable with what it's been doing in the US with its SGE. So look forward at a country or in a country near you. Also in a country near you, per Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable, it's two berries from two different publications this week as it is with pretty much every week. Google November 2023 reviews update rolls out. So Google said, if you listened to our news last week, Google said they're going to roll out a new review update and that the review update, this one, will be the last of the official announced review updates. What you're basically going to have is a continuously updating ranking system, which means that the review update is essentially real time. I hate using that word because it's not exactly what it means, but it will be out live and changing rankings on a consistent and ongoing basis without specific roll-outs as we have now. So that's super interesting. As I believe I mentioned last time, I think this is the way of the algorithm. This is where I think the Google updates in general are going. We actually cover this in our BrightonSEO session, our live recording of SERP's Up over at BrightonSEO in San Diego. So look for that episode. I believe that one comes out next week. So we get into that there and then. So listen then for that there. Wow, that's so many pronouns. Just so you know, the reviews update is live, at least the beginning of it is live at the same time as the November 2023 core update, which makes picking out ranking movements perhaps a little bit more complex than it usually is, and there's multiple layers of Google updates going on, so that's always fun, right? And with that, that's this week's snappy news. Thank you as always to the great writers of all the great news articles that are out there, and of course, in particular, the great Barry Schwartz. With that, let's dive into who you should be following this week for more SEO awesomeness. And since we're focused so much on experience and expertise and EEAT, we thought this week's follow of the week should be Olaf Kopp. He is on X, but he's more on LinkedIn. So look for Olaf Kopp. However on LinkedIn, we'll link to that in the show notes. Olaf is a EEAT aficionado. He's written many, many articles around it for Search Engine Land. He's got a really, what I like, a really conceptual understanding of EEAT. And it's the kind of content that when you go and look at it, you're learning how to fish and you're not just getting the fish. Crystal Carter: I mean, what fish are we talking about? Mordy Oberstein: Mackerel. Crystal Carter: Mackerel. Mackerel's so pretty. They're such pretty little fish. They're very shiny and cute. I think they're adorable. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. What's an ugly fish? I know, a fluke. Flounder. Crystal Carter: Have you ever seen salmon? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I've seen salmon. Crystal Carter: Salmon are ugly fish. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, we're really crapping on the fish here. Crystal Carter: Say it to it's face. But salmon are ugly fish. Mordy Oberstein: No, I would say salmon cannot hurt you. I would say it to it. I wouldn't say it to a shark though. Crystal Carter: I mean, they jump pretty high. If you ever watch people talk about bears eating salmon. But if you watch a bear eating salmon, I've not seen this personally, but on nature documentaries, they're literally just hanging their mouths open trying to catch the salmon who are jumping upstream. It's not very graceful, but I mean, that's what... You got to do what you got to do if you're a bear and you need a snack. Mordy Oberstein: Hey, bears have to eat too. Crystal Carter: It's true. Mordy Oberstein: Bears have to eat too. Well, I'm that happy note, 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 a very special live episode from BrightonSEO in San Diego live from the conference. So look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at, you got it, wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Lily Ray Olaf Kopp Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Searchlight SEO Newsletter Amsive Digital Lily Ray Website News: Google Search testing “Mentioned in” search snippet Google Quality Rater Guidelines Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Lily Ray Olaf Kopp Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Searchlight SEO Newsletter Amsive Digital Lily Ray Website News: Google Search testing “Mentioned in” search snippet Google Quality Rater Guidelines 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 and putting on some grouping insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by our always hungry for more SEO knowledge, our head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I'm also always hungry. I'm big into snacks and things. We have a lot of good snacks. We recently found these biscuits that have rosemary in them. They're incredibly what in England, people refer to as Moreish. As in if they say Pringles, once you pop, you can't stop. Similar thing with these particular snacks. Mordy Oberstein: Are they Triscuits? Those are amazing. Crystal Carter: They're not Triscuits, but I love Triscuits. I love me a Triscuit. That is the quality. You get a little cheese on there, oh. Mordy Oberstein: It's the best cracker. I don't know what the hell is wrong with the rest of the world for not being into Triscuits. It's ridiculous. Crystal Carter: Although, to be fair, sometimes Ritz does it. Sometimes it's a Ritz and I'm like, "Oh yeah." Mordy Oberstein: Ritz is fine. It's good with Herring. I know it's an old Jewish thing. Totally lost the audience with that one, but Triscuits are far superior. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. People who are listening, hit us with your favorite cheese accompanying snack tray. Mordy Oberstein: And it'll all makes sense why we're talking about food in a few moments. But first, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also showcase your years of experience to your clients with the advanced design and clients tools found in Wix Studio. Look for it over at wix.com/studio. Experience? You ask. What can that mean for today's topic? Well, I hope you're as hungry as we have something to eat today. That's right. We're taking off the oddly controversial, though lately less so, topic of experience, expertise, trustworthiness, and authoritativeness also known as EEAT. Was EAT, but now it's EEAT. That's a mouthful, whatever. We'll explore what does good EEAT actually look like? What does EEAT mean for the Google algorithm and your ability to rank? And why did Google add the extra E after all? To help us get two full scoops of EEAT, the world's best, Lily Ray of Amsive Digital will join us as we make our way to the proverbial salad bar in the sky, known as the SERP. Plus, we'll look at how Google goes all in on experience with its own features on the results page. And of course, we have the snap piece of SEO news for you and who you should be following for more awesomeness on social. So head over to the buffet and load up on free food like it's a famine. As episode number 63 of the SERP's UP podcast helps you stuff your faces with the lowdown on EEAT. That's EEAT. Crystal Carter: I hooked up a lot to chew on there, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice, nice., Nice. I'm really going to digest that for a while. Lily Ray: That was quite an intro and you guys make me laugh so much that I was like, "Should I go on mute? Should I not go on mute?" Because I'm just sitting here cracking up and it's amazing. So thanks for having me. This is- Mordy Oberstein: Lily, thanks for being here. Crystal Carter: So happy to have you here. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. You're a second time guest. You're our second, second time guest. Lily Ray: Isn't that right? Yeah, it was fun the first time, so that's why I said yes again. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I also noticed during our bit of banter in the front, I mentioned Ritz and you were shaking your head no. You were like … Lily Ray: Well, it's more like I love Ritz, but I'm just like, that's such a snack from childhood. So much butter. You know what I mean? But you're right, it's still a guilty pleasure for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's true. It's a little basic, but it does the job. I enjoy it. I enjoy it. But there we go. Lily Ray: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: They used to have a guy who's a kid, like Kosher knockoffs. This wasn't technically Kosher at one point, whatever. Now that I've experienced real Ritz, they were crumbly and not nearly as good. The level of expertise and trustworthiness around the cracker making of the knockoff was not nearly as good as the original. Which brings us to our topic, and I want to give a little bit of background... Pat in the back for that pivot. A little bit of background on what the heck EEAT is. So we're going to go on a little magical SEO history tour, cue up The Beatles, I guess. Because in March of 2018, Google released a medic update. It was I guess the August, 2018 core update, but they weren't calling it that then, which we call it now but it was called a medic update. And it was one of those, I don't know, moments in SEO history where something just started to be different. And one of the things that was different was the conversation around Your Money, Your Life websites, YMYL, and the impact that we saw on health websites and finance sites getting hit really hard during the medic update and the emphasis on site quality, meaning it became apparent that Google was able to assess and profile quality in brand new ways. And back then, literally a few weeks after the update rolled out, yours truly wrote a I'll call a prophetic blog post, which has been since deleted by the place that hosted it, salty point, around Google profiling site identity, a topic you hear a lot more about, and the website's really building upside identity and that sort of thing. And that really started emerging during or after, rather, the medic update and the subsequent core updates that followed and EAT... Well, at the time it was EAT because there was only expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, experience came later, really started becoming a focal point of the SEO dialogue. And eventually EAT became EEAT. But there's always the question of what was Google doing? What were they able to do? EEAT came from Google's quality radar guidelines, which are not part of the algorithm, but we were seeing things that look similar to what Google was talking about and the guidelines happen in the algorithm and EAT at the time and now EEAT really became part of the SEO equation and a little bit controversial because of that. So maybe let's take it from there. The algorithm and EEAT, is EEAT part of the algorithm? Lily Ray: Softball. Softball question. The way that Google talks about this, so they talk about there's many different signals that go into their evaluations, their EEAT evaluations. And those can be many, many different, let's say on page, off page direct, indirect signals about a brand, about a website, about content. And those signals factor into their evaluations of the EEAT, which of course then can impact rankings. So they're not going to tell you that EEAT is a direct ranking factor. In fact, they've said many times it's indirect. But if you think about it as a whole, as a concept, it is essentially a big, huge part of Google's algorithms and it depends on the query itself, how much it matters. So they've been very clear that for certain queries, it's extremely important. For other queries, maybe it's less important. But there's other statements from Google saying this matters for every query. So people like to get into these silly debates about whether or not it's important. But if you read pretty much all of Google's documentation from the last several years, it's by far the most common theme about how SEO works. But they have to keep it really vague for the same reasons they have to keep all of their information about ranking very vague. Because people think that it's something that can be faked and exploited and just like all these spammy approaches are trying to fake EEAT, which people are doing now and with some success in some cases. But yeah, Google's not going to tell us directly how it works. So in my perspective, yes, it's probably the single most important thing you should be thinking about for SEO, but it's not as simple as saying putting a keyword in your title tag is a ranking factor. Right? Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that part of this comes from... They had that piece of content that they said, "What site owners should know about Google's August, 2019 core update." And they talk loads about the EEAT and they link to your content there as well, and they talk about how important it is. And I think that, as you say, it's not a one pill sort of thing. It's not like you do one thing and then it's completely fixed. It's a holistic approach. And I think that that's certainly something that you've talked about for many years. I've been on your website, you have a section that says, "I talk about EEAT lot, and the reason why is because it's very complex." Lily Ray: Yeah, it's complex. And it's very hard for a lot of SEOs to wrap their heads around because a lot of SEO in years past has been more like you do one thing and you can see a result of that thing pretty clearly. So you can draw a conclusion, oh, I added this keyword to my title, or I changed my H1, or I improved page speed, and I'm pretty sure it led to these outcomes. With EAT and EEAT, it's hardly ever like that. So a lot of people made the mistake early on of saying, "Oh, I added an author name and I tested adding an author name and nothing happened." Because it's not how it works. Google has all the data in the entire world and they're using it in ways we probably cannot even wrap our heads around. So that in and of itself is probably not going to change how Google evaluates the EEAT of your site and your brand. Mordy Oberstein: That's always been my major hangup with the EEAT. I call it a matter of factor. Yeah, you have all these ranking signals like your keyword and your title tag and blah blah blah blah blah…. But looking at the quality of the website, its ability to transmit information in a expert led manner that results in it being trustworthy, it's very holistic, and it's very meta. It's like, okay, before we even get to a keyword in a title tag, what's the nature of this content? Is it applicable and is it quality? And that's before a ranking factor. It's prior to a ranking factor, and I think that confuses the heck out of SEOs. Lily Ray: Yeah, yeah. It's because they can't understand how Google's doing it, and they also can't imagine what's possible and what's not possible. So a lot of the times it's like Google can't possibly know who these authors are. Meanwhile, literally today, Glenn Gabe just posted, in Google Discover, they're putting author names in the thumbnail, and now you can click on the author name and it takes you to their knowledge graph. And Glenn found it for Barry Barry Schwartz, the author in the SEO community. So I'm like, "Okay, if they can't do it, why are they literally continuing to push products that show that they're trying to do it." Crystal Carter: Right. And they rolled out lots and lots more knowledge panels for people of all different levels of notoriety and the knowledge panels that they have for people who are big names, for instance, are much more robust these days. How have you seen that evolve? Lily Ray: Yeah, I think you're right. I think I've seen a lot more people this year saying, especially SEO people, like, "Hey, I put structured data around my name and now I have a knowledge panel." It's like, okay, well, that's a much easier barrier to entry than it was before. But you're right, Crystal, if you Google prominent people's names, it's like Google's gone so far into making it a beautiful search result with connecting all the different dots. Sometimes when I Google my own name, I'm like, "You chose that YouTube video to display at the very top of the page." It's like curating almost these personal websites for people, and they're absolutely building that out more over time. Mordy Oberstein: No, they're really smart about it. In mine, they show a picture of me when I was a kid that I once posted, I went, "Wow." Lily Ray: You're like, "Take that down." Mordy Oberstein: Really. To be honest to you, I look way better back then than I do now, so I'm going to leave it there. Lily Ray: You're going to keep it? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, keep it. So to piggyback off of that, what does good... Because we mentioned, okay, throw the author in there, have an author bio, but I feel like EEAT has... We've SEOed it, it became a checklist. We need to do this, I need to do that and I need to do that. But what does developing good EEAT actually look like? Lily Ray: Yeah, it's doing the hard work that nobody wants to do. Everybody wants a shortcut. A lot of people these days are saying, you'll see these people, "Oh, I created this fake mid-journey person and a fake author bio and got all these fake mentions and all these publications did it, did all these fake things and it's ranking." I'm like, "Yeah, it's ranking for now until Google sees enough of these patterns to the point where they launch another helpful content update and it doesn't work anymore." If you're willing to have something work for a month or three months or whatever, great, good for you. But sustainable long-term marketing and EEAT means all the things that have always contributed to building a trustworthy brand. So we work with our clients to say, who are the legitimate experts at your company? The people that actually know these things, are they looped into the content creation process? And the more that these people go and make themselves public speaking at events, doing interviews, making YouTube videos, doing TikTok, all this stuff, it all gets factored back into EEAT. Google loves those signals. Crystal Carter: So I've worked with clients on this who were in the medical space on one of the things you do a EEAT audit, and I presume that that's something that you do and many think that you do. And when I've done that sort of thing, it's sometimes very difficult to explain to clients what you're actually looking for because they're like, "But I thought you were going to look at the website." And you're like, "Yeah, kind of. Yes, but also your whole digital footprint." How do you talk to clients about that? Because one of the things I think people struggle with, they'll say, "Oh, well, we are qualified. Oh, well, we do have that certification." But they don't necessarily demonstrate it. So do you find it tricky for clients to get their head around that? Lily Ray: It's a great question. I mean, personally, I think it's one of the most fun and exciting areas of SEO when you start to believe in it and understand how it works. Because like you said, if they are truly qualified, then it's just a matter of connecting the dots and making that super easy for search engines to understand and users. All of this is mutually beneficial for search engines and users. That's one of the nice things about it. It's not like, "Oh, let's go buy a million shady links and spam the internet." Because it's good for SEO, but it's terrible for users. No, we're actually doing something that's good for the internet and brands as a whole. But to your question, Crystal, it's like if you go in the search quality rater guidelines, which have finally become trendy, Marie Haynes made this trendy and Olaf Kopp maybe and three other people five years ago, seven years ago. Now, suddenly the SEO industry's like, "Check out this nugget from page 18 of the search quality guidelines." I'm like, "It's no secret. It's been there the whole time." Mordy Oberstein: The main content should be clearly accessible on the page. Lily Ray: Yeah, guys. Found this great hack. Oh my God. Crystal Carter: I'm not going to lie. If you're new to SEO and you're interested in it, look up Google search quality rater guidelines. And honestly, Lily, you hit me to this and you were like, "Oh yeah." This and this. And I was like, "Okay, let me have a look myself." Literally printed it out and was going through that with the highlighter with all of this stuff that I used to carry it around dogeared, but it's a great read and it's super, super useful. It's also worth bookmarking because they just update the link. I was trying to compare one year to the other and it will go. There's a couple of people that do really good line by line what's changed. But yeah, it's a great document. We should link that in the share notes. Lily Ray: Yeah, it's hard to find. And one last thing about that, if you read the guidelines, the whole point of why I brought that up is because the first thing it says for quality raters to do is, which the document is intended for, is to research the reputation of websites outside of what the website says about itself, including a search operator that they can add to Google that literally looks at the website reputation without looking at the website, subtract the website's domain. So they're actually looking directly outside of the website to understand what other people are saying about the website, not the website itself. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's why I feel like there's so much of what goes into EEAT and branding and content marketing, right? You can do very mundane tasks like I mentioned before, but though the real work is really developing the brand. I think the point you made before about getting the people who work at your company involved in the content creation and promoting that content is, first off just leaving SEO aside, is a great brand marketing tactic. You want to show you as the expert and in order to do that, your people need to be out there talking about what makes them an expert. How many times is a random content marketing agency in Wichita, Kansas writing about whatever it is that you actually do and the actual experts are not actually involved in the content? If you're like, "What's the biggest thing you can do to build up your EEAT?" But make sure the content's really actually good. Crystal Carter: And accurate and factual. Lily Ray: Yeah, and beyond good. I think we'll talk about this soon, but now it's just true experience. So another thing the SEO community is trying to do with the onset of the new E, which I think we'll talk about is faking experience. And the amazing thing that Google's done and cornered people into doing, which I think is a great thing, is now you need that to rank. I mean, the data just shows it over and over with different types of algorithm updates or ranking systems. We had the review system, now we have the helpful content system. It's always saying the same thing now, which is, do you have true experience? So people are going into ChatGPT and saying, "Pretend I'm an SEO expert with real SEO experience and say this and this thing." And the answers, I'm like, "If you're a real SEO person with experience, you'll know the answers are not good." So people can tell the difference, right? Crystal Carter: And I think also you talked about being good for users and being good for the algorithm or whatever as well. I heard a radio advert the other day and it was like, "Here are real customers talking about their customer experience with our energy company." And it was literally slightly grainy phone calls of people going, "Oh, I had a great, thank you so much for your help. That was really helpful." And that sort of stuff. And I think TikTok is a classic venue for this. There's a lot of ugly videos on TikTok that are like, "Here's how I fixed the bicycle." Or "Here's how I did this thing." And I think people are really looking for something real that they can quantify as real because there's so much content everywhere. So I think that that experience level, I think that's a response to that. Do you agree? Or you're seeing something else? Lily Ray: Yeah, no, I think it's really clear. It's interesting in the past couple of weeks and months how so many people are so blindsided by what Google's doing because Google's been warning us for years about this. The feedback that Google's been getting about its algorithms and the quality of its results have been in mainstream media for a couple of years now. We think that Google provides a lot of very inauthentic results, a lot of results from brands that don't know what they're talking about. Too many brands are doing affiliate content. This is not authentic but we want to hear from real people. TikTok is the biggest threat to Google search. It has been clear for months and years the challenges that Google's facing. Now they're probably maybe over indexing on real experience with some of their ranking updates, but it should not come as a surprise to anyone that Google searchers in general want that classic old feeling of how Google used to be when you would get Joe Schmoe's website about fixing his bike. They're trying to go back there while still honoring many of the other signals that are important for search. Mordy Oberstein: That to me, by the way, is a mistake that I think people in the SEO industry make. Okay, so Google added an extra E to EEAT where it was originally expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, and then they added an E for experience. And SEO's like, "Oh, okay, now we've to optimize for experience." They're out thinking, where did the E come from? They didn't pull it out of a hat. Google realized that there's a new content trend. People are preferring content from actual people with actual experience. And in order for them to stay relevant, they need to figure out a way to include that in the algorithm. So it's not like, oh, I need to optimize for Google. No, you need to give people what they actually want, which is what Google's trying to do. So we've talked about this on Twitter a while back when they started doing the product review updates and now they're called the review updates. And Google said, "Okay, we want you to have actual experience with the toaster oven that you're using." How do they do that? And to me, it's not crazy complicated. The language structure you're going to use if you use the stupid toaster oven is going to be so different than if you didn't. So for example, you would write, great toaster oven, was really good on bread, if you didn't use it. But if you actually used it, you would be like, "I tried to put a steak in there and it did not work. Do not use this on steak." Lily Ray: Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I've been looking at sites that got hit by the recent helpful content update. And I'm not the most advanced set of algorithms on the planet. I'm just a person looking at sites one by one. So obviously, whatever Google's capable of doing is going to be a million times more sophisticated than what I'm doing. Okay, first of all, so many of the sites that were impacted have absolutely no experience. That's just obvious. Okay, we get it. You wrote a million pieces of content about all the great places to travel in the world. You've obviously never been there. There's no evidence, there's no author, there's nothing. That's obviously the most extreme example. But then you get these mid-range like, "Oh, I really enjoyed going to the restaurant. The breakfast was excellent. Highly recommend it. Try the pancakes." Okay, did you really go there? Mordy Oberstein: No, you did add the word I and we in a thousand times. I told Crystal this, I took that product review page and I went to the way back machine and it was clear. They try to mimic experience and it was not actual experience. And I went back and they used the word I and we eight times. Fast-forward to now, and they use it 150 times. Lily Ray: It's real experience. If I just put that word there a million times, people will never know. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So note to the audience, and I feel like if you're listening to this podcast and you're a smaller website, this is for you. You have actual experience, you have the ability to really give that experience over to your audience and create something different and valuable. But if you're listening to this and you're on an SEO, stuffing in we and our and I is not optimizing for the experience of EEAT. Lily Ray: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I think that's a great segue. I have a question. So the way I always describe for our Wix audience, and I know not everybody here is Wix user yet. But the way I like to describe it is Wix folks are doers, we like to do stuff, make websites, do stuff, et cetera. So if somebody was looking for something to do, I don't know if you'd be interested in this, going through each acronym. So a quick tip, is that ridiculous? Or something you could do to demonstrate experience on a website that almost anyone could do, what would be something you could recommend for someone? Lily Ray: Yeah, I mean, this is where it gets fun because presumably if you are making a website and marketing the website, presumably and hopefully it's because you actually like what you're doing, you know about what you're doing, you care about what you're doing. Of course, that's definitely not true for many people that are doing marketing on the internet. But if those things are true, assuming those things are true, share what you know. You know what I mean? What are the unique insights and experiences that you have? Me personally, I think you both as well. I can talk about SEO all day, every day. I have very strong opinions as everybody knows and I like to share them and people like to hear them. So do that. If you're a biker or a bike mechanic, what have you experienced? What frustrates you? What's the cool new bike? What's going on? And then of course you can map that to the different SEO tools that we use to say, okay, how should I write this headline? What keywords should I include on this page? How should I set up my content structure? But when you start from what you know, this is a very different way of thinking about SEO because most people start from the keywords themselves and then try to pretend that they know these things or research what other people have said. But I almost only write SEO content or content about SEO when there's something that I need to say and that's a lot. It's very frequent, but it doesn't happen not because my company's like, "Lily, we haven't heard from you in a while." I'm like, "Guys, it's Sunday night and something really big happened and I have an idea and I'm writing a blog." So think about it that way. Crystal Carter: So this is reminding me. So on Wix SEO hub, I have an article about user first SEO content ideas and I'm sure you must get this a lot as in your experience, you talk to SEOs all over the world. If anyone doesn't know, it's not really a conference if Lily's not there. No, I'm kidding. But every SEO conference is made better by Lily Ray. But yeah, there we go. Anyway, at conferences, you speak to SEOs all over the world and you must have lots of people asking you questions all the time about different things. So again, rather than keywords, if you're hearing people regularly asking you those questions, those are potentially users. That's potentially a place where you can validate your experience or the experiences of other people in order to create the content. So I think that that's something that folks can do as well. Listen to people who are talking to you. Lily Ray: Yeah, or your customers or your calls or your chats, right? Crystal Carter: Right. So we did experience. And expertise, what is a good win for expertise in terms of something that someone could work on, sort of a thing? Lily Ray: Yeah, I think this is when we start to get into things like author bios and building out a personal brand. Every place that one would expect you to be mentioned or recognized in your industry, make sure that you're there or make sure that it's clear that you're there. Here's a random example for me. I'm in Google Scholar. I was included in an academic journal where I've talked about SEO. That's extreme, but that's all the different places that you might expect somebody who's saying they're an expert in something to have expertise. So I just spoke at a recipe blogger conference last week. It's like, where are all the publications where you've been mentioned? Where did you go to culinary school? Right? Just connecting all those dots and making sure that they're all easy for people and search engines to see. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think one thing that I've seen is that, and I think you've mentioned this as well on Twitter, is LinkedIn for instance, even if you're not posting every single day on LinkedIn, if you have your LinkedIn, if you spent an hour going through your LinkedIn profile and making sure that's got your relevant qualifications and has the skill sets and all of that sort of stuff, Google pulls those results into the SERP, for instance. So that can be a good source of that as well. And then with regards to authority, is that one trickier? Lily Ray: Yeah, probably. I mean, the SEO industry will tell you because Gary-ish from Google- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the link thing. Lily Ray: One time said that it's links. Yeah. So Gary in maybe 2018 or 2019 said that page rank and links are the only things we really look at for EAT or something along those lines, and authority is largely driven by links. So of course, the SEO industry likes to misconstrue this into links are the only thing that matters, nothing else matters. Which is not true. But of course, similar to having the right credentials and experience listed in your online profiles, you do want to back up your legitimacy with links and also social media mentions. I can't say enough about when I share an article that I wrote on Twitter, it shows up in Google Discover the next day. So it's like Google's looking at these signals, even if they don't tell you the social media signals are ranking factors, they're looking at them, for sure. Crystal Carter: And what about trust? What's a good opportunity in terms of demonstrating trust online? Lily Ray: Yeah, this is where the trust pilots and the G2s and testimonials and online ratings and online reviews come in. There's so many different sites where you should be listed, building out a knowledge panel using Crunchbase, all these things. Just making sure that your brand is a legitimate brand. Other sites that were impacted by the recent algorithm updates, including the helpful content update, one of the first things that I noticed is a lot of these sites are obviously just blogs that someone bought because of the name. It's just obvious, right? So if you're bestpizzaslices.com, okay, great, you're going to write about the best pizza slices. I'm sure the content is fine, but that's not a brand. There's no evidence that you started a business. Who are you? Why should we trust you? So that's a silly example because I'm sure you can do fine with pizza slices, but you know what I mean? People are just buying domains and not investing any energy into making this a real brand because that's the whole point, they're churn and burn sites. So you have to show that you're a real brand. Mordy Oberstein: And all that bleeds over, right? Even the Google's graphic, the whole diagram, they have a Venn diagram and the E, and the A, and the T they overlap a little bit to make a one overall picture. So one of these things, again, that makes it hard is that it's not very linear. As Lily mentioned before, I just want to harbor on that point for a real quick second. It is a mindset. It is a way of thinking about producing content and websites and working with sites and content. And I think we're done. I think we've exhausted the topic for this particular episode. Lily, if people wanted to experience your expertise and experience in SEO, where could they find you? Lily Ray: Well, my new answer to this question is that Google me and pick wherever you want to follow me because there's a lot of different options. So it's Lily Ray, L-I-L-Y R-A-Y. Mordy Oberstein: That's the best answer I've heard. I know it's... Lily Ray: It's true. Mordy Oberstein: It's such a good answer in this whole mumble-jumbled world of social media. That is the best answer I've heard in a long time. Lily Ray: Pick your favorite. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, we'll link to Lily's various social media profiles and perhaps just the SERP. Lily Ray: Just the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, in the show notes. So look for the link to Lily's SERP in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Such an honor to have you with us. Thank you so much. Lily Ray: Thanks for having me. You guys are the best. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Lily. Bye. Thanks again, Lily. Experience is not just fodder for the algorithm. Google didn't pull it out of a magic hat and say, "Hey, let's focus on experience and expertise." Content trends impact search engines and Google saw experience and expertise are actual content trends that people want. Hence, you all are going to TikTok for information. Thus Google knows it itself needs to show experience and expertise in its own SERP features. So like that, with that, let's dive into what it all looks like on the SERP as we take a directional look at what Google is doing with a little segment we call going, going Google. Speaker 4: And it's going, going Google. It's out of here. Mordy Oberstein: Google does a lot of things to help give results within its own SERP feature the little boxes and doohickeys it offers that are not the actual results that pull in expertise and experience. In fact, Crystal, you found one of these and shared it with the great Barry Schwartz. Care to share that with us? Crystal Carter: Yes. So I found a mentioned in drop down, and I found this on the couple of top level searches, so broad search keywords. And essentially, I entered in something and then further down there was a brand and underneath the brand it would say mentioned in, and it mentioned a few different places where people have mentioned this particular topic. These are really useful for providing context. They also provide a little bit of a point of panic potentially if you might have something there where you're mentioned, did he not? So flattering way. So I think it's important for people to think about how their reputation is being managed across the web and to make sure that they're creating some great content that is actually about them. So people talking about them. This is essentially the authority piece. So I tend to say that when we think about authority, it's what other people are saying about you. So if you were applying for a job, you get references. You might say great things about yourself on your resume, but then you have your references. And if your references are your mom or your best friend, that'll give your employer one kind of impression. If your references are somebody that you worked with who also has a good reputation, for instance, that's going to give another impression. And it's the same with some of these online recommendations that Google's trying to get more people more comfortable for. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it really helps Google showcase the result that they're giving is expert driven, right? Other people are mentioning that website, then that website has some sort of expertise on whatever topic is that you're searching for. So it's Google saying, "Hey, let's make sure that you, the searcher, understand that this website is an expert because other people are saying that they are." Crystal Carter: Right. And that when you're looking at the SERP, I mean, it takes up a lot of real estate. So the one that I saw had a couple of different options. And I think that what's interesting is that it takes up probably double the space of a normal plain blue link, which is great because that's saying not only is this somebody who's got content on this, but they've got content and other people think that content is good. So I think that that is an absolute plus for people who have good brand knowledge or good topic knowledge on a particular topic. And I think that it's worth investing time in making yourself be seen as a very clear authority. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and on the flip side of that, from the experience angle, Google has a whole set of results where you can get a perspective from actual people, meaning you search for something like, are The Beatles good? It was the example we used in the previous episode. And you get a set of results of people sharing their opinions about The Beatles. It's really results based on experience. A lot of it coming from social media because that's a great place to see where people have their experiences and their thoughts on that from actual people. Crystal Carter: So one of the examples that I found was Coco Gauff. So after she won the US Open with plastic finish there. Well done Coco. So after she won that, there were people who also had opinions on that as well. So there was something that was specifically an opinion piece, for instance from CNN that was mentioned in The Perspective. But I think it's great to have the content earmarked so that essentially you're saying this is content that's objective or that's a news piece, core news and this is the opinion column area. In a newspaper, you'll have current events, you'll have some people who are making think pieces about what they think it might mean or what context they see in a particular news event, and then you'll have people who are just reporting what happened on that particular occasion. And both ideas are useful for you to get context of what's going on, but they're not exactly the same. So I think it's good that Google's saying, "Okay, these are opinions, they're interesting and things, but they're opinions." And I think that it provides context and provides a great way to get more information on the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: The point is, if you look at what Google's doing in their own SERP features, you can get a sense of what they're trying to focus on and what they're trying to do and what direction they're going, and it's the name of the segment going, going Google. So take a look at what Google's doing and take a look at what's changing on the results page and take a look at the change in testing that they're doing because that'll show you what they're looking for and what they're trying to do, what they think is valuable. Crystal Carter: Right. And one of the other ones that Glenn Gabe identified recently was within the Discover tab there, for instance, he found something that was talking about Google, Google search results, and it was an article written by Barry Schwartz and underneath the article it said, "Get the latest on Barry Schwartz." And when you click on it goes to Barry's knowledge graph. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Crystal Carter: So that is a good way that you're connecting the dots, and it's something I've talked about in terms of thinking about mobile optimization. I did a course recently for Semrush and I talked about how actually spending some time making sure the people on your team have good knowledge graphs, have good biographical entities, have good information across the web, is actually really useful for mobile, for EEAT, for all of those sorts of things. So Google wants to add citations essentially to the kind of content that they're giving. So they want to add context to the authors. They want to add context to the information the publishers that they're pointing people to. They want to give people more context for the kind of information that they're getting. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of Barry, of course, it is the perfect time for us to dive into this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Google SGE expands through 120 countries per Barry Schwartz override Search Engine Land. Basically, it's what I just said. Google's SGE, it's Search Generative Experience expands to 120 new countries. Which means that if you are in Angola, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil. Just reading off the list. Cambodia. Let's go to E, Ethiopia. G for, I don't know, Guam. In all of these countries, you can, in theory, access the SGE Google Search Generative Experience, which is super interesting. Google has stated that yes, this is still on beta, still being tested, but the expansion obviously indicates that Google is far more comfortable with what it's been doing in the US with its SGE. So look forward at a country or in a country near you. Also in a country near you, per Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable, it's two berries from two different publications this week as it is with pretty much every week. Google November 2023 reviews update rolls out. So Google said, if you listened to our news last week, Google said they're going to roll out a new review update and that the review update, this one, will be the last of the official announced review updates. What you're basically going to have is a continuously updating ranking system, which means that the review update is essentially real time. I hate using that word because it's not exactly what it means, but it will be out live and changing rankings on a consistent and ongoing basis without specific roll-outs as we have now. So that's super interesting. As I believe I mentioned last time, I think this is the way of the algorithm. This is where I think the Google updates in general are going. We actually cover this in our BrightonSEO session, our live recording of SERP's Up over at BrightonSEO in San Diego. So look for that episode. I believe that one comes out next week. So we get into that there and then. So listen then for that there. Wow, that's so many pronouns. Just so you know, the reviews update is live, at least the beginning of it is live at the same time as the November 2023 core update, which makes picking out ranking movements perhaps a little bit more complex than it usually is, and there's multiple layers of Google updates going on, so that's always fun, right? And with that, that's this week's snappy news. Thank you as always to the great writers of all the great news articles that are out there, and of course, in particular, the great Barry Schwartz. With that, let's dive into who you should be following this week for more SEO awesomeness. And since we're focused so much on experience and expertise and EEAT, we thought this week's follow of the week should be Olaf Kopp. He is on X, but he's more on LinkedIn. So look for Olaf Kopp. However on LinkedIn, we'll link to that in the show notes. Olaf is a EEAT aficionado. He's written many, many articles around it for Search Engine Land. He's got a really, what I like, a really conceptual understanding of EEAT. And it's the kind of content that when you go and look at it, you're learning how to fish and you're not just getting the fish. Crystal Carter: I mean, what fish are we talking about? Mordy Oberstein: Mackerel. Crystal Carter: Mackerel. Mackerel's so pretty. They're such pretty little fish. They're very shiny and cute. I think they're adorable. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. What's an ugly fish? I know, a fluke. Flounder. Crystal Carter: Have you ever seen salmon? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I've seen salmon. Crystal Carter: Salmon are ugly fish. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, we're really crapping on the fish here. Crystal Carter: Say it to it's face. But salmon are ugly fish. Mordy Oberstein: No, I would say salmon cannot hurt you. I would say it to it. I wouldn't say it to a shark though. Crystal Carter: I mean, they jump pretty high. If you ever watch people talk about bears eating salmon. But if you watch a bear eating salmon, I've not seen this personally, but on nature documentaries, they're literally just hanging their mouths open trying to catch the salmon who are jumping upstream. It's not very graceful, but I mean, that's what... You got to do what you got to do if you're a bear and you need a snack. Mordy Oberstein: Hey, bears have to eat too. Crystal Carter: It's true. Mordy Oberstein: Bears have to eat too. Well, I'm that happy note, 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 a very special live episode from BrightonSEO in San Diego live from the conference. So look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at, you got it, wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

In this episode of SERP's Up, we focus on optimizing your homepage from how it “sets the SEO pace” for your entire site to why it’s the most important page for Core Web Vitals. Ryan Jones, SEO consultant, shares his perspectives on what good SEO looks like on arguably the more important page on your website. We'll also talk about some of the most common mistakes people make with homepages and how to avoid them. Back Off on the right foot with Homepage SEO In this episode of SERP's Up, we focus on optimizing your homepage from how it “sets the SEO pace” for your entire site to why it’s the most important page for Core Web Vitals. Ryan Jones, SEO consultant, shares his perspectives on what good SEO looks like on arguably the more important page on your website. We'll also talk about some of the most common mistakes people make with homepages and how to avoid them. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 01 | August 23, 2022 | 37 MIN 00:00 / 37:28 This week’s guests first speaker Ryan has been working in SEO for 7 years and has worked both agency-side and in-house as well as building his own websites as side projects. Currently he's focussed on growing Land of Rugs into an 8-figure revenue business, using organic growth as the vehicle for doing that. Of course, he's having fun and learning lots on the way too. Notes Transcript Transcript [00:00:00] Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO. Podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up! [00:00:14] Mordy Oberstein: Aloha Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by our head of SEO communications, crystal [00:00:27] Crystal Carter: Carter. What's up, people? [00:00:30] Mordy Oberstein: Hello? What's going on here? Do you think that was too much like over the tops? [00:00:34] Mordy Oberstein: Our first episode, like the whole SERP's Up Aloha Mahalo? I don't know. I kinda like it. I kind of feel like it's a little over the top. [00:00:41] Crystal Carter: I feel like that's our brand, though, Mordy. Like, I feel like that's how we roll. Is that not? Isn't that what the people have come to expect from, like the Mordy & Crystal SEO thing? [00:00:53] Mordy Oberstein: I say yes. I feel like, no, we're just, we're just gonna roll with [00:00:56] Crystal Carter: it. I feel like if people showed up and we were like, this is the [00:01:00] SERP these are things. [00:01:02] Mordy Oberstein: I feel like people with the people would be disappointed, but I want you to know that in a previous life, it needs to do an SEO podcast for, I literally, the entire point of the podcast was do everything, but. [00:01:12] Mordy Oberstein: Hello, welcome to our show about backlinks. Would you like some backlinks, sir? No. Put the answer is no, and we don't, we don't buy links. [00:01:21] Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix. Now you can dive deep into the world of SEO with our new SEO learning hub. By the way, that's a place on the web where this very podcast lives. [00:01:33] Mordy Oberstein: It's wix.com/seo/learn. So look out for episodes of the SERP's Up podcast there or wherever you consume your podcast as well. Some great blog posts, webinars, and whatnot to help you learn about SEO. All of the things [00:01:47] Crystal Carter: learn all of, of the SEO things. From the hub of the SEO things. [00:01:52] Mordy Oberstein: The it's the hub of SEO. [00:01:54] Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Not the SEO hub, the hub of SEO, the hub of SEO, the SEO hub of the [00:02:00] SEO, the SEO, the hub of the [00:02:02] Crystal Carter: SEO optimizing. There [00:02:04] Mordy Oberstein: we go. We also have PM machines there, Lord. So. Thank you for joining us. Our dear audience may have so much to cover today. First off, this is our first episode of the SERP's Up podcast. [00:02:16] What is SERP'S UP About? [00:02:16] Mordy Oberstein: And I just wanna quickly say, this is a podcast where anyone and everyone of your site owner, an SMB, an enterprise website, a seasoned SEO, a new SEO. This is a podcast where everybody can learn something about SEO. It's SEO [00:02:29] Crystal Carter: for. That's exactly what we're trying to do here. We're bringing SEO to the people [00:02:33] Mordy Oberstein: democratize [00:02:34] Crystal Carter: SEO, all of the people with all the [00:02:37] Mordy Oberstein: SEO, exactly. [00:02:37] Mordy Oberstein: With all the SEO, with all the optimizations [00:02:41] Crystal Carter: precisely. And I think that it's really important that, you know, I think we both spend a lot of time making sure that people can understand what's going on. There's no cloak and dagger, we're not trying to, we're not trying to overcomplicate things. We're trying to deliver the information as in, in an accessible and entertaining way for your SEO enjoyment. [00:02:59] On this show we cover... [00:02:59] Mordy Oberstein: I [00:03:00] exactly. Okay. So we're gonna kick off this show with a look at where you should be kicking your site off your homepage, right? It's literally called your homepage. It's the home of your website. We're talking, but SEO for your homepage, how your homepage directs the rest of the content on your site. Why is super important for Core Web Vitals and links and how to get. [00:03:20] Mordy Oberstein: Going with your homepage the right way. We'll hear tips from in-house SEO, Ryan Jones, about what works, what doesn't work for your SEO on your homepage. We got a fun little game. We're gonna play with the nice little Google SERP feature. We'll give you a look at a great free tool that you can get some content ideas from, and we'll tap into a little SEO news and last. [00:03:42] Mordy Oberstein: We'll tell you who you should be following out there in the SEO industry. So you can get some more SEO knowledge on your own. It's just some basic SEO awesomeness all throughout this podcast, just jampacked jam. It is jampacked by the way, I'm thinking, how are we gonna get this done in the amount of time [00:04:00] that we wanna get this on? [00:04:00] Focus Topic of the Week [00:04:00] Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, let's jump into it. Our focus topic of the week. It's SEO for. Homepage pretty [00:04:08] Crystal Carter: precisely. So I think what we're gonna do first, just to make sure that everyone's on the same page about the homepage. Let's just start out with a super SEO question, which is what is a homepage. So when we talk about a homepage, we talk about the first page that users see when they arrive on your domain. [00:04:23] Crystal Carter: So if your domain is is example.com for instance, in your homepage is what people see when they arrive on example.com. And these can vary from lots of different types of ways. There's a couple of different types of homepages that you can use a couple of different types of techniques. So I've seen some where they'll funnel people where like, for instance, if you go to some place like zara.com, that's a very top level domain, but they're a very complicated business with lots of different geos and lots of different markets that they work in. [00:04:48] Crystal Carter: So if you go to their page, they will filter you to whatever market you're in, for instance, if you go to some place like Virgin, for instance, they do lots of things. So virgin.com covers space, travel and [00:05:00] phones and broadband and holiday vacations. Lots of, lots of different things. So if you go to their page, Because they have so many different brand affiliations, they will filter you to lots of different things as well. [00:05:12] Crystal Carter: Another one that I looked at was fandom. They've got one where they just have like all the links, they just put all the links on their homepage and that's another way to do it as well. So there's lots of different ways you can think about a homepage, but it's essentially the first page people arrive at on your domain and it can impact a lot of the wider, uh, experience of your site. [00:05:28] Crystal Carter: And when we talk about homepage SEO, we mean the SEO that is targeted. On the homepage and making sure that your homepage is doing what it's supposed to do from an SEO point of view, this can be reviewing your copy, looking at your content structure, looking at your linking, but it can be a lot, a lot, lot more. [00:05:43] Crystal Carter: So that is what we mean when we're talking about that. [00:05:47] Mordy Oberstein: Homepage SEO but that's no, but that's really the beauty of this. And we'll get into all of this. There's so many different ways you can take as you take us from a technical point of view, looking at things like corporate vitals and your performance. [00:05:58] Mordy Oberstein: I'm sure you're gonna get to in a few minutes, [00:06:00] you can look at this from a linking perspective because, uh, everyone's linking to your homepage. Uh, I fundamentally look at the homepage as like the place that sets the pace for the rest of your website. There's your website needs to have an identity, not just for your users, but also for search engines and really well more importantly for your users, but we're talking about search engines right now, but it's the same thing. [00:06:18] Mordy Oberstein: the same thing, but you need to have an identity and your homepage really is like, this is where you have an identity. This is where you tell search engines and you tell people what you tell the whole world. This is who I am. This is what I do. And I I'll tell you I've looked at thousands of home pages. [00:06:34] Mordy Oberstein: And once I did like a, a, a listing of how often, or which home pages I was able to understand what the heck the site actually did just by looking at the homepage, I will tell you it was a 70, 30 split and 70%. I didn't understand what the site did just from the home. Right. And that's a major problem for your users. [00:06:52] Mordy Oberstein: That's a major problem for, for search engines obviously, but once you, a once you're able to pin down that [00:07:00] identity on the homepage. I feel like it sits you up for success with the rest of your site, cuz now, you know, I, what, what sort of falls into the, the four qubits of my blogs periphery? Like what can I talk about on my blog? [00:07:11] Mordy Oberstein: What shouldn't I talk about on my blog? Yeah. Now that I have an identity on the homepage, I can sort of have a sense what fits and what doesn't. So there's so many ways to slice your homepage, but to me fundamentally, it's like, it's your identity. I know you're gonna take us to a totally different place. [00:07:25] Mordy Oberstein: Why your pocket is, is so awesome. [00:07:27] Crystal Carter: To be honest, I think that like, it, it is the same thing. Like, you know, you're talking about the identity and the identity can also have to do with your technical framework. So the identity can be how you connect with your users. For instance, if your homepage is really optimized for mobile, then that tells your users that we understand that you're using this page on your mobile. [00:07:43] Crystal Carter: We understand that you need to be able to access this content. On the go, um, you know, uh, for instance, like there's, there's, I've worked with a lot of leisure clients, um, and in the leisure, leisure industry, [00:07:55] Mordy Oberstein: leisure, leisure, potato, pat, potato . [00:07:58] Crystal Carter: And, and, and for those [00:08:00] folks, like people are on their people are in their cars, they're searching, you know, where can I go today? [00:08:04] Crystal Carter: People are in their, you know, you don't take most people. Don't take a full PC on vacation with them. Um, and then Marty's like, I do, I do it all the time. Now, again, . [00:08:14] Mordy Oberstein: Um, if my desktop I'm schlepping box full tower, I need a full, the old school monitor, like really right. Bulky monitor. And I, [00:08:25] Crystal Carter: and so I think that making sure you've got the technical framework that sets that up. [00:08:29] Crystal Carter: Is absolutely part of your homepage or part of your homepage experience and part of your overall experience. [00:08:33] Mordy Oberstein: So, yeah. So what do you mean by that? Cause that's like a really important point. Like when you say like getting your technical framework set up, because I know we obviously getting your content writing for your identity and for, and certain people understand what you're doing and surgeon to understand what you're doing is sort of a self-evident point that people don't do it. [00:08:47] Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But when you talk about like the technical framework, cause I know you brought up Core Web Vitals when we were talking about this, like people don't think about. As being unique to a homepage. [00:08:56] Crystal Carter: Yeah. So there's a couple of things. So from the identity point, you literally, [00:09:00] you literally explain your identity and your structured data on your homepage. [00:09:03] Crystal Carter: Like you literally say we are this corporation, we were founded by these people. Um, you know, our address is here. Our phone number is here. Our email address is here. So all of that stuff is literally, um, built [00:09:14] into [00:09:15] Mordy Oberstein: the technical framework. Right? You can add tructure data to your home page. I basically said like, this is, this is our, this is who we. [00:09:19] Crystal Carter: Literally like this is our literal identity. Like this is our, our, our V A T number. This is our tax number. Like this is, [00:09:25] Mordy Oberstein: this is who we are, which is super important. Cause structured data, whether or not it's not a, an official ranking factor, but at the end of the day, structuring structured data can a create, help the knowledge graph build on itself. [00:09:36] Mordy Oberstein: And. Structured data, which means that Google understands that this entity and that entity like your website and you as an individual are connected. Right. It also is theoretically, I know Google said that they don't look at it to understand a page unless it's one of their supported schema. Theoretically, they could look at it and save themselves some resources and understand content. [00:09:57] Mordy Oberstein: I know that's a bit of a debate [00:09:58] Crystal Carter: among EOS and it's, it's not [00:10:00] necessarily a ranking factor, but it is a visibility factor because there's certain parts of the SERP that you are not eligible for, unless you have sort of structured data on it. And that, and those parts of the SERP rank higher than the plain blue links. [00:10:11] Crystal Carter: So like , so it's not, it's not a, it's not a ranking factor. I don't wanna get into ranking factor [00:10:16] Mordy Oberstein: things. Let's not, I was gonna say, let's knock go. [00:10:18] Crystal Carter: I'm not gonna go. I'm not gonna go down that, that garden path, but it does affect like how you understand. And also like, particularly for the structured data that goes on your homepage though, organization, your local business, your corporation structured data. [00:10:28] Crystal Carter: You can also, um, use it. Pull the entities from various different places. So for instance, let's say you're, you were really big on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or TikTok or whatever. And then you got a website which happens a lot. Then you, when you go onto your homepage on your website, you can put same as more. [00:10:47] Crystal Carter: Do you oversee TikTok? And then Google will understand that, where that, where you have like, you know, 5 million followers on. And you're a big cheese on TikTok that those users also will want to find you on your, on your website. [00:10:59] Mordy Oberstein: [00:11:00] Right? So you're basically telling Google that this TikTok account and this homepage, this website. [00:11:06] Mordy Oberstein: Are connected or, yeah, they're connected. And there's code that you could inject called structure data that, that tells Google this [00:11:11] Crystal Carter: really, exactly that they're the same entity they're made by the same person. Um, you know, like you've got, you've got a podcast and you've got, and you've got the information about you and you've got information about the podcast and they can understand that you are the person that does the podcast and they can connect all of those [00:11:23] Mordy Oberstein: information. [00:11:23] Mordy Oberstein: And it's really the perfect place for it because the homepage again is your identity and you're connecting out to other, and there's, it's really important for you especi. In this age of SEO to make con help Google make the connections between different entities. And we say entities, I mean, anything from who you are, who your site is to your social media accounts, all of these various entities to help them sort of get a really clear understanding of what this website is and who you are, kind of thing. [00:11:46] Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think when you think about an entity, it's like, it's like the idea of like, you have Jennifer Lopez and you have JLo. Google understands that both of those people are the same. That's the same. If somebody answers in JLo in a search bar, they're looking for Jennifer Lopez, it doesn't matter. Or, or if [00:12:00] somebody misspells Jennifer with one N or two Ns, they understand that they mean the same. [00:12:04] Crystal Carter: Entity exactly. Um, another one is like ladybug and lady bird in England. You say lady bird in, in America, you say ladybug, but if I wanted to know about lady bugs and there was good content, that was, that was written literally for Ladybird. Then that's the, that's a whole nother that's a whole, oh yeah, we can go to this whole we're often. [00:12:20] Mordy Oberstein: I really wanna talk about Core Web Vitals and, and the home, because by the way, Core Web Vitals is a ranking factor on desktop and on mobile. And if you don't know what it is, they're basically currently speaking, there are three metrics that Google measures, how, how your page is performing. It's. Um, CLS like, you know, when you go to a webpage and you are mobile in particular, you start seeing buttons moving around. [00:12:41] Mordy Oberstein: So Google's measuring that. Google's measuring F I D how interactive, how that first, how quickly you can make that first interaction on a webpage. And of course they're measuring LCP, which is how quickly the largest content full, the largest thing on your page. It's usually a giant heater image. Load. So Google's measuring performance in three different ways to see if your site offers a [00:13:00] good experience to users. [00:13:01] Mordy Oberstein: And your home rate is really important for this. [00:13:03] Crystal Carter: Your homepage is really important for this because, so when Google's measuring cumulative layout shifts, CRS, they're measuring how things jump around. First of all, for users, I hate that. Like I. I cannot stand. If I go on a website and I try to click something and I end up clicking something else and then I have to go back and blah, that sucks. [00:13:18] Crystal Carter: The other thing is, is that if you have a homepage, that's doing that a lot. Then you have to think about the fact that a lot of your traffic is going through your homepage. Now, the, when Google's. Pulling pulling out your overall score for your page experience, um, and whether or not your site overall passes a page experience, a metric, they will pull the data for 75% of page views across your site. [00:13:40] Crystal Carter: If most of your site, or if a lot of your traffic is going through your homepage and your homepage is underperforming, then that then the performance of your homepage will, will contribute to a lot of that [00:13:49] Mordy Oberstein: score for your, but disproportionately. [00:13:51] Crystal Carter: Exactly for a lot of your, your site overall. So it's very important. [00:13:55] Crystal Carter: So optimizing your homepage can help you go really far with regards to your overall core [00:14:00] web vitals performance. [00:14:00] Mordy Oberstein: So, so it's really, there's a point. People don't talk enough about, right? If most of the traffic is coming through your homepage and Google is measuring in it's real field data, it's really looking at actual how users are actually experiencing your. [00:14:15] Mordy Oberstein: And if they're experiencing it on the homepage, then that's what Google's counting. Then that's the place to really focus on your performance and make sure you have it optimized. [00:14:22] Crystal Carter: Exactly. And it's not just, and it's not just the incoming traffic. It's also the internal traffic as well. So it's like all the page fees across the site. [00:14:28] Crystal Carter: So if people are going from one page to another, to another, to another, and they're very often gonna go back to the homepage yeah. To get back to, to, to find the main thing they saw the first time. [00:14:36] Mordy Oberstein: And it's the same thing with links by the way. Right. So most of the page, most of link to is going to be your homepage. [00:14:43] Mordy Oberstein: And if your homepage is really garbage, right? If you don't know, and I hate to say it that way, but if people can't understand what your page is about who you are, what you do, it doesn't look nice. If it's not well constructive, it's not well organized. People are not gonna wanna link to [00:14:55] Crystal Carter: it. And also that you'll, you'll also be wasting the, the, the, uh, I'm gonna say [00:15:00] it. [00:15:00] Crystal Carter: I'm gonna say link juice, the link juice you're wasting, you're spilling your link juice all over the floor. So so if you've got, so if you've got, if you got this juicy link from like, from something that's relevant, right? So let's say you're doing, I don't know, lemon meringue pies. You're like, you've got a shop that sells lemon meringue pies, and you've got a link from lemon, meringue Pie Gazette Right. And it's got 300 da , um, then, then, and then they get to your homepage and you don't have anything that says lemon meringue pies. You just have, like, I don't know, pies generally, or I don't know, whatever. Then Google's not gonna be able to understand that end users. Aren't gonna be able to understand the relevance of that link. [00:15:38] Crystal Carter: Like why that page is linking to you. If it's just like a general sort of like artsy thing about pies or something, or thousand percent, then it's not gonna you're you're not, you're wasting that. [00:15:49] Mordy Oberstein: So we can go down that wormhole as a whole separate thing again, but we, I wanna end off on one point about this conversation around homepage before we get to our special guest Ryan Jones and see what he has to say about homepages. [00:15:59] Mordy Oberstein: But [00:16:00] I, I just wanna say, when you talk, when you think about a homepage, it's really important to look at how Google thinks about your homepage in your vertical. So let's say something like a medical, you sell medical equip. So you're gonna have con you're gonna have content on there that obviously describes what you do and what you're selling. [00:16:14] Mordy Oberstein: And you'll probably have a bunch of access points so that you can actually get people to buy the actual product. What I would venture to say that Google probably wants you to contextualize that, to offer some information maybe in FAQ to sort of contextualize the medical equipment that you're selling. [00:16:29] Mordy Oberstein: Who is it for? Who is it not for? What are some things you should know before you actually go ahead and purchase this? You want take a [00:16:35] Crystal Carter: look particularly for medical stuff. Like homepages are like you, like, if you're doing anything in a Y M Y L, which is your money or life, anything that's like really serious grown up stuff, basically like, okay, if you're doing anything around that, then, then your homepage really needs to be top notch. [00:16:49] Crystal Carter: So if you look at someone, someone who's got a really good medical homepage is Pfizer, and you need to be able to demonstrate. Your expertise, authority and trust. So, you know that you've got, like, for instance, in, in the UK, you [00:17:00] see pharmacy, there's like a pharmacy, um, badge that shows up for, particularly for things, SSL things you wanna be able to like, you know, Dr. [00:17:07] Crystal Carter: Grace Jones , um, for instance, verify this, like we have all these credentials, we have backed up all of this and, and like things like your registered with the relevant health authorities and they'll fine. Um, they, if you're in a medical vertical and your homepage is not super topnotch, then you're definitely missing a trick [00:17:24] Mordy Oberstein: there. [00:17:24] Mordy Oberstein: And that's exactly the point different verticals Google's gonna think of your homepage is needing different things. So it makes sense to go see what's out there and ranking on thes and see, okay. How does Google think about the homepage? What does it want? What does it expect out of a homepage for whatever it is? [00:17:36] Mordy Oberstein: My website offers, that's a, you know, pro tip right there. Yeah. With that for some more pro tips, check out that. We have in-house SEO specialist, Ryan Jones telling us what's worked for him. And what has it worked for him for his homepage? [00:17:55] Ryan Jones: Uh, so, so when it comes to homepage SEO, uh, there's, there's definitely been some [00:18:00] cases where I've had some major wins, but also where I've made some pretty rookie mistakes too. I mean, I remember when I first came into the industry nearly seven years ago, my main kind of thinking was getting everyone to the homepage and then all these users will sort of magically go where they need to go in reality that. [00:18:18] Ryan Jones: Isn't the case at all. I mean, if, if you're not serving what the user actually needs, you're not gonna rank and you're not gonna make any money. One of my biggest homepage wins actually came about by reducing the traffic to the homepage. So. Initially analyzing the site, we found that around 60% of our organic traffic was arriving at the homepage whilst this isn't necessarily an issue for some people, especially returning users. [00:18:43] Ryan Jones: Uh, it can be a huge issue for others, especially when your, your site's hard to navigate as well. Luckily for me, there was some pretty good gains to make in terms of increasing the authority via back links and, and targeted internal links, uh, to some other pages. Uh, over time, we managed to see [00:19:00] the, the homepage slowly leave the SERPs for a whole bunch of keyword and other pages arrived in its place that obviously increased revenue, conversion rate and all the other magic metrics you wanna see in the green as an SEO, kind of seems ironic to say that one of my biggest homepage wins came about by reducing traffic to the homepage. [00:19:19] Ryan Jones: But, but there we go. I. When we come to failures as well. One of my biggest failures is, is more of a learning based failure, to be honest. Uh, but this came from focusing. Like purely I'm building back links to other pages rather than looking at their homepages and opportunity. When I was pretty early on in my career, like talking zero to six months, I used to fill out all these HARO requests and specifically requests that if they were gonna link, could they link to a, a category page or, or another money page instead of the homepage, the obvious answer was. [00:19:53] Ryan Jones: You know, no. Why, why bloody hell would I do that right over time? I've, I've learned that one of the best tools at my [00:20:00] disposal is internal links and I can use the homepages authority to push that authority through, to, to all the pages on site. Obviously this involves having a, a really clean site architecture, but that that's a completely different topic for a, a completely different podcast. [00:20:22] Mordy Oberstein: Brilliant. Thanks Ryan. You can find Ryan on Twitter at Ryan Jones, SEO that's at Ryan Jones. SEO on Twitter were linked to his Twitter profile in the show notes, but that was really interesting points about his, I always, when people talk about their failures and successes, particularly the failures, I always learned more from the failures than from the successes. [00:20:38] Mordy Oberstein: Wonder where you took away from that one, crystal. [00:20:40] Crystal Carter: I think the thing I found really interesting was how much he talked about navigation. I think that navigation via the homepage is super, super important. And I absolutely agree with what he was talking about there. So he said that internal links were a really big win. [00:20:51] Crystal Carter: The homepage is a really great place to add internal links that are high priority. Sometimes I think about like, if you were to think about your website as a supermarket, um, in your suit, in [00:21:00] your supermarket, you have things that are normally there, like bread and milk, cheese, rice beans, that sort of things. [00:21:04] Crystal Carter: Your homepage, for instance, let's say your homepage is like the fruit like with like the seasonal. Like the seasonal fruit and vegetables that shows up there. So, so on your homepage, you can put, like, these are the things that are in season now, and you can drive traffic to those pages, find internal links. [00:21:18] Crystal Carter: Um, and if you were to think about it like a restaurant, then you can also, like, if you have new blogs, new content, new jobs, new, new events, new, whatever, then that's like a specials board, like in a restaurant where you can say, we need you to see this stuff now because it's fresh. It's new it's here today. [00:21:31] Crystal Carter: Um, it might not be here tomorrow. But it's here. Well, your blog probably will be, but this is new stuff. So on your homepage, you can add feeds for new blogs, new, you can add feeds for new jobs, whatever your vertical is, you can add stuff that's seasonal. So for instance, like you on your homepage, you aren't gonna want, like, I don't know, 4th of July stuff all the time, but you will want it when it's near, when on the 3rd of July, for instance. [00:21:51] Crystal Carter: So these are things that you, you want to think about how you, how you position, which internal links across your site to drive them to the important content now. [00:22:00] And, and, and when you. [00:22:02] Mordy Oberstein: And, and linking to your pages, you're linking internally to your other pages is such an easy win. It has such a major impact on how Google understands your site and how it ranks things on your site. [00:22:10] Mordy Oberstein: So it's like, literally, like Ryan mentioned, like low hanging fruit. So speaking of low hanging fruit, I have no idea what that has to do with anything. Um, but we're moving on. We're moving on. That was a bad example of pivoting. I got a, I got a good, the first time the beta, my existence is pivoting from segment to segment, by the way, [00:22:30] Mordy Oberstein: People also ask it's one of the most common features on the Google SERP and it Google gives you four questions, generally, sometimes two, sometimes three that relate to your initial query. So for example, if you were to, uh, ask is McDonald's good, Google would offer you a box that contains these four questions. [00:22:49] Mordy Oberstein: Least. When I looked at it, these four questions who knows what it contains now but it had one. What's good about, McDonald's not much two. Why should you not eat McDonald's and question number three. [00:23:00] Is it healthy to eat? McDonald's no question number four. Does McDonald's have a good reputation. And when you click on any one of these four questions, Does an expandable tab expands. [00:23:11] Mordy Oberstein: Cause that's what expandable tabs do. And it reveals an answer that comes from a web page. So you get an answer right there on the Google results. It gives you a little snippet of content giving you the answer. Like it was a healthy McDonald's one word. No. And then it has a URL that you can read more information that would help you answer this question. [00:23:30] Mordy Oberstein: So here's a little fun segment that we have called fun with people. Also ask. [00:23:40] Fun with People Also Ask [00:23:40] Mordy Oberstein: So this week, Crystal's going to grill me to see if I'm as smart as Google. Okay. Which is so not even a contest, take this every way you want. [00:23:52] Mordy Oberstein: and it's gonna see if I can actually answer the questions that Google has and the people also ask [00:24:00] feature for the query Yankees. Cause I'm a baseball. Yes. [00:24:04] Crystal Carter: All right. So Mr. Mr. Wardy Stein is Mr. Yankees, uh, loves Yankees. So we are gonna start with, uh, the query. So the query I entered into Google is Yankees, um, which interestingly enough is very different from the query Yankee. [00:24:15] Crystal Carter: Um, so you can check that out on your own. Um, but, um, we're gonna go through that. So the first question is who is the most famous Yankee. [00:24:24] Mordy Oberstein: So I know what Google's gonna have there. It's gonna say babe Ruth, and it's gonna be O paragraph about babe Ruth, but the truth is that's not true. Yogi bear is the most famous Yankee because people know all of his yogis, like, um, it's getting late, early out there, or when you can learn, you can, you can learn a lot by observing. [00:24:42] Mordy Oberstein: No, what is it? You can observe a lot by watching, sorry. You couldn't observe a lot by watching, right? So in at least in America, there's all these yogis. So I feel Yogi be is more famous, but I know Google's gonna give the answer of Bei. [00:24:53] Crystal Carter: This is very interesting because they've actually, so this says who's the most famous Yankee. [00:24:57] Crystal Carter: And then they said best Yankee of all time by [00:25:00] uniform number. Is what he re returned. So zero is, is Adam Octa or [00:25:07] Mordy Oberstein: Adam Ottavino like that's he's ever on the Yankees. He was there for one year. He was terrible. [00:25:12] Crystal Carter: Exactly. Number two, Billy Martin, or sorry, number one, Billy Martin, number two, Derek Jeter. So that's a very interesting, that's a very interesting, this is going [00:25:19] Mordy Oberstein: by the numbers. [00:25:20] Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's the result then it's gonna go Gehrig Ruth Mantle, uh, um, uh, DiMaggio. Yes. Who's six who's number six. Oh, wait. Seven is mantle eight is Berra. Why am I blanking on six Jo I'm blanking, Jo. Or so Joe Torry! Yeah. You know why I'm blanking because he was a manager, not a player. Oh, blanking it. Okay. [00:25:48] Crystal Carter: Very interesting. [00:25:48] Mordy Oberstein: All right. Okay. So I'll give you by the way, just cause to show you that Google in these answers can give you the wrong answer sometimes. Right? which by the way, is an opportunity. If you are writing content about the Newin is, and you write, write the [00:26:00] right answer and see if you get in there, cause this one is totally wrong. [00:26:02] Mordy Oberstein: Right. Okay. Next question. [00:26:04] Crystal Carter: Yeah. Okay. So next one. So the next one is why are the Yankees so popular? [00:26:08] Mordy Oberstein: Because they're the best. They won the most championships of any sport in the us. [00:26:13] Crystal Carter: So the Wikipedia arguably the most successful professional sports team in the United States, the one 19 American, uh, league things, 40, 40 American pennants, 27 world series, blah, blah, blah, Yankees, [00:26:23] Mordy Oberstein: Yankee. [00:26:23] Mordy Oberstein: Okay. So I'm the smartest Google in that one. [00:26:25] Crystal Carter: Okay. Next one. How did the Yankees get their name? [00:26:30] Mordy Oberstein: They got, they were originally . They were originally from Baltimore. Then they moved to New York who came the Highlander. They became the Yankees. I don't know what made them become the Yankee. It's just kind of a nickname people gave them, I think. [00:26:42] Mordy Oberstein: And they just adopted it. Do you know, what's [00:26:44] Crystal Carter: interesting. It says NY history.org says no definitive answer exists. So you're, I don't know is kind of correct. Interesting, amazing. But there's no, but there's speculation. It brought from the civil war connotation of the Yankees and, uh, and in that the team played north of their [00:27:00] counterparts, the New York giants. [00:27:00] Crystal Carter: Interesting. Very interesting that you, your, your, I don't know. Okay. Last one last. Do the Steinbrenner own 100% of the Yankees. No. Stein writer initially owned less than half of the team. He bought out. Many of his partners eventually owning 70% of them, but that [00:27:17] Mordy Oberstein: is not 100%. No one owns all the baseball team. [00:27:19] Mordy Oberstein: That's a lot of awesome. I, I did good. I did good. Right. I think he did pretty good there. I did good. And Google actually did pretty good for the most part, except that first question, which by the way, like you see, like, just so you know, like just, if you're, if you're running a blog about the Yankees, those are four great questions. [00:27:36] Mordy Oberstein: You could have a blog post about on your own. [00:27:38] Crystal Carter: Yeah, very interesting. And I think also like the thing about the, so if you look up Yankee, you get a completely different, completely different people. So ask. So it's really important to remember that like that this is the achieving as well. Those are different entities. [00:27:50] Crystal Carter: So Google understands that the Yankees is a baseball team and a [00:27:54] Mordy Oberstein: Yankee is a nomenclature referring to. The north or right Americans in [00:28:00] general. I don't even know how to answer that one. [00:28:01] Crystal Carter: Right. Civil wars, blah. So there, so their questions are what is being, being a Yankee mean? When did the, when, where did the term Yankee come from? [00:28:08] Crystal Carter: Totally different Yankee in the civil war. And then it says, what do you call a southerner? So I don't know why. All right, [00:28:15] Mordy Oberstein: moving on, moving on from now. Check this pivot. Speaking of people also asked speak, do speak of it. I will speak of it. Also asked by Mark Williams-cook is a fantastic tool that takes the questions from the people. [00:28:36] Mordy Oberstein: Also ask boxes on Google exports and it helps you see what questions your audience might be looking for answers for, [00:28:44] Tool Time [00:28:44] Mordy Oberstein: which is why it's tool time on the SES up podcast. [00:28:58] Mordy Oberstein: What is. [00:29:00] AlsoAsked and how does it work? So [00:29:02] Crystal Carter: also asked is it's a great tool. And again, um, we said, it said Mark Williams-Cook, um, and it essentially creates a tree. So for instance, for the queries Yankee, it'll give you the seed query and then it will spread out. So it'll give you those four first initial queries, and then it will expand the next four [00:29:17] Mordy Oberstein: for each, right? [00:29:18] Mordy Oberstein: Because when you like, when crystal opened up that box, when she, who was the best New York Yankee, when she clicked and opened the answer, Google loaded new questions related to the one that you just clicked on. Right. So what the tool does, it says, okay, when you open up this one, here is the four new questions that Google now showed on the SERP, so that now, you know, not just the first four questions, but now, you know, the four new questions that Google loaded. [00:29:45] Mordy Oberstein: Once you opened up one of the questions I. Go ahead. [00:29:50] Crystal Carter: So the thing that's great about the tool is that it essentially gives you a bird's eye view of this, of this rabbit hole. Right? So, so if you're on the SERP you're actually trying to do this manually, then you have to click and click and click and click and click [00:29:59] Mordy Oberstein: and [00:30:00] they, and then write down the questions that are, that are keep coming up so that you can answer em on your website, which makes [00:30:04] Crystal Carter: sense. [00:30:05] Crystal Carter: And they don't actually go in order. So the four questions. So if you do it on the SERP, when you click who's the best Yankee, then four questions will pop down the bottom, but the other three questions will still be there. [00:30:13] Mordy Oberstein: And it's all very, yeah, it's chaos. It looks visually chaotic. completely. [00:30:18] Crystal Carter: So, um, AlsoAsked gives you, gives it to you a very clear, very easy to read sort of tree, uh, query tree, which helps you to, or to think about blog topics, log headers, FAQs insights on your customer journey, and also can help you with things like feature snippets, because I think a lot of people don't realize, but featured snippets and, and people also. [00:30:35] Crystal Carter: And a few, a few other sort features very often fit into each other. Yeah. So if you can rank for people also ask you are increasing your chances of ranking for a featured snippet as well. So, so it's a really great tool for, [00:30:47] Mordy Oberstein: for it's just great. It's a great tool. Check it out. AlsoAsked.com a link to in the show notes, but you there's, it's a freemium models. [00:30:54] Mordy Oberstein: You can try it out for free. Go ahead and give it a try. What you'll basically get are a series of [00:31:00] questions that are pulled from what Google thinks people are asking. Which will give you some great ideas to write about for your own website. Yeah. [00:31:07] Crystal Carter: And it's also written the way that people write questions. [00:31:10] Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's really, it's a great, great tool, which why we're featuring it here on tool time on the SERP's Up podcast. [00:31:16] Mordy Oberstein: Now we'd be remiss if we left you off without two more things. One is some news and then two is some places where you can learn more about SEO. So with that, let's get to some snappy news. [00:31:37] Snappy SEO News 00:31:37] Mordy Oberstein: Snappy news, steppy news, steppy news, big stuff this week, bringing out the big guns with an update to Google's latest, greatest, and most awesomeness machine learning property MUM, which is 1000 times more powerful than Burt, whatever that means. Well, it does mean that it can understand content in all new ways. [[00:31:55] Mordy Oberstein: So if you remember, Google gave an example around preparing for a hike and it showed that MUM would break down and parse the word, prepare in all sorts of ways, from training for the hike to gear for the hike. And so. And since then, we've all been waiting for the moment where MUM would be further integrated into the Google algorithm. [00:32:13] Mordy Oberstein: So per a blog post Google release, and as covered by surgeon and journals, Matt Southern link in the show notes, quoting the article from SEJ Google's algorithms can understand when sources agree on. Same fact as Matt puts it, Google's multitask unified model. MUM algorithm is now capable of identifying when multiple high quality sources agree on the same fact. [00:32:36] Mordy Oberstein: This update to MUM is [00:01:00] part of a more significant effort to improve information literacy across the web. So specifically here, what Google's doing is going to be using MUM to see if the call out and the featured snippet has a consensus. So for example, Say I search for how big is the sun compared to the moon? [00:32:55] Mordy Oberstein: So you currently this, when I search for it, you get big, bold texts that shows up above the rest of the snippet of content and above the, and the feature snippet that says 400 times, meaning the moon is 400 times smaller. The sun is 400 times bigger than the moon. Then of course you get the rest of the content and the featured snippet and the URL. [00:33:13] Mordy Oberstein: Google's going to be using MUM to see if there's consensus around those callout snippets, in this case, consensus around the fact that the sun is 400 times bigger than the moon. The reason why I'm covering this now for you here, even though, by the time you hear this news, it might be on the older side. [00:33:32] Mordy Oberstein: Ish is because it's huge. It's a huge insight to how MUM works and [00:02:00] I wanted you to know about it. So yes, MUM can parse things and break things down, like preparing for a hike into all different sorts of intents and subtopics. And that's amazing, but what's amazing here is that it could pull it all back together. [00:33:51] Mordy Oberstein: Unite, what it sees out there on the web to create all new understanding in this case, the understanding is when there is a consensus around a topic that it can there for show in the lead call out of a feature snippet. So boiling it all down for you here, what's important for you to recognize, I think is, with machine learning super important to align with how the machine learning sees a topic. [00:34:16] Mordy Oberstein: And how it thinks that topic should be handled. So you want to do on your site, what you see Google doing with its machine learning. If Google's machine learning properties. In this case, MUM thinks about a topic in one way, align with that topic because that's how machine learning works. Anyway, with that, that is the snappy news [00:03:00] for this week on these SERP's Up podcast. [00:34:39] Mordy Oberstein: last up for today and last up each week on the SERP's Up podcast, [00:34:49] Follow of the Week [00:34:49] Mordy Oberstein: we wanna help you learn more about SEO world by following the leaders in the SEO world. So this week we have none other who better to start this off with. [00:34:59] Mordy Oberstein: Then Wix's own head of SEO. Mm-hmm Nati Elimelech who you can find on Twitter at @Netanel N E T A N E L. We will link to it. The show notes, but he's a great person. First off you can find him. He's did a whole bunch of webinars. He did a whole webinar. He did with Deep Crawl. I'm going through some technical SEO stuff. [00:35:21] Mordy Oberstein: There's Wix SEO unfiltered re explains what Wix has done around SEO, but he is always out there on Twitter asking questions, putting thoughts out there. It's a great account to follow actually. [00:35:32] Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that he's got a really good understanding of making sure that, that the CMS works for users. [00:35:39] Crystal Carter: I think one of the things that I've, I've found in working with Nati and his team and the way he runs this team is seeing how people respond. I'm like, oh, there's this new, cool thing that's happening [00:35:00] in SEO? Oh, this is really interesting. And like the response from Nati, um, and from Inot. So whenever I have this conversation is, but how does it help the users? [00:35:56] Crystal Carter: How is it good for users? How is it good for. How does his help users do better SEO? And that is essentially how he approaches SEO. That's how he approaches Twitter. And that's the kind of content that he shares. That's the kind of content that he advocates for. And those are kind kind of conversations that he advocates for as well. [00:36:10] Crystal Carter: Yeah. And, um, he's got some great insights and some great perspectives [00:36:13] Mordy Oberstein: on that. Yeah. I mean, look, there's only maybe two other people on the planet that I can think of who are doing SEO the scale, that Nati does that's where he is literally auditing millions of websites. So you figure a dude, like that's gotta have some unique insights, which he does also some bad jokes. [00:36:28] Mordy Oberstein: Ignore the bad jokes on Twitter. but keep the SEO insights he's @Netanel on Twitter. I think that's it. Crystal. I think, I think we've managed to get through the first episode we have casted a pod. Success. Great. Well done. Yes. So thank you for joining us on the [00:36:00] SERP's Up podcast. Are you gonna miss us not to worry, we're back next week with the new episode, as we'll dive into creating great content for users and for bots, look for wherever you can consume your podcast on or aforementioned SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn, looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content we have on the Wix learning hub at you guest at wix.com/seo/learn until next time. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Ryan Jones Nati Elimelech Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub AlsoAsked Search Research Tool Breaking Down Tech SEO with Nati Elimelech & DeepCrawl May 2022 Google Core Update Analysis News: Google’s Algorithms Can Understand When Sources Agree On Same Fact Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Ryan Jones Nati Elimelech Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub AlsoAsked Search Research Tool Breaking Down Tech SEO with Nati Elimelech & DeepCrawl May 2022 Google Core Update Analysis News: Google’s Algorithms Can Understand When Sources Agree On Same Fact Transcript [00:00:00] Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO. Podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up! [00:00:14] Mordy Oberstein: Aloha Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by our head of SEO communications, crystal [00:00:27] Crystal Carter: Carter. What's up, people? [00:00:30] Mordy Oberstein: Hello? What's going on here? Do you think that was too much like over the tops? [00:00:34] Mordy Oberstein: Our first episode, like the whole SERP's Up Aloha Mahalo? I don't know. I kinda like it. I kind of feel like it's a little over the top. [00:00:41] Crystal Carter: I feel like that's our brand, though, Mordy. Like, I feel like that's how we roll. Is that not? Isn't that what the people have come to expect from, like the Mordy & Crystal SEO thing? [00:00:53] Mordy Oberstein: I say yes. I feel like, no, we're just, we're just gonna roll with [00:00:56] Crystal Carter: it. I feel like if people showed up and we were like, this is the [00:01:00] SERP these are things. [00:01:02] Mordy Oberstein: I feel like people with the people would be disappointed, but I want you to know that in a previous life, it needs to do an SEO podcast for, I literally, the entire point of the podcast was do everything, but. [00:01:12] Mordy Oberstein: Hello, welcome to our show about backlinks. Would you like some backlinks, sir? No. Put the answer is no, and we don't, we don't buy links. [00:01:21] Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix. Now you can dive deep into the world of SEO with our new SEO learning hub. By the way, that's a place on the web where this very podcast lives. [00:01:33] Mordy Oberstein: It's wix.com/seo/learn. So look out for episodes of the SERP's Up podcast there or wherever you consume your podcast as well. Some great blog posts, webinars, and whatnot to help you learn about SEO. All of the things [00:01:47] Crystal Carter: learn all of, of the SEO things. From the hub of the SEO things. [00:01:52] Mordy Oberstein: The it's the hub of SEO. [00:01:54] Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Not the SEO hub, the hub of SEO, the hub of SEO, the SEO hub of the [00:02:00] SEO, the SEO, the hub of the [00:02:02] Crystal Carter: SEO optimizing. There [00:02:04] Mordy Oberstein: we go. We also have PM machines there, Lord. So. Thank you for joining us. Our dear audience may have so much to cover today. First off, this is our first episode of the SERP's Up podcast. [00:02:16] What is SERP'S UP About? [00:02:16] Mordy Oberstein: And I just wanna quickly say, this is a podcast where anyone and everyone of your site owner, an SMB, an enterprise website, a seasoned SEO, a new SEO. This is a podcast where everybody can learn something about SEO. It's SEO [00:02:29] Crystal Carter: for. That's exactly what we're trying to do here. We're bringing SEO to the people [00:02:33] Mordy Oberstein: democratize [00:02:34] Crystal Carter: SEO, all of the people with all the [00:02:37] Mordy Oberstein: SEO, exactly. [00:02:37] Mordy Oberstein: With all the SEO, with all the optimizations [00:02:41] Crystal Carter: precisely. And I think that it's really important that, you know, I think we both spend a lot of time making sure that people can understand what's going on. There's no cloak and dagger, we're not trying to, we're not trying to overcomplicate things. We're trying to deliver the information as in, in an accessible and entertaining way for your SEO enjoyment. [00:02:59] On this show we cover... [00:02:59] Mordy Oberstein: I [00:03:00] exactly. Okay. So we're gonna kick off this show with a look at where you should be kicking your site off your homepage, right? It's literally called your homepage. It's the home of your website. We're talking, but SEO for your homepage, how your homepage directs the rest of the content on your site. Why is super important for Core Web Vitals and links and how to get. [00:03:20] Mordy Oberstein: Going with your homepage the right way. We'll hear tips from in-house SEO, Ryan Jones, about what works, what doesn't work for your SEO on your homepage. We got a fun little game. We're gonna play with the nice little Google SERP feature. We'll give you a look at a great free tool that you can get some content ideas from, and we'll tap into a little SEO news and last. [00:03:42] Mordy Oberstein: We'll tell you who you should be following out there in the SEO industry. So you can get some more SEO knowledge on your own. It's just some basic SEO awesomeness all throughout this podcast, just jampacked jam. It is jampacked by the way, I'm thinking, how are we gonna get this done in the amount of time [00:04:00] that we wanna get this on? [00:04:00] Focus Topic of the Week [00:04:00] Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, let's jump into it. Our focus topic of the week. It's SEO for. Homepage pretty [00:04:08] Crystal Carter: precisely. So I think what we're gonna do first, just to make sure that everyone's on the same page about the homepage. Let's just start out with a super SEO question, which is what is a homepage. So when we talk about a homepage, we talk about the first page that users see when they arrive on your domain. [00:04:23] Crystal Carter: So if your domain is is example.com for instance, in your homepage is what people see when they arrive on example.com. And these can vary from lots of different types of ways. There's a couple of different types of homepages that you can use a couple of different types of techniques. So I've seen some where they'll funnel people where like, for instance, if you go to some place like zara.com, that's a very top level domain, but they're a very complicated business with lots of different geos and lots of different markets that they work in. [00:04:48] Crystal Carter: So if you go to their page, they will filter you to whatever market you're in, for instance, if you go to some place like Virgin, for instance, they do lots of things. So virgin.com covers space, travel and [00:05:00] phones and broadband and holiday vacations. Lots of, lots of different things. So if you go to their page, Because they have so many different brand affiliations, they will filter you to lots of different things as well. [00:05:12] Crystal Carter: Another one that I looked at was fandom. They've got one where they just have like all the links, they just put all the links on their homepage and that's another way to do it as well. So there's lots of different ways you can think about a homepage, but it's essentially the first page people arrive at on your domain and it can impact a lot of the wider, uh, experience of your site. [00:05:28] Crystal Carter: And when we talk about homepage SEO, we mean the SEO that is targeted. On the homepage and making sure that your homepage is doing what it's supposed to do from an SEO point of view, this can be reviewing your copy, looking at your content structure, looking at your linking, but it can be a lot, a lot, lot more. [00:05:43] Crystal Carter: So that is what we mean when we're talking about that. [00:05:47] Mordy Oberstein: Homepage SEO but that's no, but that's really the beauty of this. And we'll get into all of this. There's so many different ways you can take as you take us from a technical point of view, looking at things like corporate vitals and your performance. [00:05:58] Mordy Oberstein: I'm sure you're gonna get to in a few minutes, [00:06:00] you can look at this from a linking perspective because, uh, everyone's linking to your homepage. Uh, I fundamentally look at the homepage as like the place that sets the pace for the rest of your website. There's your website needs to have an identity, not just for your users, but also for search engines and really well more importantly for your users, but we're talking about search engines right now, but it's the same thing. [00:06:18] Mordy Oberstein: the same thing, but you need to have an identity and your homepage really is like, this is where you have an identity. This is where you tell search engines and you tell people what you tell the whole world. This is who I am. This is what I do. And I I'll tell you I've looked at thousands of home pages. [00:06:34] Mordy Oberstein: And once I did like a, a, a listing of how often, or which home pages I was able to understand what the heck the site actually did just by looking at the homepage, I will tell you it was a 70, 30 split and 70%. I didn't understand what the site did just from the home. Right. And that's a major problem for your users. [00:06:52] Mordy Oberstein: That's a major problem for, for search engines obviously, but once you, a once you're able to pin down that [00:07:00] identity on the homepage. I feel like it sits you up for success with the rest of your site, cuz now, you know, I, what, what sort of falls into the, the four qubits of my blogs periphery? Like what can I talk about on my blog? [00:07:11] Mordy Oberstein: What shouldn't I talk about on my blog? Yeah. Now that I have an identity on the homepage, I can sort of have a sense what fits and what doesn't. So there's so many ways to slice your homepage, but to me fundamentally, it's like, it's your identity. I know you're gonna take us to a totally different place. [00:07:25] Mordy Oberstein: Why your pocket is, is so awesome. [00:07:27] Crystal Carter: To be honest, I think that like, it, it is the same thing. Like, you know, you're talking about the identity and the identity can also have to do with your technical framework. So the identity can be how you connect with your users. For instance, if your homepage is really optimized for mobile, then that tells your users that we understand that you're using this page on your mobile. [00:07:43] Crystal Carter: We understand that you need to be able to access this content. On the go, um, you know, uh, for instance, like there's, there's, I've worked with a lot of leisure clients, um, and in the leisure, leisure industry, [00:07:55] Mordy Oberstein: leisure, leisure, potato, pat, potato . [00:07:58] Crystal Carter: And, and, and for those [00:08:00] folks, like people are on their people are in their cars, they're searching, you know, where can I go today? [00:08:04] Crystal Carter: People are in their, you know, you don't take most people. Don't take a full PC on vacation with them. Um, and then Marty's like, I do, I do it all the time. Now, again, . [00:08:14] Mordy Oberstein: Um, if my desktop I'm schlepping box full tower, I need a full, the old school monitor, like really right. Bulky monitor. And I, [00:08:25] Crystal Carter: and so I think that making sure you've got the technical framework that sets that up. [00:08:29] Crystal Carter: Is absolutely part of your homepage or part of your homepage experience and part of your overall experience. [00:08:33] Mordy Oberstein: So, yeah. So what do you mean by that? Cause that's like a really important point. Like when you say like getting your technical framework set up, because I know we obviously getting your content writing for your identity and for, and certain people understand what you're doing and surgeon to understand what you're doing is sort of a self-evident point that people don't do it. [00:08:47] Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But when you talk about like the technical framework, cause I know you brought up Core Web Vitals when we were talking about this, like people don't think about. As being unique to a homepage. [00:08:56] Crystal Carter: Yeah. So there's a couple of things. So from the identity point, you literally, [00:09:00] you literally explain your identity and your structured data on your homepage. [00:09:03] Crystal Carter: Like you literally say we are this corporation, we were founded by these people. Um, you know, our address is here. Our phone number is here. Our email address is here. So all of that stuff is literally, um, built [00:09:14] into [00:09:15] Mordy Oberstein: the technical framework. Right? You can add tructure data to your home page. I basically said like, this is, this is our, this is who we. [00:09:19] Crystal Carter: Literally like this is our literal identity. Like this is our, our, our V A T number. This is our tax number. Like this is, [00:09:25] Mordy Oberstein: this is who we are, which is super important. Cause structured data, whether or not it's not a, an official ranking factor, but at the end of the day, structuring structured data can a create, help the knowledge graph build on itself. [00:09:36] Mordy Oberstein: And. Structured data, which means that Google understands that this entity and that entity like your website and you as an individual are connected. Right. It also is theoretically, I know Google said that they don't look at it to understand a page unless it's one of their supported schema. Theoretically, they could look at it and save themselves some resources and understand content. [00:09:57] Mordy Oberstein: I know that's a bit of a debate [00:09:58] Crystal Carter: among EOS and it's, it's not [00:10:00] necessarily a ranking factor, but it is a visibility factor because there's certain parts of the SERP that you are not eligible for, unless you have sort of structured data on it. And that, and those parts of the SERP rank higher than the plain blue links. [00:10:11] Crystal Carter: So like , so it's not, it's not a, it's not a ranking factor. I don't wanna get into ranking factor [00:10:16] Mordy Oberstein: things. Let's not, I was gonna say, let's knock go. [00:10:18] Crystal Carter: I'm not gonna go. I'm not gonna go down that, that garden path, but it does affect like how you understand. And also like, particularly for the structured data that goes on your homepage though, organization, your local business, your corporation structured data. [00:10:28] Crystal Carter: You can also, um, use it. Pull the entities from various different places. So for instance, let's say you're, you were really big on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or TikTok or whatever. And then you got a website which happens a lot. Then you, when you go onto your homepage on your website, you can put same as more. [00:10:47] Crystal Carter: Do you oversee TikTok? And then Google will understand that, where that, where you have like, you know, 5 million followers on. And you're a big cheese on TikTok that those users also will want to find you on your, on your website. [00:10:59] Mordy Oberstein: [00:11:00] Right? So you're basically telling Google that this TikTok account and this homepage, this website. [00:11:06] Mordy Oberstein: Are connected or, yeah, they're connected. And there's code that you could inject called structure data that, that tells Google this [00:11:11] Crystal Carter: really, exactly that they're the same entity they're made by the same person. Um, you know, like you've got, you've got a podcast and you've got, and you've got the information about you and you've got information about the podcast and they can understand that you are the person that does the podcast and they can connect all of those [00:11:23] Mordy Oberstein: information. [00:11:23] Mordy Oberstein: And it's really the perfect place for it because the homepage again is your identity and you're connecting out to other, and there's, it's really important for you especi. In this age of SEO to make con help Google make the connections between different entities. And we say entities, I mean, anything from who you are, who your site is to your social media accounts, all of these various entities to help them sort of get a really clear understanding of what this website is and who you are, kind of thing. [00:11:46] Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think when you think about an entity, it's like, it's like the idea of like, you have Jennifer Lopez and you have JLo. Google understands that both of those people are the same. That's the same. If somebody answers in JLo in a search bar, they're looking for Jennifer Lopez, it doesn't matter. Or, or if [00:12:00] somebody misspells Jennifer with one N or two Ns, they understand that they mean the same. [00:12:04] Crystal Carter: Entity exactly. Um, another one is like ladybug and lady bird in England. You say lady bird in, in America, you say ladybug, but if I wanted to know about lady bugs and there was good content, that was, that was written literally for Ladybird. Then that's the, that's a whole nother that's a whole, oh yeah, we can go to this whole we're often. [00:12:20] Mordy Oberstein: I really wanna talk about Core Web Vitals and, and the home, because by the way, Core Web Vitals is a ranking factor on desktop and on mobile. And if you don't know what it is, they're basically currently speaking, there are three metrics that Google measures, how, how your page is performing. It's. Um, CLS like, you know, when you go to a webpage and you are mobile in particular, you start seeing buttons moving around. [00:12:41] Mordy Oberstein: So Google's measuring that. Google's measuring F I D how interactive, how that first, how quickly you can make that first interaction on a webpage. And of course they're measuring LCP, which is how quickly the largest content full, the largest thing on your page. It's usually a giant heater image. Load. So Google's measuring performance in three different ways to see if your site offers a [00:13:00] good experience to users. [00:13:01] Mordy Oberstein: And your home rate is really important for this. [00:13:03] Crystal Carter: Your homepage is really important for this because, so when Google's measuring cumulative layout shifts, CRS, they're measuring how things jump around. First of all, for users, I hate that. Like I. I cannot stand. If I go on a website and I try to click something and I end up clicking something else and then I have to go back and blah, that sucks. [00:13:18] Crystal Carter: The other thing is, is that if you have a homepage, that's doing that a lot. Then you have to think about the fact that a lot of your traffic is going through your homepage. Now, the, when Google's. Pulling pulling out your overall score for your page experience, um, and whether or not your site overall passes a page experience, a metric, they will pull the data for 75% of page views across your site. [00:13:40] Crystal Carter: If most of your site, or if a lot of your traffic is going through your homepage and your homepage is underperforming, then that then the performance of your homepage will, will contribute to a lot of that [00:13:49] Mordy Oberstein: score for your, but disproportionately. [00:13:51] Crystal Carter: Exactly for a lot of your, your site overall. So it's very important. [00:13:55] Crystal Carter: So optimizing your homepage can help you go really far with regards to your overall core [00:14:00] web vitals performance. [00:14:00] Mordy Oberstein: So, so it's really, there's a point. People don't talk enough about, right? If most of the traffic is coming through your homepage and Google is measuring in it's real field data, it's really looking at actual how users are actually experiencing your. [00:14:15] Mordy Oberstein: And if they're experiencing it on the homepage, then that's what Google's counting. Then that's the place to really focus on your performance and make sure you have it optimized. [00:14:22] Crystal Carter: Exactly. And it's not just, and it's not just the incoming traffic. It's also the internal traffic as well. So it's like all the page fees across the site. [00:14:28] Crystal Carter: So if people are going from one page to another, to another, to another, and they're very often gonna go back to the homepage yeah. To get back to, to, to find the main thing they saw the first time. [00:14:36] Mordy Oberstein: And it's the same thing with links by the way. Right. So most of the page, most of link to is going to be your homepage. [00:14:43] Mordy Oberstein: And if your homepage is really garbage, right? If you don't know, and I hate to say it that way, but if people can't understand what your page is about who you are, what you do, it doesn't look nice. If it's not well constructive, it's not well organized. People are not gonna wanna link to [00:14:55] Crystal Carter: it. And also that you'll, you'll also be wasting the, the, the, uh, I'm gonna say [00:15:00] it. [00:15:00] Crystal Carter: I'm gonna say link juice, the link juice you're wasting, you're spilling your link juice all over the floor. So so if you've got, so if you've got, if you got this juicy link from like, from something that's relevant, right? So let's say you're doing, I don't know, lemon meringue pies. You're like, you've got a shop that sells lemon meringue pies, and you've got a link from lemon, meringue Pie Gazette Right. And it's got 300 da , um, then, then, and then they get to your homepage and you don't have anything that says lemon meringue pies. You just have, like, I don't know, pies generally, or I don't know, whatever. Then Google's not gonna be able to understand that end users. Aren't gonna be able to understand the relevance of that link. [00:15:38] Crystal Carter: Like why that page is linking to you. If it's just like a general sort of like artsy thing about pies or something, or thousand percent, then it's not gonna you're you're not, you're wasting that. [00:15:49] Mordy Oberstein: So we can go down that wormhole as a whole separate thing again, but we, I wanna end off on one point about this conversation around homepage before we get to our special guest Ryan Jones and see what he has to say about homepages. [00:15:59] Mordy Oberstein: But [00:16:00] I, I just wanna say, when you talk, when you think about a homepage, it's really important to look at how Google thinks about your homepage in your vertical. So let's say something like a medical, you sell medical equip. So you're gonna have con you're gonna have content on there that obviously describes what you do and what you're selling. [00:16:14] Mordy Oberstein: And you'll probably have a bunch of access points so that you can actually get people to buy the actual product. What I would venture to say that Google probably wants you to contextualize that, to offer some information maybe in FAQ to sort of contextualize the medical equipment that you're selling. [00:16:29] Mordy Oberstein: Who is it for? Who is it not for? What are some things you should know before you actually go ahead and purchase this? You want take a [00:16:35] Crystal Carter: look particularly for medical stuff. Like homepages are like you, like, if you're doing anything in a Y M Y L, which is your money or life, anything that's like really serious grown up stuff, basically like, okay, if you're doing anything around that, then, then your homepage really needs to be top notch. [00:16:49] Crystal Carter: So if you look at someone, someone who's got a really good medical homepage is Pfizer, and you need to be able to demonstrate. Your expertise, authority and trust. So, you know that you've got, like, for instance, in, in the UK, you [00:17:00] see pharmacy, there's like a pharmacy, um, badge that shows up for, particularly for things, SSL things you wanna be able to like, you know, Dr. [00:17:07] Crystal Carter: Grace Jones , um, for instance, verify this, like we have all these credentials, we have backed up all of this and, and like things like your registered with the relevant health authorities and they'll fine. Um, they, if you're in a medical vertical and your homepage is not super topnotch, then you're definitely missing a trick [00:17:24] Mordy Oberstein: there. [00:17:24] Mordy Oberstein: And that's exactly the point different verticals Google's gonna think of your homepage is needing different things. So it makes sense to go see what's out there and ranking on thes and see, okay. How does Google think about the homepage? What does it want? What does it expect out of a homepage for whatever it is? [00:17:36] Mordy Oberstein: My website offers, that's a, you know, pro tip right there. Yeah. With that for some more pro tips, check out that. We have in-house SEO specialist, Ryan Jones telling us what's worked for him. And what has it worked for him for his homepage? [00:17:55] Ryan Jones: Uh, so, so when it comes to homepage SEO, uh, there's, there's definitely been some [00:18:00] cases where I've had some major wins, but also where I've made some pretty rookie mistakes too. I mean, I remember when I first came into the industry nearly seven years ago, my main kind of thinking was getting everyone to the homepage and then all these users will sort of magically go where they need to go in reality that. [00:18:18] Ryan Jones: Isn't the case at all. I mean, if, if you're not serving what the user actually needs, you're not gonna rank and you're not gonna make any money. One of my biggest homepage wins actually came about by reducing the traffic to the homepage. So. Initially analyzing the site, we found that around 60% of our organic traffic was arriving at the homepage whilst this isn't necessarily an issue for some people, especially returning users. [00:18:43] Ryan Jones: Uh, it can be a huge issue for others, especially when your, your site's hard to navigate as well. Luckily for me, there was some pretty good gains to make in terms of increasing the authority via back links and, and targeted internal links, uh, to some other pages. Uh, over time, we managed to see [00:19:00] the, the homepage slowly leave the SERPs for a whole bunch of keyword and other pages arrived in its place that obviously increased revenue, conversion rate and all the other magic metrics you wanna see in the green as an SEO, kind of seems ironic to say that one of my biggest homepage wins came about by reducing traffic to the homepage. [00:19:19] Ryan Jones: But, but there we go. I. When we come to failures as well. One of my biggest failures is, is more of a learning based failure, to be honest. Uh, but this came from focusing. Like purely I'm building back links to other pages rather than looking at their homepages and opportunity. When I was pretty early on in my career, like talking zero to six months, I used to fill out all these HARO requests and specifically requests that if they were gonna link, could they link to a, a category page or, or another money page instead of the homepage, the obvious answer was. [00:19:53] Ryan Jones: You know, no. Why, why bloody hell would I do that right over time? I've, I've learned that one of the best tools at my [00:20:00] disposal is internal links and I can use the homepages authority to push that authority through, to, to all the pages on site. Obviously this involves having a, a really clean site architecture, but that that's a completely different topic for a, a completely different podcast. [00:20:22] Mordy Oberstein: Brilliant. Thanks Ryan. You can find Ryan on Twitter at Ryan Jones, SEO that's at Ryan Jones. SEO on Twitter were linked to his Twitter profile in the show notes, but that was really interesting points about his, I always, when people talk about their failures and successes, particularly the failures, I always learned more from the failures than from the successes. [00:20:38] Mordy Oberstein: Wonder where you took away from that one, crystal. [00:20:40] Crystal Carter: I think the thing I found really interesting was how much he talked about navigation. I think that navigation via the homepage is super, super important. And I absolutely agree with what he was talking about there. So he said that internal links were a really big win. [00:20:51] Crystal Carter: The homepage is a really great place to add internal links that are high priority. Sometimes I think about like, if you were to think about your website as a supermarket, um, in your suit, in [00:21:00] your supermarket, you have things that are normally there, like bread and milk, cheese, rice beans, that sort of things. [00:21:04] Crystal Carter: Your homepage, for instance, let's say your homepage is like the fruit like with like the seasonal. Like the seasonal fruit and vegetables that shows up there. So, so on your homepage, you can put, like, these are the things that are in season now, and you can drive traffic to those pages, find internal links. [00:21:18] Crystal Carter: Um, and if you were to think about it like a restaurant, then you can also, like, if you have new blogs, new content, new jobs, new, new events, new, whatever, then that's like a specials board, like in a restaurant where you can say, we need you to see this stuff now because it's fresh. It's new it's here today. [00:21:31] Crystal Carter: Um, it might not be here tomorrow. But it's here. Well, your blog probably will be, but this is new stuff. So on your homepage, you can add feeds for new blogs, new, you can add feeds for new jobs, whatever your vertical is, you can add stuff that's seasonal. So for instance, like you on your homepage, you aren't gonna want, like, I don't know, 4th of July stuff all the time, but you will want it when it's near, when on the 3rd of July, for instance. [00:21:51] Crystal Carter: So these are things that you, you want to think about how you, how you position, which internal links across your site to drive them to the important content now. [00:22:00] And, and, and when you. [00:22:02] Mordy Oberstein: And, and linking to your pages, you're linking internally to your other pages is such an easy win. It has such a major impact on how Google understands your site and how it ranks things on your site. [00:22:10] Mordy Oberstein: So it's like, literally, like Ryan mentioned, like low hanging fruit. So speaking of low hanging fruit, I have no idea what that has to do with anything. Um, but we're moving on. We're moving on. That was a bad example of pivoting. I got a, I got a good, the first time the beta, my existence is pivoting from segment to segment, by the way, [00:22:30] Mordy Oberstein: People also ask it's one of the most common features on the Google SERP and it Google gives you four questions, generally, sometimes two, sometimes three that relate to your initial query. So for example, if you were to, uh, ask is McDonald's good, Google would offer you a box that contains these four questions. [00:22:49] Mordy Oberstein: Least. When I looked at it, these four questions who knows what it contains now but it had one. What's good about, McDonald's not much two. Why should you not eat McDonald's and question number three. [00:23:00] Is it healthy to eat? McDonald's no question number four. Does McDonald's have a good reputation. And when you click on any one of these four questions, Does an expandable tab expands. [00:23:11] Mordy Oberstein: Cause that's what expandable tabs do. And it reveals an answer that comes from a web page. So you get an answer right there on the Google results. It gives you a little snippet of content giving you the answer. Like it was a healthy McDonald's one word. No. And then it has a URL that you can read more information that would help you answer this question. [00:23:30] Mordy Oberstein: So here's a little fun segment that we have called fun with people. Also ask. [00:23:40] Fun with People Also Ask [00:23:40] Mordy Oberstein: So this week, Crystal's going to grill me to see if I'm as smart as Google. Okay. Which is so not even a contest, take this every way you want. [00:23:52] Mordy Oberstein: and it's gonna see if I can actually answer the questions that Google has and the people also ask [00:24:00] feature for the query Yankees. Cause I'm a baseball. Yes. [00:24:04] Crystal Carter: All right. So Mr. Mr. Wardy Stein is Mr. Yankees, uh, loves Yankees. So we are gonna start with, uh, the query. So the query I entered into Google is Yankees, um, which interestingly enough is very different from the query Yankee. [00:24:15] Crystal Carter: Um, so you can check that out on your own. Um, but, um, we're gonna go through that. So the first question is who is the most famous Yankee. [00:24:24] Mordy Oberstein: So I know what Google's gonna have there. It's gonna say babe Ruth, and it's gonna be O paragraph about babe Ruth, but the truth is that's not true. Yogi bear is the most famous Yankee because people know all of his yogis, like, um, it's getting late, early out there, or when you can learn, you can, you can learn a lot by observing. [00:24:42] Mordy Oberstein: No, what is it? You can observe a lot by watching, sorry. You couldn't observe a lot by watching, right? So in at least in America, there's all these yogis. So I feel Yogi be is more famous, but I know Google's gonna give the answer of Bei. [00:24:53] Crystal Carter: This is very interesting because they've actually, so this says who's the most famous Yankee. [00:24:57] Crystal Carter: And then they said best Yankee of all time by [00:25:00] uniform number. Is what he re returned. So zero is, is Adam Octa or [00:25:07] Mordy Oberstein: Adam Ottavino like that's he's ever on the Yankees. He was there for one year. He was terrible. [00:25:12] Crystal Carter: Exactly. Number two, Billy Martin, or sorry, number one, Billy Martin, number two, Derek Jeter. So that's a very interesting, that's a very interesting, this is going [00:25:19] Mordy Oberstein: by the numbers. [00:25:20] Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's the result then it's gonna go Gehrig Ruth Mantle, uh, um, uh, DiMaggio. Yes. Who's six who's number six. Oh, wait. Seven is mantle eight is Berra. Why am I blanking on six Jo I'm blanking, Jo. Or so Joe Torry! Yeah. You know why I'm blanking because he was a manager, not a player. Oh, blanking it. Okay. [00:25:48] Crystal Carter: Very interesting. [00:25:48] Mordy Oberstein: All right. Okay. So I'll give you by the way, just cause to show you that Google in these answers can give you the wrong answer sometimes. Right? which by the way, is an opportunity. If you are writing content about the Newin is, and you write, write the [00:26:00] right answer and see if you get in there, cause this one is totally wrong. [00:26:02] Mordy Oberstein: Right. Okay. Next question. [00:26:04] Crystal Carter: Yeah. Okay. So next one. So the next one is why are the Yankees so popular? [00:26:08] Mordy Oberstein: Because they're the best. They won the most championships of any sport in the us. [00:26:13] Crystal Carter: So the Wikipedia arguably the most successful professional sports team in the United States, the one 19 American, uh, league things, 40, 40 American pennants, 27 world series, blah, blah, blah, Yankees, [00:26:23] Mordy Oberstein: Yankee. [00:26:23] Mordy Oberstein: Okay. So I'm the smartest Google in that one. [00:26:25] Crystal Carter: Okay. Next one. How did the Yankees get their name? [00:26:30] Mordy Oberstein: They got, they were originally . They were originally from Baltimore. Then they moved to New York who came the Highlander. They became the Yankees. I don't know what made them become the Yankee. It's just kind of a nickname people gave them, I think. [00:26:42] Mordy Oberstein: And they just adopted it. Do you know, what's [00:26:44] Crystal Carter: interesting. It says NY history.org says no definitive answer exists. So you're, I don't know is kind of correct. Interesting, amazing. But there's no, but there's speculation. It brought from the civil war connotation of the Yankees and, uh, and in that the team played north of their [00:27:00] counterparts, the New York giants. [00:27:00] Crystal Carter: Interesting. Very interesting that you, your, your, I don't know. Okay. Last one last. Do the Steinbrenner own 100% of the Yankees. No. Stein writer initially owned less than half of the team. He bought out. Many of his partners eventually owning 70% of them, but that [00:27:17] Mordy Oberstein: is not 100%. No one owns all the baseball team. [00:27:19] Mordy Oberstein: That's a lot of awesome. I, I did good. I did good. Right. I think he did pretty good there. I did good. And Google actually did pretty good for the most part, except that first question, which by the way, like you see, like, just so you know, like just, if you're, if you're running a blog about the Yankees, those are four great questions. [00:27:36] Mordy Oberstein: You could have a blog post about on your own. [00:27:38] Crystal Carter: Yeah, very interesting. And I think also like the thing about the, so if you look up Yankee, you get a completely different, completely different people. So ask. So it's really important to remember that like that this is the achieving as well. Those are different entities. [00:27:50] Crystal Carter: So Google understands that the Yankees is a baseball team and a [00:27:54] Mordy Oberstein: Yankee is a nomenclature referring to. The north or right Americans in [00:28:00] general. I don't even know how to answer that one. [00:28:01] Crystal Carter: Right. Civil wars, blah. So there, so their questions are what is being, being a Yankee mean? When did the, when, where did the term Yankee come from? [00:28:08] Crystal Carter: Totally different Yankee in the civil war. And then it says, what do you call a southerner? So I don't know why. All right, [00:28:15] Mordy Oberstein: moving on, moving on from now. Check this pivot. Speaking of people also asked speak, do speak of it. I will speak of it. Also asked by Mark Williams-cook is a fantastic tool that takes the questions from the people. [00:28:36] Mordy Oberstein: Also ask boxes on Google exports and it helps you see what questions your audience might be looking for answers for, [00:28:44] Tool Time [00:28:44] Mordy Oberstein: which is why it's tool time on the SES up podcast. [00:28:58] Mordy Oberstein: What is. [00:29:00] AlsoAsked and how does it work? So [00:29:02] Crystal Carter: also asked is it's a great tool. And again, um, we said, it said Mark Williams-Cook, um, and it essentially creates a tree. So for instance, for the queries Yankee, it'll give you the seed query and then it will spread out. So it'll give you those four first initial queries, and then it will expand the next four [00:29:17] Mordy Oberstein: for each, right? [00:29:18] Mordy Oberstein: Because when you like, when crystal opened up that box, when she, who was the best New York Yankee, when she clicked and opened the answer, Google loaded new questions related to the one that you just clicked on. Right. So what the tool does, it says, okay, when you open up this one, here is the four new questions that Google now showed on the SERP, so that now, you know, not just the first four questions, but now, you know, the four new questions that Google loaded. [00:29:45] Mordy Oberstein: Once you opened up one of the questions I. Go ahead. [00:29:50] Crystal Carter: So the thing that's great about the tool is that it essentially gives you a bird's eye view of this, of this rabbit hole. Right? So, so if you're on the SERP you're actually trying to do this manually, then you have to click and click and click and click and click [00:29:59] Mordy Oberstein: and [00:30:00] they, and then write down the questions that are, that are keep coming up so that you can answer em on your website, which makes [00:30:04] Crystal Carter: sense. [00:30:05] Crystal Carter: And they don't actually go in order. So the four questions. So if you do it on the SERP, when you click who's the best Yankee, then four questions will pop down the bottom, but the other three questions will still be there. [00:30:13] Mordy Oberstein: And it's all very, yeah, it's chaos. It looks visually chaotic. completely. [00:30:18] Crystal Carter: So, um, AlsoAsked gives you, gives it to you a very clear, very easy to read sort of tree, uh, query tree, which helps you to, or to think about blog topics, log headers, FAQs insights on your customer journey, and also can help you with things like feature snippets, because I think a lot of people don't realize, but featured snippets and, and people also. [00:30:35] Crystal Carter: And a few, a few other sort features very often fit into each other. Yeah. So if you can rank for people also ask you are increasing your chances of ranking for a featured snippet as well. So, so it's a really great tool for, [00:30:47] Mordy Oberstein: for it's just great. It's a great tool. Check it out. AlsoAsked.com a link to in the show notes, but you there's, it's a freemium models. [00:30:54] Mordy Oberstein: You can try it out for free. Go ahead and give it a try. What you'll basically get are a series of [00:31:00] questions that are pulled from what Google thinks people are asking. Which will give you some great ideas to write about for your own website. Yeah. [00:31:07] Crystal Carter: And it's also written the way that people write questions. [00:31:10] Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's really, it's a great, great tool, which why we're featuring it here on tool time on the SERP's Up podcast. [00:31:16] Mordy Oberstein: Now we'd be remiss if we left you off without two more things. One is some news and then two is some places where you can learn more about SEO. So with that, let's get to some snappy news. [00:31:37] Snappy SEO News 00:31:37] Mordy Oberstein: Snappy news, steppy news, steppy news, big stuff this week, bringing out the big guns with an update to Google's latest, greatest, and most awesomeness machine learning property MUM, which is 1000 times more powerful than Burt, whatever that means. Well, it does mean that it can understand content in all new ways. [[00:31:55] Mordy Oberstein: So if you remember, Google gave an example around preparing for a hike and it showed that MUM would break down and parse the word, prepare in all sorts of ways, from training for the hike to gear for the hike. And so. And since then, we've all been waiting for the moment where MUM would be further integrated into the Google algorithm. [00:32:13] Mordy Oberstein: So per a blog post Google release, and as covered by surgeon and journals, Matt Southern link in the show notes, quoting the article from SEJ Google's algorithms can understand when sources agree on. Same fact as Matt puts it, Google's multitask unified model. MUM algorithm is now capable of identifying when multiple high quality sources agree on the same fact. [00:32:36] Mordy Oberstein: This update to MUM is [00:01:00] part of a more significant effort to improve information literacy across the web. So specifically here, what Google's doing is going to be using MUM to see if the call out and the featured snippet has a consensus. So for example, Say I search for how big is the sun compared to the moon? [00:32:55] Mordy Oberstein: So you currently this, when I search for it, you get big, bold texts that shows up above the rest of the snippet of content and above the, and the feature snippet that says 400 times, meaning the moon is 400 times smaller. The sun is 400 times bigger than the moon. Then of course you get the rest of the content and the featured snippet and the URL. [00:33:13] Mordy Oberstein: Google's going to be using MUM to see if there's consensus around those callout snippets, in this case, consensus around the fact that the sun is 400 times bigger than the moon. The reason why I'm covering this now for you here, even though, by the time you hear this news, it might be on the older side. [00:33:32] Mordy Oberstein: Ish is because it's huge. It's a huge insight to how MUM works and [00:02:00] I wanted you to know about it. So yes, MUM can parse things and break things down, like preparing for a hike into all different sorts of intents and subtopics. And that's amazing, but what's amazing here is that it could pull it all back together. [00:33:51] Mordy Oberstein: Unite, what it sees out there on the web to create all new understanding in this case, the understanding is when there is a consensus around a topic that it can there for show in the lead call out of a feature snippet. So boiling it all down for you here, what's important for you to recognize, I think is, with machine learning super important to align with how the machine learning sees a topic. [00:34:16] Mordy Oberstein: And how it thinks that topic should be handled. So you want to do on your site, what you see Google doing with its machine learning. If Google's machine learning properties. In this case, MUM thinks about a topic in one way, align with that topic because that's how machine learning works. Anyway, with that, that is the snappy news [00:03:00] for this week on these SERP's Up podcast. [00:34:39] Mordy Oberstein: last up for today and last up each week on the SERP's Up podcast, [00:34:49] Follow of the Week [00:34:49] Mordy Oberstein: we wanna help you learn more about SEO world by following the leaders in the SEO world. So this week we have none other who better to start this off with. [00:34:59] Mordy Oberstein: Then Wix's own head of SEO. Mm-hmm Nati Elimelech who you can find on Twitter at @Netanel N E T A N E L. We will link to it. The show notes, but he's a great person. First off you can find him. He's did a whole bunch of webinars. He did a whole webinar. He did with Deep Crawl. I'm going through some technical SEO stuff. [00:35:21] Mordy Oberstein: There's Wix SEO unfiltered re explains what Wix has done around SEO, but he is always out there on Twitter asking questions, putting thoughts out there. It's a great account to follow actually. [00:35:32] Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that he's got a really good understanding of making sure that, that the CMS works for users. [00:35:39] Crystal Carter: I think one of the things that I've, I've found in working with Nati and his team and the way he runs this team is seeing how people respond. I'm like, oh, there's this new, cool thing that's happening [00:35:00] in SEO? Oh, this is really interesting. And like the response from Nati, um, and from Inot. So whenever I have this conversation is, but how does it help the users? [00:35:56] Crystal Carter: How is it good for users? How is it good for. How does his help users do better SEO? And that is essentially how he approaches SEO. That's how he approaches Twitter. And that's the kind of content that he shares. That's the kind of content that he advocates for. And those are kind kind of conversations that he advocates for as well. [00:36:10] Crystal Carter: Yeah. And, um, he's got some great insights and some great perspectives [00:36:13] Mordy Oberstein: on that. Yeah. I mean, look, there's only maybe two other people on the planet that I can think of who are doing SEO the scale, that Nati does that's where he is literally auditing millions of websites. So you figure a dude, like that's gotta have some unique insights, which he does also some bad jokes. [00:36:28] Mordy Oberstein: Ignore the bad jokes on Twitter. but keep the SEO insights he's @Netanel on Twitter. I think that's it. Crystal. I think, I think we've managed to get through the first episode we have casted a pod. Success. Great. Well done. Yes. So thank you for joining us on the [00:36:00] SERP's Up podcast. Are you gonna miss us not to worry, we're back next week with the new episode, as we'll dive into creating great content for users and for bots, look for wherever you can consume your podcast on or aforementioned SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn, looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content we have on the Wix learning hub at you guest at wix.com/seo/learn until next time. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

How do you build an SEO strategy from scratch? How should SEO differ for specific business models? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by SEO growth specialist Gaetano DiNardi to teach you how to build an SEO strategy from the ground up… using an actual case as a reference. Get hands-on as we explore how Gaetano built his client an SEO strategy from scratch. Also stopping by is messaging strategist Diane Wiredu to discuss ways to articulate brand messaging that actually resonates with your audience effectively. Gather your finest ingredients, as this week we’re giving you the recipe to make SEO from scratch right here on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back The ins & outs of starting SEO from scratch How do you build an SEO strategy from scratch? How should SEO differ for specific business models? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by SEO growth specialist Gaetano DiNardi to teach you how to build an SEO strategy from the ground up… using an actual case as a reference. Get hands-on as we explore how Gaetano built his client an SEO strategy from scratch. Also stopping by is messaging strategist Diane Wiredu to discuss ways to articulate brand messaging that actually resonates with your audience effectively. Gather your finest ingredients, as this week we’re giving you the recipe to make SEO from scratch right here on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 77 | March 6, 2024 | 53 MIN 00:00 / 52:57 This week’s guests Diane Wiredu Diane Wiredu is a messaging expert and the founder of Lion Words. She helps scaling SaaS and B2B companies achieve message-market fit. So they can stand out from the crowd, market more effectively, and sell more. Simply put: she helps make the value of your products easier to understand. Gaetano DiNardi Gaetano DiNardi is a music producer and songwriter turned growth marketer. Over the past 10 years, Gaetano has become one of the most prominent voices in B2B marketing. Currently, he's advising companies like Gong, Kustomer, Cognism, Workvivo, DataGrail, Aura and more on SEO, PPC, content strategy, website optimization, and copywriting. 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. I'm brewing new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who cooks up a storm from the scratch. She has the flour, she has the water, she mixes it in, adds the sugar, puts in the oven, out comes great SEO pie, the head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Okay. I do not make cakes from scratch. Let's just make that clear. I use the box. The box is the best way. Mordy Oberstein: That counts, by the way. That's scratch. Crystal Carter: I use the box. I always use the box. The boxes are good. Highly recommend. Mordy Oberstein: If you didn't buy it and you put it into the oven and you had to mix something, that's from scratch in my book. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. I do make cornbread from scratch because I moved to England from America, and in America they have Jiffy Cornbread, comes in a box, get it from the box. Perfect. Gets every single time, right? Every time. In England, Jiffy doesn't exist. So I had to learn how to make it from scratch so that I do make from scratch. But cakes, generally speaking, Betty Crocker, she does a great job. So let's just give Betty her flowers and everybody can have a nice birthday. Throw some sprinkles on it. Let's go. Mordy Oberstein: I make toast from scratch. Crystal Carter: Are you out there? Are you like the little red hen? Did you grow the wheat and- Mordy Oberstein: No, no. I just put it into the thing and out comes toast. Crystal Carter: Ta-daa. Mordy Oberstein: Ta-daa. I did it myself. Crystal Carter: Right. You tell your children, you're like, "You're welcome." Mordy Oberstein: My kids are actually way better cooks than I am. It's a whole- Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they're good. They're good. Crystal Carter: All right. This is good. Mordy Oberstein: That's so great on the cleanup, but on the cooking part. Crystal Carter: You win some, you lose some. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, this SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by a Wix. You can always subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search over Wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. Got little slashes, but where you can also get started with your SEO by using the Wix SEO setup checklist, where you can connect to Google Search Console to single click with the add a bonus of having your homepage indexed by Google instantly. And who knows what else they'll find when they do. As this week we're talking about starting SEO from scratch, which now you know why there was a scratch joke about cooking in the beginning. It all makes sense, how your product and services and business models factor into SEO. How to craft a strategy and SEO plan from scratch. How to get your SEO to gain some momentum when you are starting from scratch. And to help us stir the pot and add in some spice, musician songwriter and SEO extraordinary Gaetano DiNardi will join us just a few minutes. Or before you could say, "It's shake a bake and I helped." Plus, we'll explore what it means to cook up some brand messaging from scratch with the help of the great Diane Wiredu. And of course, we have the snap piece of SEO news for you this weekend. Who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So add three cups of flour, one cup of water, a teaspoon of yeast, let it sit, and then add 10 sticks of butter, some large, as much as you want, Crisco the entire can, teaspoon of olive oil and a pinch of kosher salt. And you mix it all up till your arms fall off. As episode number 77 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you start baking some SEO goodness from scratch. You smell that? Smells like SEO. Crystal Carter: I don't know what this recipe was for, but it was very greasy. Its like- Mordy Oberstein: Well, some say that SEO is snake oil. It's not really snake oil, it's just Crisco. Crystal Carter: It's Crisco. Crisco is magical. Shout out to Crisco my- Mordy Oberstein: My grandma used scoop Crisco. It was a disgusting thing I've ever seen. It was just nasty. Crystal Carter: No. You want to make cookies? Crisco. Mordy Oberstein: Crisco. Crystal Carter: Those are the best cookies, honestly, dry never. Forever moisturized. Mordy Oberstein: It looks disgusting. I feel like it's the... It's like you eat it and it immediately clogs your entire body. Crystal Carter: I don't care. The cookies are off the chain. The cookies are delicious. Mordy Oberstein: But it's delicious. Probably worth it. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: SEO from scratch. Starting from nothing is never easy. A lot of times when you come into SEO, it's in the middle of the process, but sometimes it's not in the middle of the process. Sometimes you're actually starting from literally nothing. And those are probably great moments because you're actually starting from when the business is getting going. You're there from day one. So that is very opportunistic for you as an SEO. But it's also hard, which gives me the pleasure of introducing today's guest. He's here in the flesh or the digital flesh, Gaetano DiNardi, welcome to the SERP's Up podcast. Gaetano DiNardi: Guys, thank you so much for having me. What an introduction. And I got to say, I love the banter. I love the chemistry, I love the back and forth. This is the way. It almost feels like a talk radio show here. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. This is what I'm going for. I said this before, if I had to do my life over and I couldn't be what I am now, I had to do something different, I would like to be a talk radio show talking about sports in New York. That would be my dream. Gaetano DiNardi: That's what this feels like. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Thank you. It's the greatest comment anyone has ever given me. Gaetano DiNardi: It's so good, man. I love it. I love it. Being from... Well, I'll tell you, when I was growing up, I couldn't really sleep well as a kid. And I used to put on the AM New York Sports Talk radio it's all right through the night. Mordy Oberstein: I did the same thing. I would put the thing on sleep for 90 minutes. And you have... Steve was choosing from the fan talking about the rangers. Gaetano DiNardi: Exactly. How boring can that be. There's nothing better to put you to sleep. Mordy Oberstein: Right to sleep, right to sleep. Oh wait, who's that on line one? Is it Sal from Staten Island? I'm sorry. Gaetano DiNardi: Sal from Staten Island. Dude, it was some funny stuff though. I used to listen to Joe Benigno. Mordy Oberstein: Joe Benigno. You know he's still around? Gaetano DiNardi: He's still around. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: He's still around. Gaetano DiNardi: He's still around. Yeah. Joe Benigno at like 2:00 AM, Mordy Oberstein: Right. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah. Yeah. Frank coming out as … Mordy Oberstein: Crazier than ever- Gaetano DiNardi: ...because he's pissed. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: I feel like though, y'all could do an app for that. There's people who are using... I don't know. There's different apps for meditation. You could just have a like, "Hey, do you need to go to sleep? Here's some vintage." Mordy Oberstein: Vintage 1990s New York Sports Radio. Crystal Carter: Right. You could just pick one and choose yours today. You want Staten Island? You want Long Island? What do you want? Mordy Oberstein: Oh man. I'll give you some good old Mike Francesa. I'll be out in three seconds. Gaetano DiNardi: Oh man, that guy. Mordy Oberstein: That guy is so boring. Gaetano DiNardi: That guy's so... Oh man. Mordy Oberstein: Well, he's also... Look at these guys are all still around with the geezers. Anyway. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Let's talk SEO from scratch. Since we're starting from scratch. Where do you want to start? Gaetano DiNardi: All right, well look, since we're starting from scratch, I'll tell you guys why this topic is being talked about. Now, I had a very tough assignment three years ago. I went into a company as a full-time head of marketing. And the primary way we're going to grow this business was through search. And so the SEO assignment was, well, there's nothing. There's zero. And the primary category was identity theft. The company saw is identity theft protection. Side note, my identity got stolen. It's a horrible situation. And so I was motivated to really thrive and crush this role because I know the kinds of people out there who do that, they are scum. So we need to fight back against this horrible thing that is plaguing so many people. And it's not just affecting young people, people who are digitally savvy. It's mostly hitting people who have no idea. And it's mostly hitting people who are in not great financial situations. So when it cracks them, it cracks hard because they're stuck with bills that they didn't accumulate, that they got to now pay for. Credit card accounts open in your name, the use of your social security number to steal your tax returns, all sorts of wacky stuff. So anyway, the company has a lot of products and they had a huge investment. So the one caveat to this is there was a lot of dough and I could spend. In fact, they kept saying to me, "Why don't you spend more? Can't you spend more? How much more can you spend?" Mordy Oberstein: That's a good problem to have. Gaetano DiNardi: Good problem to have. And of course, all my agency and consultants and link building friends are like, "He has a lot of resources, so let's get in there." So yeah, I did recruit in a lot of players to help me scale this, but this was the ultimate setup that we landed on. Me driving everything. Two content marketers with very strong SEO backgrounds and great editorial chops. 10 freelance writers, one in-house link building manager, plus like two, three external link builders. The result of that is approximately 20 articles a month and approximately a hundred links per month. And that was the pace we ran at from when I started building that program, which really kicked off in late 2021. The first article was published in November 2021. I personally wrote it actually. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Gaetano DiNardi: It was how to check if your identity has been stolen. It's still a top killer. It's still ranks- Mordy Oberstein: EEAT. E For experience. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah. E for experience, baby. Yeah. I wrote it personally, built links to it personally through my own network. And it ranked pretty fast actually for a site with nothing. And so I guess I'll pause there before I keep ranting and riffing, but that's the initial setup. I know it's a lot to take in because most people do an SEO, it's way smaller scale than that. Nobody's doing 20 articles a month. Nobody's treating a SaaS SEO as a publisher almost would. And so anyway, I guess I'll pause there so we can just get your reactions. But that's how we launched it and that's the setup. Crystal Carter: I think one of the first things that stood out for me from that conversation, and you brought it back at the end, was when you were talking about the building it from scratch, you'd had the customer base in mind and you actually discussed that throughout your description of what you were going to do. You were saying, "I had my identity stolen. This is the experience that people were having. And I wrote the first article myself." And Mordy mentioned the experience in the EEAT. And I think that when people are thinking about getting going with SEO, having the customer experience and the customer focus, and like, "I get you, I get this, I get why this is an issue for you, and that's at the core of what we're doing." I feel like that is always a good recipe for success. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's exactly what stood out to me initially also is that when you're first starting out, you're really trying to think, "Okay, who is the audience? What are the needs? How do I align the needs? And how do I align SEO with what the business itself is actually trying to do?" So it's completely harmonious from the start. Gaetano DiNardi: Absolutely. So here's the next thing I realized. The company has a lot of products and services. Like identity theft protection is the flagship product, but it's sold as a bundle with a lot of other stuff. So there's financial fraud protection, there's password manager, there's VPN, there's antivirus and there's family safety, parental controls and stuff like that. Have you guys ever looked at how difficult VPN the category is? Have you ever seen how insane- Mordy Oberstein: Yes, actually. Gaetano DiNardi: ...antiviruses? You know the kind of brands and players that are in those categories. It's pretty wild. So you can get overwhelmed really fast as an SEO with the company saying, "Hey, we got to get more subscribers into this. We got to grow our presence for that. We got to do this and that and this and that." And so you got to actually deflect a lot of that noise and say, "All right, the reality is we have no topical focus and no strength and no brand association with anything right now." So we've got to hammer one thing and go all in and say, "All right, that other stuff is going to have to come later." And so I made the decision to say, "All right, we're just going to build our identity theft and own that to start because we need to get something going somehow, somewhere." Crystal Carter: And I think that that's a real strength because I think that a lot of people think that when my brand, I have to get my logo out there and this and that. And it's like when you're very much starting from a completely new business or a completely new website or a completely new product, for instance, the solution is the lead there. So when you're saying identity theft first, that's how people are going to find you. And I think that building that out and building the depth of information there is going to help you build trust with people so that when you introduce them to a new product, they're more likely to actually get involved with you because they trust you on that one thing that you show yourself to be very good at. Mordy Oberstein: I want to read you an email that I sent to somebody who was asking about an SEO product that I'm working on with them. And I'm not going to go into the whole details around the whole thing, but I wrote, I generally recommend in these cases, putting your full energy behind one thing, seeing how it goes- Gaetano DiNardi: Thank You. Mordy Oberstein: ...and then taking it from there. Gaetano DiNardi: Thank you. Crystal Carter: Right. Gaetano DiNardi: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Because it's so easy to get overwhelmed and all over the place. And what I feel like when you're starting from scratch, what you're trying to do is really getting... We spoke about this on the podcast, is getting momentum. Gaetano DiNardi: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: And that's both momentum internally in terms of your own process, getting things going, getting things moving. And also externally, getting some momentum in terms of creating a digital presence for yourself, building up those associations and getting Google to really see your light in that dark sky so that it's gravitated to it, like a moth kind of thing. And you can't do that if you're all over the place. You have to just pick one thing and just go all in. Gaetano DiNardi: Thank you so much for saying that. You just made me so happy because this is what I say too, the momentum piece in SEO is huge. It's such an underrated factor. But when you have momentum, think about it. You're publishing 10, 15, 20 articles a month, a hundred plus links a month. Now, I'll tell you guys how we sprinkled some more sauce on top of that. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it is like a deep dish pizza, you're putting the sauce on top. Gaetano DiNardi: Oh, this is crazy. So now when the company you're driving results for is backed by the former chairman of Walt Disney Corporation, you know there's some heavy hitters behind this project. So they went and sponsored the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA basketball team. So then the next part of this was, all right, this can't just be SEO, it's got to be fully surround sound. Let's hit all the review sites as hard as we can. So we started doing surround sound search, hitting up every big site that reviews identity theft products and getting them to review us. We started getting included on all those X best top software lists for identity theft protection, working out affiliate deals with every single affiliate player out there. We started working with YouTube creators and influencers to mention our product in their scam stories. We did YouTube SEO, we mirrored our editorial strategy with a YouTube SEO playbook. It was literally just a dude who's well-spoken and credible, like a Mordy, I got to say. He's like your son. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. I don't have a credible part, but well-spoken I'll take. Gaetano DiNardi: To deliver on camera, very confident with good, clear delivery of speech and stuff. We basically took all the content briefs for our SEO pages and transformed them into scripts, and we started embedding all the YouTube videos into our SEO pages. But I guess where I was going with all this was it helped a lot to start seeing in branded search aura plus identity protection, aura identity theft. Now we're getting somewhere. Now it's like okay, we're getting a lot of links with those anchor texts. We're starting to rank for some really competitive terms, and we're branding ourselves real hard against LifeLock. So that was pick out the big nasty enemy in the room and just go attack. So ranking for stuff like that was key. Crystal Carter: And I think something that's interesting with that playbook that you just laid out, there is a lot of people... Some people will be listening to this and they'll go, "I'm a small business, how could I possibly do this?" But like, "Yo, you could sponsor the local 5K. You could sponsor your local little league team. You could sponsor the local football team at your high school, the high school near you. You can do that sort of thing. And then you can build on that. You can get links in local publications. You can talk to local influencers. You can literally talk to them because they're probably in your town. You can invite them to your restaurant. You could give them a free consultation at your law firm, whatever it may be." So there are definitely plays that you can make. And YouTube videos, you could make a YouTube video. We have the tools, we have the technology. It doesn't have to cost you a million dollars. And certainly when you're getting started, it doesn't have to be a massive production in order to get going. So I think that there's lots of things that you can take from that, even if you have a small budget. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, nothing's actually different. Just the scale of it is different. What you actually want to do is the same thing. It's actually probably easier at a smaller scale than doing it at a massive scale. I am thinking of two particular projects in my mind. One was a very big massive project with a big massive budget, and one is not. And the strategy I did for... They're pretty much the same. Just the scale is different. So in one of them, they have a hundred thousand dollars budget for SEO. I'm like, okay, 20 grand for the first three months should be on social media, getting influencers to share your content, put it out there, get your brand known, get your content known, get people to link to it, put money there. On the smaller scale product, it was the same thing, but it wasn't $20,000, it was $200. Crystal Carter: And you could figure that out. You can beg, borrow, et cetera, for instance- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's much easier. If you're a smaller grassroots, then you could beg, borrow and steal people. I do you a favor, you do me a favor. You work at a big product and no one doing any favors. Crystal Carter: No. But if you have people that you know that you're like, "Hey." These people, you can get involved with them. And I think you mentioned, you said, "Oh, this person's related to Disney," et cetera, et cetera. That's a sign. Be aware of your networks, that's the other thing. Use your networks to grow as well. I think that's really important. Mordy Oberstein: Think like a marketer. Gaetano DiNardi: Absolutely. So to the point of not needing a huge budget, I'll tell you, most of our ads were shot with iPhones. Most of our videos that we used for ads were shorts. We just got customers to put your iPhone in front of your face and just talk. And we would clip that up, shape that up. We would even take little clips of the news saying, "Austin, tonight, 10:00 PM news, this crazy identity theft story is out of control." And then we would have somebody talking about that same topic. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Gaetano DiNardi: And we would collage stuff together. So we got creative and nifty with some of our advertising as well. And then remember what we said at the beginning, how I actually wrote the first post, and like it's really about understanding that customer deeply. I forgot to mention one of the most important things I did in this whole process, and it was just listening to calls, listening to sales calls. That's all I did for the first week actually. As I was doing keyword research, I was listening to calls. We used a call transcription software, and I would type in things like dark web and I would see that 35% of our calls mentioned dark web or I would type in little focus terms like that just to see what pops up. And I would look at the surrounding texts near it and I would see, oh, dark web monitoring, dark web alerts. And I would form content strategy based on that. And then I would actually use mostly autosuggest to be honest with you, to find the super long tail stuff. Because what I realized was there's two things in somebody's mind who's worried about identity theft. It definitely has happened. I got hacked, I got scammed. Somebody took advantage of me somehow, some way, and I'm freaking out versus I think something weird is happening. Am I in that danger zone? I'm still very, very concerned, but I don't know if I should be out in full out panic mode yet. What should I do? And then there's actually another category of people that are just like, "Whatever, I don't care. I know that I use the same passwords across 80 different online accounts and I don't care. I'll be fine. This is all just marketing hype to try and get me to buy stuff." And we countered a lot of those thoughts and feelings with our content. We actually realized that is X worth it? Should I get X is a great topic for this category. Is identity theft insurance worth it? Is identity theft protection worth it? And we took the narrative of we're going to be the only company out there that says something different than everyone else. If you go look at Norton, LifeLock and all those big brands, they all say, "Yes, you need it, you need it, you need it, you need it. If you don't, you're screwed." We were the only ones that said, "You actually don't really need this if you're comfortable with doing all this manual work." And the reality is, no one's comfortable doing all this manual work. Who do you know that goes to the credit score website and checks all their credit reports and credit scores manually? Who goes through the three- Crystal Carter: I do all the time. No, I'm kidding. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Who do you know that... I mean, I do this because I'm a freak, but who logs in to all their credit card accounts and checks all the charges all the time, the debit card? Who's on top of that stuff like 24/7? You know what I mean? It's tough. So anyway, that's just some thoughts around the content strategy and how I came up with ideas and stuff. Crystal Carter: I think though, there's so many points to take from that. Again, this is something you do not need a gigantic budget for. You can look at your customer service information. You can see the reviews on your product. You can see the reviews on your business. You can talk to the people who are your customer service team. You can look in your Slack channels for the questions that are coming from that. I have an article that talks about user first content information. That is gold dust. That is gold dust. Going through those user calls is super, super useful. Does not cost the earth and like you said, gives you some keywords that you would not find in other places. The trending topics thing is really important, I think is particularly when you're working in SaaS or something that's where the technology is evolving and stuff because auto suggest updates quicker than you're going to see in historic keyword search volumes. So that's super useful. And also differentiation, like you said, we don't want to sound like everybody else. That's huge as well. With all the AI stuff, for instance, a lot of people are going to be making a lot of content that sounds very similar to a lot of content that's also being published at the same time. And that's been the case for a while. But if you can cut through that noise, that is absolutely crucial. Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: So I feel like we've got a really good solid foundation about how to get started, how to think strategically, how to think about... How to get going from the very beginning, how to structure, know what you're going to need long term. We going to make a point that maybe we can consciousize a little bit, that's not a real word. Make conscious a little bit, you need to think about what the plan is not now, but also long-term, the resource that you're going to need and build yourself up in order to handle that. But if there's one last thing you wanted to focus on before time quickly runs out on us, what would it be? Gaetano DiNardi: I think I would in terms of just how to decide topics, because there's so many different kinds of topics you could create content about. It's like an endless sea of ideas. I mean, I'm sure you guys are familiar with this framework. I'll just show it to you. It's this framework that prioritizes the business potential of a topic based on how commercially relevant it is. So there's a lot of rabbit holes with content. A lot of times even somebody at your company will bring up a really wacky idea like, "Hey, PPP loan fraud is exploding right now. Let's go cover this topic." That could potentially work. But the problem is there's very, very little connection with that trending topic to your solution. The other problem with it is that it's not really going to be much of an SEO play because think about who's covering the topic PPP loan fraud. Every big news site out there is already covering it. So it doesn't really make sense for you as a smaller brand to try and out-cover what these big publishers are already going nuts over. So I like to go as close to the product as possible, and it doesn't have to be the classic X best software list. There's other ways to find that pain point. So for example, how to protect your child from identity theft. That would be the highest possible business potential because you pretty much need a solution to do that. There are other things you can do manually, but a solution is going to do that really, really well. The next level down is if your product is helpful, but it's not absolutely essential to solving the problem. So something like I got scammed on Facebook marketplace. That was a very, very common thing that we would see. The solution can help you solve parts of that problem, but it can't guarantee 100% scam prevention. And we would say that pretty openly in all of our marketing material. Because a lot of people would get the impression that if you are a customer and you do get scammed on Facebook, we'll be able to help you recover a hundred percent of your lost assets or things like that. It's not always the case. The next level down is if the product can be mentioned sparingly or as part of the recovery process in the event of fraud or some kind of identity theft. So an example is like how do scammers steal credit card numbers? This is a very popular long-tail search, and we felt that explaining all the ways that scammers can steal your credit card number and then how to prevent that from happening is a great way to get in front of the audiences that matter. The audiences who are thinking about this, they may be worried that their credit card number already has been stolen, but this may be what they're searching. So that's the framework for thinking about how close is this topic to how our product can solve that potential problem. And if too many ideas are coming to the table that are far away from the product, we probably need to reevaluate what we're doing because the reality is we're not getting judged based on how much traffic we generate to the site. We're getting judged on SERPs. And so the traffic is nice, it's a leading indicator. We can show that to leadership and say, "Hey, we have this much organic visibility," and they're going to be like, "That's great. That's a great positive sign." But if none of that traffic is really doing anything in terms of business results, they're going to start questioning the program. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. And we spoke about this on a recent podcast about emerging content versus evergreen content and bailing those two things out and going after, even for emerging content, if the big players are there, maybe not the best place for you to go. Being really strategic, especially at the very beginning about what topics you go after will be the difference maker between burning through resources that you don't really have or being effective with the limited resource that you have and making sure that you're actually building that momentum we spoke about before. With that, where can people find you? Gaetano DiNardi: You just go to my website, officialgaetano.com. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Social? Gaetano DiNardi: Social. Yeah, I'm all over that stuff. If you guys go to LinkedIn, that's where you'll primarily find me. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, Cool. Okay. So not TikTok. Gaetano DiNardi: You just search Gaetano DiNardi. I'm not a tiktoker man. It's just not- Mordy Oberstein: It's not our thing. Again, I've never said, "Yeah, SEO marketing. But yeah, TikTok is my thing." And then we talk about TikTok, it's marketing TikTok, of course, but then actually on TikTok. Gaetano DiNardi: I know. The thing is I'm a good writer and it's easier for me to just rant on X or put together a nice little LinkedIn post or something. It takes too much work to get on camera and start talking and doing video content. I don't know. I got to be in the mood for it. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm with you. Crystal Carter: Well, thank you very much for being in the mood for this today. We really appreciate all your insights and it's very clear that you've got very clear focus of where you want to take something from zero to hero, and that's amazing. So thank you very much for sharing today. Gaetano DiNardi: Guys. Thank you so much. I don't know what to say. I feel pretty blessed and humbled to be a part of the Wix podcast. This is going to be a stamp on the- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no. Gaetano DiNardi: Stamp on the old resume here. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Gaetano DiNardi: Checkbox, accomplishment done. Mordy Oberstein: We're happy we can make this happen for you. Thanks so much for coming by. Gaetano DiNardi: All right, sounds good. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. So building SEO from scratch is one thing, but to build brand messaging from scratch is a totally different thing, but not really because it overlap in a lot of ways. But let's pretend that they don't. Okay, let's not pretend that they don't, they do. What I'm saying is let's just focus on the brand messaging part and move beyond SEO, just so we bit as we get into brand messaging and building it from scratch with the help of the great Diane Wiredu in a little segment we call The Great Beyond. So I, in case you don't know, I love brand building, I love brand messaging, I love brand positioning, I love brand marketing. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Let's bring a little bit of that into this. As we look at building messaging from scratch, which is really, really, really hard to do. Building brand from scratch, I take building a brand from scratch is harder than building SEO from scratch. And building SEO from scratch is incredibly difficult,. Crystal Carter: Right. Absolutely. And I think sometimes you have to decide which things to lean on. So I've seen people... I saw somebody on Dragon Stand, which is something like Shark Tank in America. It's like that sort of thing where you're presenting a business and they had this matcha tea brand and the guy asked him, "Why don't you have the name of your brand bigger on the can of tea?" It was like an iced tea kind of thing. And he was like, "Because matcha as a concept is bigger at the moment than our brand name. So if somebody is looking for this particular product, they will recognize the word matcha sooner than they will recognize our brand name." And sometimes you have to think about that. Sometimes you have to think about that and that balance of which thing is actually going to lead the conversation and which thing is going to be more recognizable. And sometimes that's a little bit of a tough pill to swallow because people are like, "But I want to have this thing." It's like, but people don't know you yet. Mordy Oberstein: That's always a tough pill to swallow in my opinion. And brand messaging is swallowing that pill. People don't care about the product the way that you think that they actually do, the way that you do, and just swallowing that pill. Crystal Carter: Right. And you have to recognize where the value is and people will come with you because let's say on this matcha tea thing, I love matcha tea, by the way, but if I were to try- Mordy Oberstein: I wonder if you've had a bit before. Crystal Carter: It's fantastic. I drink matcha tea, I switched from coffee to matcha tea. I highly recommend it to anyone. Anyway- Mordy Oberstein: Don't do that. No, no, no. Slow down. Do not get off coffee people. Crystal Carter: Do it. Do it. It's the best thing that ever happened to you. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to have a sip of coffee. Crystal Carter: And I think that the thing that you can do with that is that it allows you to... Let's say if I'm the matcha tea person, I'm in this audience and I go, "Oh, matcha tea." Then I can experience the brand and I can go, "Oh, I like this. I want to find out more about this." And then I will check out the brand and if I've had a good brand experience, and then I'll say, "Hey, have you heard about that?" I'll tell other people about it. I'll let people know, say, "Hey, I found this great thing. It's really, really great." I'll be out and about. And I'll say, "Oh, I'll see that. That's what I want." And I think that sometimes you can lead with that, lead with the product and the actual USP of the product, the solution that you have until you get that brand equity as you're building from scratch. Mordy Oberstein: It's a slow burn. I have so much to say about this, but let's actually get to what Diane Wiredu from Lion's Words, the founder of Lion Words has to say about building brand messaging from scratch. Here's Diane. Diane Wiredu: So the question is, how do you create brand messaging from scratch? Well, usually you're not really starting from scratch. You've probably been explaining what you do successfully somehow or somewhere to get your business to the state that it's at right now. So whether that's on your current website, on sales calls, chats, or prospect conversations, it could be in decks or proposals or even just on social media. So I'll start by saying that you've probably got a foundation. What you need to do is figure out if what you're saying about your product or service actually resonates with your market and buyers and how to better articulate the value that you deliver in a really clear, relevant and differentiated way. So for that, there are a few crucial steps. Step one is to document and evaluate your existing messaging. So I always do this with my clients. I take a look at their current messaging and bring it into one place. So what's working, what's not? Where are the gaps or inconsistencies in the story that you're telling? You want to identify some points of friction, but also opportunities. What do you want to be saying? So starting with this step, this gives you a really good point of reference and a benchmark to evaluate against. Then step two, we want to find out what your customers are saying. So go out and perform voice of customer research to discover how your customers speak about your product or service and their experience with it. So I love to set up customer interviews where I can ask open-ended questions around the before, during, and after stage. So I'll ask questions that dig into customer struggles, the decision and buying process, what their needs and jobs to be done were, and of course the results and outcomes afterwards. Step three is to go out and look at what competitors are saying. So our messaging doesn't exist in a vacuum. And aside from being clear, we also want to avoid drowning in the sea of sameness. So look at competitive alternatives and evaluate what they are and aren't saying as well. And then lastly, step four, you want to filter those findings and really narrow your messaging focus. So I like to create a messaging map, which is essentially a prioritized list of key themes, words, messages that came up in the research, and then map this against your initial evaluation and start drafting new messaging that better reflects your value as well as the customer's needs and point of view. A really important little copywriting tip is to really bring in and use those customer words as well. So this step is a bit tricky, but it's all about simplifying. Remember that you can't be known for a hundred things as a company, so find your north star and really narrow down your focus. And lastly, I guess a bonus step, step five is to test because creating messaging might be done by you and/or your team, but it's really your prospects and customers who will tell you if it works and resonates or not. So validate your messaging through message testing or user testing and then iterate on it and optimize so that you can get the biggest ROI from it. So hopefully that will help you get started with your messaging. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Diane. Make sure you follow Diane on LinkedIn. We'll link to her LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Just look for Diane Wiredu on LinkedIn, give Lion's Word a look, and we'll link to that in the show notes as well. She's also an event and host organizer for the Marketing Meetup. So shout out to the Marketing Meetup. We love them. A lot of shout-outs. There's a lot of points to get to in this, and I'll say first off, one of the points people don't realize about messaging and something that she hit on is that I find that good messaging is the vertex of what your users need and who you are. And it's a convergence of those two things together. And I think what brands often don't get right is often they lean too into who they are or too far into who their audience is and what their audience needs, but don't connect that to who they are either. And that's finding that sweet spot is what you really ultimately want because what you're trying to do when you're building a brand is really trying to create a connection. So it has to be part of you and part of your audience together in that, in order for there to be a conversation or there be a connection, it can just be one or the other one. And the last thing I wanted to say, or one of the last things, I have a million things to say, but the last thing I want to say before I hand it over to Crystal is messaging frameworks when you're getting started are great. And to what she's talking about there about refining that and doing focus groups and really understanding what people want and who you are. All that stuff is great. I do find though, as you start getting things rolling, and as your brand starts evolving, as you mature, as you get past the starting up phase from scratch, messaging framework can also become a crutch and it's something to watch out for. Messaging frameworks are great for working at scale, especially in larger companies because you cannot talk to everybody all the time and all the different people all the time about what the USPS are, how you want to... You need to have some framework. What nearly happens though is as you use those frameworks to scale things, you lose touch with the actual user, the actual needs and the actual pain points and things can become a little bit templatized. So you need to find a good balance between scaling and actually being in tune and having your finger on the pulse, which you can't scale. There's no way to scale that in my personal opinion. So yes, frameworks are great, but as things start to evolve, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself with the frameworks and relying on them as a crutch. Crystal Carter: She talked about refining testing and things, and I think that really ties in with what you're saying as well. These shouldn't be static. They should evolve with your brand because your brand will evolve. Your brand is a living, breathing thing and will evolve. And certainly with digital marketing, with SEO, you will be able to get actual feedback on that in real time, essentially. So if a new story breaks and people want to talk about your brand in a different way, then your brand positioning will evolve. So for instance, I mean with Wix, we had this last year, people started talking about AI and Wix was like, "No, actually we are big in the game on AI, and we have been for a long time and started putting that information more to the fore. Another prime example is there's a drink called Lucozade, which exists in England, and it's a little bit like Gatorade. And back in the day it was marketed as the brand was medicinal. So it came in glass bottles and it had very medicinal packaging and stuff because it had electrolytes, it was the kind of thing that you would have after you'd been- Mordy Oberstein: Like coke, literally like Coke. Both the drink and the drug were medicinal. Crystal Carter: So yeah, so people thought of it as a medicinal thing. And then later on people started realizing that athletes were having it because it replaced electrolytes, and so they started marketing it as a sports drink, and that is people listening to how the audience is responding to their brand. And as she said, this is something you should see how users are responding to it, how your audience is responding to your brand. I also liked what she was saying about you're not really starting from scratch. You have input. You have data on how people respond to your brand from sales calls and from going to conferences and talking to people at expos and from talking about your brand, explaining what you do to your mom. Does your mom actually understand what you do? Can you summarize the brand of your company in a couple of words? That's something that you refine and that's something that's really, really important. If you're able to do that really, really quickly, then that means you've really nailed the essence of your brand. And I think also what you were talking about, about the relationship between what can you do for me? That sort of thing. What can you do for me? Who are you? Do you understand who you are? And do I understand who you are and do you understand who I am? I think sometimes there's a thing, it's like it's not necessarily that I don't have confidence in you but sometimes it's like... Not you personally Mordy, but- Mordy Oberstein: You're completely right. Crystal Carter: ...I do. But I think sometimes you have a situation, like I mentioned Dragons Den earlier, but something that happens on that show is they'll say, "Oh, I'm investing in you as a person," or whatever. And I think it's hard to understand what that means, but sometimes with the brand, it's a question of demonstrating that you have confidence in yourself, and if you don't have confidence in yourself, how can you expect somebody else to also have confidence in you? So it might be that you think this brand is great, but it doesn't seem like they think they're great, which makes you worry what they know that you don't know. So I think it's really important that you're confident, but maybe not necessarily overly so, but just confident in your capabilities and aware of your competitors and things like that. And I think that that's something that's really, really useful. Dan had some great points. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. One thing I'll say real quick before we have to move on, and never really when you're going to start thinking about messaging, you're going to bring up tone like what's our tone in our messaging going to be? I will say that the biggest mistake I see people make is the tone is simply a list of adjectives when really tone is actually a way of communicating with your audience in nonverbal ways or less like subtle, more sublime verbal ways. It's basically asking in what way and more importantly, on what emotional level do we want to communicate with our audience? And once you understand that's what tone actually is, you'll immediately realize that it's more than a few adjectives. Anyway, you know who's got a great tone? I always find this tone very fun, really fun, uplifting and exciting. Crystal Carter: I do too. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's Barry, Barry Schwartz, it's Barry Schwarz time on the SERP's Up podcast. When we get into the SEO news, I'm going to say, "Take it away, Barry," at this point. Crystal Carter: All right, go RustyBrick, go. Mordy Oberstein: Snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, three articles for you this week. Two from Search Engine Roundtable. One from Search Engine Land. All three from Barry Schwartz, who clearly has a monopoly on the SEO news. First up from SEO Roundtable, Google Popular Opinion search carousel. What about the Google Popular Opinions search carousel? Let me help you, Barry. Google tests popular Opinion search carousel. As spotted by Brodie Clark was a great follow, follow him over an X. Brodie was searching for Sony XM4, which is a pair of headphones and underneath an Amazon listing, got a carousel that was called Popular Opinions, which presented a series of cards that were review articles of the headphones. Barry pointed out that he saw a similar test a year ago with a section on the cervical perspectives and opinions. What's interesting though is that back then the results Barry got back were from CNET and Gadget, CNN, big, big name sites. In Brodie's case, the results seem a little bit more niche, which I think is interesting. What I think is happening here is Google looking for a way to put results up on the top of the SERP from more specifically topically specific websites that are not just the usual big names. There's been a lot of controversy around Google just defaulting to the big name websites and is that really healthy and are those results really good, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? I don't want to get into the controversy here right now, but what I do see is with a popular opinion is if the results are more niche and more topically specific than they used to be with the tests a year ago, that to me seems like Google is trying to find a way to implement a scenario where there are more topically focused websites that offer perhaps better content up at the top of the SERP. So I like that one. Okay. Also from seoroundtable.com and also from Barry Schwartz because who else would it be? Well, I guess technically Glenn Gabe does write once in a while for SEO Roundtable. By the way, Barry, more Glenn on SEO Roundtable. I like that little diversity of authors there. Anyway, Barry writes Early Signs, Google search ranking update on February 28th and 29th. There's been a... Well, it looks like almost like massive increase in ring fluctuations, not just on the 20th and 29th, but a few days before that. Also, it looks to be like 25th. So a series of ring volatility. Glenn Gabe who will try to link to the show notes on this as well, walk through some cases you've seen of massive reversals and so forth. Sometimes these kind of things could be a precursor to an official algorithm update. So who knows? As of the recording of this new section, it looks like things have calmed down a little bit. By the time when we release this episode, things could be spiking again. Who knows? It's a game of roulette. Onto searchengineland.com. But again, sticking with Barry Schwartz, new Google structured data carousels beta. What about them, Barry? Google announces new structured data carousels beta. Well, they didn't announce it, they added documentation. I digress. Google add in new documentation for a new beta carousel that basically looks when you have, let's say events or products or whatever it might be, but you have multiple iterations of them. So imagine a collection page or an event page with multiple events. If you want to show those multiple items, there's a new carousel that Google might implement, and you can use structurally in a markup to be eligible to appear in this little carousel that is attached to your result. It's not a separate independent cert feature carousel, but imagine you see this often with, let's say, news aggregators where if you search for something related to, say, sports news, ESPN might have a carousel, like multiple stories there. It's like that. Where in your organic result, you'll have multiple swipeable carousel cards. Basically this item list structured data needs to be attached or combined with something that supports the items. So you need to have product markup on there if you have a series of multiple products, right? If you are a local business and your page has multiple, I don't know, vacation rentals listed on the page, so you have to have local business markup or a subtype for a vacation rental listed on there. So it's not like it's independent thing, it's a markup to show the items or the items of what. So there's going to be multiple markups on the page. And with that, I'm done. That is your Snappy news for this week. Thank you, Barry, for your contributions and for your great headlines. Well, that was always fun. Thank you, Barry and the other contributors to the SEO News world out there. Crystal Carter: Yeah, thank you very much for keeping us up to date with everything that's going on. It's like, it's wild though here. There's a lot of SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Lot of ins and outs, sort of what have yous. Different people involved. Speaking of people, speaking of people, that brings us to our follow of the week this week, which is the one, the only Lily Ugbaja who's over at Lily U-G-B-A-J-A over on X slash Twitter, whatever you want to call it. She's up first off contributor to the Wix SEO Hub. Crystal Carter: Contributor to the Wix SEO Hub. She's fantastic. She also has a great TED Talk online as well. One of the things she talks about on the Wix SEO Hub is how she built up our website from scratch and built up all the traffic from scratch and built that up from zero. That's one of the reasons why she's the follow of the week, and she talks about a lot of different tactics there and competitors and pulling things through. And I think she talks about being a little bit scrappy in the marketing, and I think that that's something that's really important when you're trying to get a brand going. I think Glenn Gabe has said, when trying to recover from an algorithm update, throw the kitchen sink at it, do all of the things- Mordy Oberstein: This is welcome wisdom by the way. Just want to shout out to Glen. Crystal Carter: Yeah, so Glen, Lily, everybody, Lily Ugbaja. And I think that it's important to, when you're thinking about your brand, get in there, get stuck in and move things forward until you get to the place where you want to be. And Lily definitely takes that approach. So yeah, she's a great follow. Do that. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. And she takes a content first approach. I think people realize your content is your brand. That's you talking. Some random blog post about whatever, that's actually you communicating with your audience and they're looking how you're doing that. So watch your tone. As we said before, I don't like your tone young man. Listen to my children, never. Crystal Carter: I found a great blog. I don't know if we have time for another tangent. Mordy Oberstein: Always. Crystal Carter: Okay, so I was looking at sheds and I found this great blog. Mordy Oberstein: Like wood sheds, like the store tool? Crystal Carter: Like a shed in your garden. I found this great blog, and my question was, should I build a shed by a wall? And the article that I found was the general thing you would find on a blog, like a marketing blog, but it was so well written, me and my kids, I read it aloud to my family because it was so- Mordy Oberstein: Like a bedtime story? Crystal Carter: It was just so well written. I was like, "Should I build a shed by a wall?" And it was like, "Do you want to build a shed by a wall? That's a bad idea. You shouldn't do that." But then the heading, so they gave all the reasons, and then the last heading was like, "But I still want to build my shed by a wall." And it was so well written. And after that thinking, speaking of tone from that, I get that these people are knowledgeable. They know what they're talking about because there was definitely knowledge in this blog, but they also have a sense of humor. And they also saw me coming. They know. Mordy Oberstein: They know. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: 99.9% of all communication is nonverbal. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that there's definitely something in there, your tone of voice and what you're saying about your brand being... Your blog being your brand, your content being your brand. It's absolutely true. Mordy Oberstein: I only have one question for you. Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: You know what's coming, right? Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: Did you build a shed by the wall? Yeah. Crystal Carter: So I had a shed that was by a wall, and it's causing me problems, and I was trying to figure out a way to get around it, but apparently you can't. So basically note to anybody who's listening, if you have a shed, do not build it by a wall because it will cause damp and the shed will fall down. So don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: Next question. Are you rebuilding the shed yourself? Crystal Carter: I do not have the skills. I have- Mordy Oberstein: I would like to see this. Crystal Carter: I do not have the skills. I mean, it would be like the House of Jack- Mordy Oberstein: Please. No, please do it and like live, like video blogging. Crystal Carter: No, no, I'm not doing that. But I have a professional person who is assisting me with this. He's a very nice man named James. Thanks, James. Mordy Oberstein: Is he your husband? Crystal Carter: No. We are artsy. We don't build things with tools. We don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: We build knowledge. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we read books and stuff, but not about sheds. Mordy Oberstein: Well, apparently you do read books about... Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: All right. Well, I guess you got to do 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 a new episode as we dive into what you never knew about Local pacs. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at Wix.com/seo/learn. Looking into more about SEO, check it all the great content, webinars and resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guest, at Wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, piece of love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Gaetano DiNardi Diane Wiredu Lily Ugbaja Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Lion Words News: Google Structured Data Carousels Beta Documentation Added Early Signs: Google Search Ranking Update On February 28 & 29th Glenn Gabe showing rank volatility examples New Google structured data carousels (beta) Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Gaetano DiNardi Diane Wiredu Lily Ugbaja Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Lion Words News: Google Structured Data Carousels Beta Documentation Added Early Signs: Google Search Ranking Update On February 28 & 29th Glenn Gabe showing rank volatility examples New Google structured data carousels (beta) 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. I'm brewing new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who cooks up a storm from the scratch. She has the flour, she has the water, she mixes it in, adds the sugar, puts in the oven, out comes great SEO pie, the head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Okay. I do not make cakes from scratch. Let's just make that clear. I use the box. The box is the best way. Mordy Oberstein: That counts, by the way. That's scratch. Crystal Carter: I use the box. I always use the box. The boxes are good. Highly recommend. Mordy Oberstein: If you didn't buy it and you put it into the oven and you had to mix something, that's from scratch in my book. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. I do make cornbread from scratch because I moved to England from America, and in America they have Jiffy Cornbread, comes in a box, get it from the box. Perfect. Gets every single time, right? Every time. In England, Jiffy doesn't exist. So I had to learn how to make it from scratch so that I do make from scratch. But cakes, generally speaking, Betty Crocker, she does a great job. So let's just give Betty her flowers and everybody can have a nice birthday. Throw some sprinkles on it. Let's go. Mordy Oberstein: I make toast from scratch. Crystal Carter: Are you out there? Are you like the little red hen? Did you grow the wheat and- Mordy Oberstein: No, no. I just put it into the thing and out comes toast. Crystal Carter: Ta-daa. Mordy Oberstein: Ta-daa. I did it myself. Crystal Carter: Right. You tell your children, you're like, "You're welcome." Mordy Oberstein: My kids are actually way better cooks than I am. It's a whole- Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they're good. They're good. Crystal Carter: All right. This is good. Mordy Oberstein: That's so great on the cleanup, but on the cooking part. Crystal Carter: You win some, you lose some. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, this SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by a Wix. You can always subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search over Wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. Got little slashes, but where you can also get started with your SEO by using the Wix SEO setup checklist, where you can connect to Google Search Console to single click with the add a bonus of having your homepage indexed by Google instantly. And who knows what else they'll find when they do. As this week we're talking about starting SEO from scratch, which now you know why there was a scratch joke about cooking in the beginning. It all makes sense, how your product and services and business models factor into SEO. How to craft a strategy and SEO plan from scratch. How to get your SEO to gain some momentum when you are starting from scratch. And to help us stir the pot and add in some spice, musician songwriter and SEO extraordinary Gaetano DiNardi will join us just a few minutes. Or before you could say, "It's shake a bake and I helped." Plus, we'll explore what it means to cook up some brand messaging from scratch with the help of the great Diane Wiredu. And of course, we have the snap piece of SEO news for you this weekend. Who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So add three cups of flour, one cup of water, a teaspoon of yeast, let it sit, and then add 10 sticks of butter, some large, as much as you want, Crisco the entire can, teaspoon of olive oil and a pinch of kosher salt. And you mix it all up till your arms fall off. As episode number 77 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you start baking some SEO goodness from scratch. You smell that? Smells like SEO. Crystal Carter: I don't know what this recipe was for, but it was very greasy. Its like- Mordy Oberstein: Well, some say that SEO is snake oil. It's not really snake oil, it's just Crisco. Crystal Carter: It's Crisco. Crisco is magical. Shout out to Crisco my- Mordy Oberstein: My grandma used scoop Crisco. It was a disgusting thing I've ever seen. It was just nasty. Crystal Carter: No. You want to make cookies? Crisco. Mordy Oberstein: Crisco. Crystal Carter: Those are the best cookies, honestly, dry never. Forever moisturized. Mordy Oberstein: It looks disgusting. I feel like it's the... It's like you eat it and it immediately clogs your entire body. Crystal Carter: I don't care. The cookies are off the chain. The cookies are delicious. Mordy Oberstein: But it's delicious. Probably worth it. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: SEO from scratch. Starting from nothing is never easy. A lot of times when you come into SEO, it's in the middle of the process, but sometimes it's not in the middle of the process. Sometimes you're actually starting from literally nothing. And those are probably great moments because you're actually starting from when the business is getting going. You're there from day one. So that is very opportunistic for you as an SEO. But it's also hard, which gives me the pleasure of introducing today's guest. He's here in the flesh or the digital flesh, Gaetano DiNardi, welcome to the SERP's Up podcast. Gaetano DiNardi: Guys, thank you so much for having me. What an introduction. And I got to say, I love the banter. I love the chemistry, I love the back and forth. This is the way. It almost feels like a talk radio show here. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. This is what I'm going for. I said this before, if I had to do my life over and I couldn't be what I am now, I had to do something different, I would like to be a talk radio show talking about sports in New York. That would be my dream. Gaetano DiNardi: That's what this feels like. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Thank you. It's the greatest comment anyone has ever given me. Gaetano DiNardi: It's so good, man. I love it. I love it. Being from... Well, I'll tell you, when I was growing up, I couldn't really sleep well as a kid. And I used to put on the AM New York Sports Talk radio it's all right through the night. Mordy Oberstein: I did the same thing. I would put the thing on sleep for 90 minutes. And you have... Steve was choosing from the fan talking about the rangers. Gaetano DiNardi: Exactly. How boring can that be. There's nothing better to put you to sleep. Mordy Oberstein: Right to sleep, right to sleep. Oh wait, who's that on line one? Is it Sal from Staten Island? I'm sorry. Gaetano DiNardi: Sal from Staten Island. Dude, it was some funny stuff though. I used to listen to Joe Benigno. Mordy Oberstein: Joe Benigno. You know he's still around? Gaetano DiNardi: He's still around. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: He's still around. Gaetano DiNardi: He's still around. Yeah. Joe Benigno at like 2:00 AM, Mordy Oberstein: Right. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah. Yeah. Frank coming out as … Mordy Oberstein: Crazier than ever- Gaetano DiNardi: ...because he's pissed. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: I feel like though, y'all could do an app for that. There's people who are using... I don't know. There's different apps for meditation. You could just have a like, "Hey, do you need to go to sleep? Here's some vintage." Mordy Oberstein: Vintage 1990s New York Sports Radio. Crystal Carter: Right. You could just pick one and choose yours today. You want Staten Island? You want Long Island? What do you want? Mordy Oberstein: Oh man. I'll give you some good old Mike Francesa. I'll be out in three seconds. Gaetano DiNardi: Oh man, that guy. Mordy Oberstein: That guy is so boring. Gaetano DiNardi: That guy's so... Oh man. Mordy Oberstein: Well, he's also... Look at these guys are all still around with the geezers. Anyway. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Let's talk SEO from scratch. Since we're starting from scratch. Where do you want to start? Gaetano DiNardi: All right, well look, since we're starting from scratch, I'll tell you guys why this topic is being talked about. Now, I had a very tough assignment three years ago. I went into a company as a full-time head of marketing. And the primary way we're going to grow this business was through search. And so the SEO assignment was, well, there's nothing. There's zero. And the primary category was identity theft. The company saw is identity theft protection. Side note, my identity got stolen. It's a horrible situation. And so I was motivated to really thrive and crush this role because I know the kinds of people out there who do that, they are scum. So we need to fight back against this horrible thing that is plaguing so many people. And it's not just affecting young people, people who are digitally savvy. It's mostly hitting people who have no idea. And it's mostly hitting people who are in not great financial situations. So when it cracks them, it cracks hard because they're stuck with bills that they didn't accumulate, that they got to now pay for. Credit card accounts open in your name, the use of your social security number to steal your tax returns, all sorts of wacky stuff. So anyway, the company has a lot of products and they had a huge investment. So the one caveat to this is there was a lot of dough and I could spend. In fact, they kept saying to me, "Why don't you spend more? Can't you spend more? How much more can you spend?" Mordy Oberstein: That's a good problem to have. Gaetano DiNardi: Good problem to have. And of course, all my agency and consultants and link building friends are like, "He has a lot of resources, so let's get in there." So yeah, I did recruit in a lot of players to help me scale this, but this was the ultimate setup that we landed on. Me driving everything. Two content marketers with very strong SEO backgrounds and great editorial chops. 10 freelance writers, one in-house link building manager, plus like two, three external link builders. The result of that is approximately 20 articles a month and approximately a hundred links per month. And that was the pace we ran at from when I started building that program, which really kicked off in late 2021. The first article was published in November 2021. I personally wrote it actually. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Gaetano DiNardi: It was how to check if your identity has been stolen. It's still a top killer. It's still ranks- Mordy Oberstein: EEAT. E For experience. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah. E for experience, baby. Yeah. I wrote it personally, built links to it personally through my own network. And it ranked pretty fast actually for a site with nothing. And so I guess I'll pause there before I keep ranting and riffing, but that's the initial setup. I know it's a lot to take in because most people do an SEO, it's way smaller scale than that. Nobody's doing 20 articles a month. Nobody's treating a SaaS SEO as a publisher almost would. And so anyway, I guess I'll pause there so we can just get your reactions. But that's how we launched it and that's the setup. Crystal Carter: I think one of the first things that stood out for me from that conversation, and you brought it back at the end, was when you were talking about the building it from scratch, you'd had the customer base in mind and you actually discussed that throughout your description of what you were going to do. You were saying, "I had my identity stolen. This is the experience that people were having. And I wrote the first article myself." And Mordy mentioned the experience in the EEAT. And I think that when people are thinking about getting going with SEO, having the customer experience and the customer focus, and like, "I get you, I get this, I get why this is an issue for you, and that's at the core of what we're doing." I feel like that is always a good recipe for success. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's exactly what stood out to me initially also is that when you're first starting out, you're really trying to think, "Okay, who is the audience? What are the needs? How do I align the needs? And how do I align SEO with what the business itself is actually trying to do?" So it's completely harmonious from the start. Gaetano DiNardi: Absolutely. So here's the next thing I realized. The company has a lot of products and services. Like identity theft protection is the flagship product, but it's sold as a bundle with a lot of other stuff. So there's financial fraud protection, there's password manager, there's VPN, there's antivirus and there's family safety, parental controls and stuff like that. Have you guys ever looked at how difficult VPN the category is? Have you ever seen how insane- Mordy Oberstein: Yes, actually. Gaetano DiNardi: ...antiviruses? You know the kind of brands and players that are in those categories. It's pretty wild. So you can get overwhelmed really fast as an SEO with the company saying, "Hey, we got to get more subscribers into this. We got to grow our presence for that. We got to do this and that and this and that." And so you got to actually deflect a lot of that noise and say, "All right, the reality is we have no topical focus and no strength and no brand association with anything right now." So we've got to hammer one thing and go all in and say, "All right, that other stuff is going to have to come later." And so I made the decision to say, "All right, we're just going to build our identity theft and own that to start because we need to get something going somehow, somewhere." Crystal Carter: And I think that that's a real strength because I think that a lot of people think that when my brand, I have to get my logo out there and this and that. And it's like when you're very much starting from a completely new business or a completely new website or a completely new product, for instance, the solution is the lead there. So when you're saying identity theft first, that's how people are going to find you. And I think that building that out and building the depth of information there is going to help you build trust with people so that when you introduce them to a new product, they're more likely to actually get involved with you because they trust you on that one thing that you show yourself to be very good at. Mordy Oberstein: I want to read you an email that I sent to somebody who was asking about an SEO product that I'm working on with them. And I'm not going to go into the whole details around the whole thing, but I wrote, I generally recommend in these cases, putting your full energy behind one thing, seeing how it goes- Gaetano DiNardi: Thank You. Mordy Oberstein: ...and then taking it from there. Gaetano DiNardi: Thank you. Crystal Carter: Right. Gaetano DiNardi: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Because it's so easy to get overwhelmed and all over the place. And what I feel like when you're starting from scratch, what you're trying to do is really getting... We spoke about this on the podcast, is getting momentum. Gaetano DiNardi: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: And that's both momentum internally in terms of your own process, getting things going, getting things moving. And also externally, getting some momentum in terms of creating a digital presence for yourself, building up those associations and getting Google to really see your light in that dark sky so that it's gravitated to it, like a moth kind of thing. And you can't do that if you're all over the place. You have to just pick one thing and just go all in. Gaetano DiNardi: Thank you so much for saying that. You just made me so happy because this is what I say too, the momentum piece in SEO is huge. It's such an underrated factor. But when you have momentum, think about it. You're publishing 10, 15, 20 articles a month, a hundred plus links a month. Now, I'll tell you guys how we sprinkled some more sauce on top of that. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it is like a deep dish pizza, you're putting the sauce on top. Gaetano DiNardi: Oh, this is crazy. So now when the company you're driving results for is backed by the former chairman of Walt Disney Corporation, you know there's some heavy hitters behind this project. So they went and sponsored the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA basketball team. So then the next part of this was, all right, this can't just be SEO, it's got to be fully surround sound. Let's hit all the review sites as hard as we can. So we started doing surround sound search, hitting up every big site that reviews identity theft products and getting them to review us. We started getting included on all those X best top software lists for identity theft protection, working out affiliate deals with every single affiliate player out there. We started working with YouTube creators and influencers to mention our product in their scam stories. We did YouTube SEO, we mirrored our editorial strategy with a YouTube SEO playbook. It was literally just a dude who's well-spoken and credible, like a Mordy, I got to say. He's like your son. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. I don't have a credible part, but well-spoken I'll take. Gaetano DiNardi: To deliver on camera, very confident with good, clear delivery of speech and stuff. We basically took all the content briefs for our SEO pages and transformed them into scripts, and we started embedding all the YouTube videos into our SEO pages. But I guess where I was going with all this was it helped a lot to start seeing in branded search aura plus identity protection, aura identity theft. Now we're getting somewhere. Now it's like okay, we're getting a lot of links with those anchor texts. We're starting to rank for some really competitive terms, and we're branding ourselves real hard against LifeLock. So that was pick out the big nasty enemy in the room and just go attack. So ranking for stuff like that was key. Crystal Carter: And I think something that's interesting with that playbook that you just laid out, there is a lot of people... Some people will be listening to this and they'll go, "I'm a small business, how could I possibly do this?" But like, "Yo, you could sponsor the local 5K. You could sponsor your local little league team. You could sponsor the local football team at your high school, the high school near you. You can do that sort of thing. And then you can build on that. You can get links in local publications. You can talk to local influencers. You can literally talk to them because they're probably in your town. You can invite them to your restaurant. You could give them a free consultation at your law firm, whatever it may be." So there are definitely plays that you can make. And YouTube videos, you could make a YouTube video. We have the tools, we have the technology. It doesn't have to cost you a million dollars. And certainly when you're getting started, it doesn't have to be a massive production in order to get going. So I think that there's lots of things that you can take from that, even if you have a small budget. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, nothing's actually different. Just the scale of it is different. What you actually want to do is the same thing. It's actually probably easier at a smaller scale than doing it at a massive scale. I am thinking of two particular projects in my mind. One was a very big massive project with a big massive budget, and one is not. And the strategy I did for... They're pretty much the same. Just the scale is different. So in one of them, they have a hundred thousand dollars budget for SEO. I'm like, okay, 20 grand for the first three months should be on social media, getting influencers to share your content, put it out there, get your brand known, get your content known, get people to link to it, put money there. On the smaller scale product, it was the same thing, but it wasn't $20,000, it was $200. Crystal Carter: And you could figure that out. You can beg, borrow, et cetera, for instance- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's much easier. If you're a smaller grassroots, then you could beg, borrow and steal people. I do you a favor, you do me a favor. You work at a big product and no one doing any favors. Crystal Carter: No. But if you have people that you know that you're like, "Hey." These people, you can get involved with them. And I think you mentioned, you said, "Oh, this person's related to Disney," et cetera, et cetera. That's a sign. Be aware of your networks, that's the other thing. Use your networks to grow as well. I think that's really important. Mordy Oberstein: Think like a marketer. Gaetano DiNardi: Absolutely. So to the point of not needing a huge budget, I'll tell you, most of our ads were shot with iPhones. Most of our videos that we used for ads were shorts. We just got customers to put your iPhone in front of your face and just talk. And we would clip that up, shape that up. We would even take little clips of the news saying, "Austin, tonight, 10:00 PM news, this crazy identity theft story is out of control." And then we would have somebody talking about that same topic. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Gaetano DiNardi: And we would collage stuff together. So we got creative and nifty with some of our advertising as well. And then remember what we said at the beginning, how I actually wrote the first post, and like it's really about understanding that customer deeply. I forgot to mention one of the most important things I did in this whole process, and it was just listening to calls, listening to sales calls. That's all I did for the first week actually. As I was doing keyword research, I was listening to calls. We used a call transcription software, and I would type in things like dark web and I would see that 35% of our calls mentioned dark web or I would type in little focus terms like that just to see what pops up. And I would look at the surrounding texts near it and I would see, oh, dark web monitoring, dark web alerts. And I would form content strategy based on that. And then I would actually use mostly autosuggest to be honest with you, to find the super long tail stuff. Because what I realized was there's two things in somebody's mind who's worried about identity theft. It definitely has happened. I got hacked, I got scammed. Somebody took advantage of me somehow, some way, and I'm freaking out versus I think something weird is happening. Am I in that danger zone? I'm still very, very concerned, but I don't know if I should be out in full out panic mode yet. What should I do? And then there's actually another category of people that are just like, "Whatever, I don't care. I know that I use the same passwords across 80 different online accounts and I don't care. I'll be fine. This is all just marketing hype to try and get me to buy stuff." And we countered a lot of those thoughts and feelings with our content. We actually realized that is X worth it? Should I get X is a great topic for this category. Is identity theft insurance worth it? Is identity theft protection worth it? And we took the narrative of we're going to be the only company out there that says something different than everyone else. If you go look at Norton, LifeLock and all those big brands, they all say, "Yes, you need it, you need it, you need it, you need it. If you don't, you're screwed." We were the only ones that said, "You actually don't really need this if you're comfortable with doing all this manual work." And the reality is, no one's comfortable doing all this manual work. Who do you know that goes to the credit score website and checks all their credit reports and credit scores manually? Who goes through the three- Crystal Carter: I do all the time. No, I'm kidding. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Who do you know that... I mean, I do this because I'm a freak, but who logs in to all their credit card accounts and checks all the charges all the time, the debit card? Who's on top of that stuff like 24/7? You know what I mean? It's tough. So anyway, that's just some thoughts around the content strategy and how I came up with ideas and stuff. Crystal Carter: I think though, there's so many points to take from that. Again, this is something you do not need a gigantic budget for. You can look at your customer service information. You can see the reviews on your product. You can see the reviews on your business. You can talk to the people who are your customer service team. You can look in your Slack channels for the questions that are coming from that. I have an article that talks about user first content information. That is gold dust. That is gold dust. Going through those user calls is super, super useful. Does not cost the earth and like you said, gives you some keywords that you would not find in other places. The trending topics thing is really important, I think is particularly when you're working in SaaS or something that's where the technology is evolving and stuff because auto suggest updates quicker than you're going to see in historic keyword search volumes. So that's super useful. And also differentiation, like you said, we don't want to sound like everybody else. That's huge as well. With all the AI stuff, for instance, a lot of people are going to be making a lot of content that sounds very similar to a lot of content that's also being published at the same time. And that's been the case for a while. But if you can cut through that noise, that is absolutely crucial. Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: So I feel like we've got a really good solid foundation about how to get started, how to think strategically, how to think about... How to get going from the very beginning, how to structure, know what you're going to need long term. We going to make a point that maybe we can consciousize a little bit, that's not a real word. Make conscious a little bit, you need to think about what the plan is not now, but also long-term, the resource that you're going to need and build yourself up in order to handle that. But if there's one last thing you wanted to focus on before time quickly runs out on us, what would it be? Gaetano DiNardi: I think I would in terms of just how to decide topics, because there's so many different kinds of topics you could create content about. It's like an endless sea of ideas. I mean, I'm sure you guys are familiar with this framework. I'll just show it to you. It's this framework that prioritizes the business potential of a topic based on how commercially relevant it is. So there's a lot of rabbit holes with content. A lot of times even somebody at your company will bring up a really wacky idea like, "Hey, PPP loan fraud is exploding right now. Let's go cover this topic." That could potentially work. But the problem is there's very, very little connection with that trending topic to your solution. The other problem with it is that it's not really going to be much of an SEO play because think about who's covering the topic PPP loan fraud. Every big news site out there is already covering it. So it doesn't really make sense for you as a smaller brand to try and out-cover what these big publishers are already going nuts over. So I like to go as close to the product as possible, and it doesn't have to be the classic X best software list. There's other ways to find that pain point. So for example, how to protect your child from identity theft. That would be the highest possible business potential because you pretty much need a solution to do that. There are other things you can do manually, but a solution is going to do that really, really well. The next level down is if your product is helpful, but it's not absolutely essential to solving the problem. So something like I got scammed on Facebook marketplace. That was a very, very common thing that we would see. The solution can help you solve parts of that problem, but it can't guarantee 100% scam prevention. And we would say that pretty openly in all of our marketing material. Because a lot of people would get the impression that if you are a customer and you do get scammed on Facebook, we'll be able to help you recover a hundred percent of your lost assets or things like that. It's not always the case. The next level down is if the product can be mentioned sparingly or as part of the recovery process in the event of fraud or some kind of identity theft. So an example is like how do scammers steal credit card numbers? This is a very popular long-tail search, and we felt that explaining all the ways that scammers can steal your credit card number and then how to prevent that from happening is a great way to get in front of the audiences that matter. The audiences who are thinking about this, they may be worried that their credit card number already has been stolen, but this may be what they're searching. So that's the framework for thinking about how close is this topic to how our product can solve that potential problem. And if too many ideas are coming to the table that are far away from the product, we probably need to reevaluate what we're doing because the reality is we're not getting judged based on how much traffic we generate to the site. We're getting judged on SERPs. And so the traffic is nice, it's a leading indicator. We can show that to leadership and say, "Hey, we have this much organic visibility," and they're going to be like, "That's great. That's a great positive sign." But if none of that traffic is really doing anything in terms of business results, they're going to start questioning the program. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. And we spoke about this on a recent podcast about emerging content versus evergreen content and bailing those two things out and going after, even for emerging content, if the big players are there, maybe not the best place for you to go. Being really strategic, especially at the very beginning about what topics you go after will be the difference maker between burning through resources that you don't really have or being effective with the limited resource that you have and making sure that you're actually building that momentum we spoke about before. With that, where can people find you? Gaetano DiNardi: You just go to my website, officialgaetano.com. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Social? Gaetano DiNardi: Social. Yeah, I'm all over that stuff. If you guys go to LinkedIn, that's where you'll primarily find me. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, Cool. Okay. So not TikTok. Gaetano DiNardi: You just search Gaetano DiNardi. I'm not a tiktoker man. It's just not- Mordy Oberstein: It's not our thing. Again, I've never said, "Yeah, SEO marketing. But yeah, TikTok is my thing." And then we talk about TikTok, it's marketing TikTok, of course, but then actually on TikTok. Gaetano DiNardi: I know. The thing is I'm a good writer and it's easier for me to just rant on X or put together a nice little LinkedIn post or something. It takes too much work to get on camera and start talking and doing video content. I don't know. I got to be in the mood for it. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm with you. Crystal Carter: Well, thank you very much for being in the mood for this today. We really appreciate all your insights and it's very clear that you've got very clear focus of where you want to take something from zero to hero, and that's amazing. So thank you very much for sharing today. Gaetano DiNardi: Guys. Thank you so much. I don't know what to say. I feel pretty blessed and humbled to be a part of the Wix podcast. This is going to be a stamp on the- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no. Gaetano DiNardi: Stamp on the old resume here. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Gaetano DiNardi: Checkbox, accomplishment done. Mordy Oberstein: We're happy we can make this happen for you. Thanks so much for coming by. Gaetano DiNardi: All right, sounds good. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. So building SEO from scratch is one thing, but to build brand messaging from scratch is a totally different thing, but not really because it overlap in a lot of ways. But let's pretend that they don't. Okay, let's not pretend that they don't, they do. What I'm saying is let's just focus on the brand messaging part and move beyond SEO, just so we bit as we get into brand messaging and building it from scratch with the help of the great Diane Wiredu in a little segment we call The Great Beyond. So I, in case you don't know, I love brand building, I love brand messaging, I love brand positioning, I love brand marketing. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Let's bring a little bit of that into this. As we look at building messaging from scratch, which is really, really, really hard to do. Building brand from scratch, I take building a brand from scratch is harder than building SEO from scratch. And building SEO from scratch is incredibly difficult,. Crystal Carter: Right. Absolutely. And I think sometimes you have to decide which things to lean on. So I've seen people... I saw somebody on Dragon Stand, which is something like Shark Tank in America. It's like that sort of thing where you're presenting a business and they had this matcha tea brand and the guy asked him, "Why don't you have the name of your brand bigger on the can of tea?" It was like an iced tea kind of thing. And he was like, "Because matcha as a concept is bigger at the moment than our brand name. So if somebody is looking for this particular product, they will recognize the word matcha sooner than they will recognize our brand name." And sometimes you have to think about that. Sometimes you have to think about that and that balance of which thing is actually going to lead the conversation and which thing is going to be more recognizable. And sometimes that's a little bit of a tough pill to swallow because people are like, "But I want to have this thing." It's like, but people don't know you yet. Mordy Oberstein: That's always a tough pill to swallow in my opinion. And brand messaging is swallowing that pill. People don't care about the product the way that you think that they actually do, the way that you do, and just swallowing that pill. Crystal Carter: Right. And you have to recognize where the value is and people will come with you because let's say on this matcha tea thing, I love matcha tea, by the way, but if I were to try- Mordy Oberstein: I wonder if you've had a bit before. Crystal Carter: It's fantastic. I drink matcha tea, I switched from coffee to matcha tea. I highly recommend it to anyone. Anyway- Mordy Oberstein: Don't do that. No, no, no. Slow down. Do not get off coffee people. Crystal Carter: Do it. Do it. It's the best thing that ever happened to you. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to have a sip of coffee. Crystal Carter: And I think that the thing that you can do with that is that it allows you to... Let's say if I'm the matcha tea person, I'm in this audience and I go, "Oh, matcha tea." Then I can experience the brand and I can go, "Oh, I like this. I want to find out more about this." And then I will check out the brand and if I've had a good brand experience, and then I'll say, "Hey, have you heard about that?" I'll tell other people about it. I'll let people know, say, "Hey, I found this great thing. It's really, really great." I'll be out and about. And I'll say, "Oh, I'll see that. That's what I want." And I think that sometimes you can lead with that, lead with the product and the actual USP of the product, the solution that you have until you get that brand equity as you're building from scratch. Mordy Oberstein: It's a slow burn. I have so much to say about this, but let's actually get to what Diane Wiredu from Lion's Words, the founder of Lion Words has to say about building brand messaging from scratch. Here's Diane. Diane Wiredu: So the question is, how do you create brand messaging from scratch? Well, usually you're not really starting from scratch. You've probably been explaining what you do successfully somehow or somewhere to get your business to the state that it's at right now. So whether that's on your current website, on sales calls, chats, or prospect conversations, it could be in decks or proposals or even just on social media. So I'll start by saying that you've probably got a foundation. What you need to do is figure out if what you're saying about your product or service actually resonates with your market and buyers and how to better articulate the value that you deliver in a really clear, relevant and differentiated way. So for that, there are a few crucial steps. Step one is to document and evaluate your existing messaging. So I always do this with my clients. I take a look at their current messaging and bring it into one place. So what's working, what's not? Where are the gaps or inconsistencies in the story that you're telling? You want to identify some points of friction, but also opportunities. What do you want to be saying? So starting with this step, this gives you a really good point of reference and a benchmark to evaluate against. Then step two, we want to find out what your customers are saying. So go out and perform voice of customer research to discover how your customers speak about your product or service and their experience with it. So I love to set up customer interviews where I can ask open-ended questions around the before, during, and after stage. So I'll ask questions that dig into customer struggles, the decision and buying process, what their needs and jobs to be done were, and of course the results and outcomes afterwards. Step three is to go out and look at what competitors are saying. So our messaging doesn't exist in a vacuum. And aside from being clear, we also want to avoid drowning in the sea of sameness. So look at competitive alternatives and evaluate what they are and aren't saying as well. And then lastly, step four, you want to filter those findings and really narrow your messaging focus. So I like to create a messaging map, which is essentially a prioritized list of key themes, words, messages that came up in the research, and then map this against your initial evaluation and start drafting new messaging that better reflects your value as well as the customer's needs and point of view. A really important little copywriting tip is to really bring in and use those customer words as well. So this step is a bit tricky, but it's all about simplifying. Remember that you can't be known for a hundred things as a company, so find your north star and really narrow down your focus. And lastly, I guess a bonus step, step five is to test because creating messaging might be done by you and/or your team, but it's really your prospects and customers who will tell you if it works and resonates or not. So validate your messaging through message testing or user testing and then iterate on it and optimize so that you can get the biggest ROI from it. So hopefully that will help you get started with your messaging. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Diane. Make sure you follow Diane on LinkedIn. We'll link to her LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Just look for Diane Wiredu on LinkedIn, give Lion's Word a look, and we'll link to that in the show notes as well. She's also an event and host organizer for the Marketing Meetup. So shout out to the Marketing Meetup. We love them. A lot of shout-outs. There's a lot of points to get to in this, and I'll say first off, one of the points people don't realize about messaging and something that she hit on is that I find that good messaging is the vertex of what your users need and who you are. And it's a convergence of those two things together. And I think what brands often don't get right is often they lean too into who they are or too far into who their audience is and what their audience needs, but don't connect that to who they are either. And that's finding that sweet spot is what you really ultimately want because what you're trying to do when you're building a brand is really trying to create a connection. So it has to be part of you and part of your audience together in that, in order for there to be a conversation or there be a connection, it can just be one or the other one. And the last thing I wanted to say, or one of the last things, I have a million things to say, but the last thing I want to say before I hand it over to Crystal is messaging frameworks when you're getting started are great. And to what she's talking about there about refining that and doing focus groups and really understanding what people want and who you are. All that stuff is great. I do find though, as you start getting things rolling, and as your brand starts evolving, as you mature, as you get past the starting up phase from scratch, messaging framework can also become a crutch and it's something to watch out for. Messaging frameworks are great for working at scale, especially in larger companies because you cannot talk to everybody all the time and all the different people all the time about what the USPS are, how you want to... You need to have some framework. What nearly happens though is as you use those frameworks to scale things, you lose touch with the actual user, the actual needs and the actual pain points and things can become a little bit templatized. So you need to find a good balance between scaling and actually being in tune and having your finger on the pulse, which you can't scale. There's no way to scale that in my personal opinion. So yes, frameworks are great, but as things start to evolve, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself with the frameworks and relying on them as a crutch. Crystal Carter: She talked about refining testing and things, and I think that really ties in with what you're saying as well. These shouldn't be static. They should evolve with your brand because your brand will evolve. Your brand is a living, breathing thing and will evolve. And certainly with digital marketing, with SEO, you will be able to get actual feedback on that in real time, essentially. So if a new story breaks and people want to talk about your brand in a different way, then your brand positioning will evolve. So for instance, I mean with Wix, we had this last year, people started talking about AI and Wix was like, "No, actually we are big in the game on AI, and we have been for a long time and started putting that information more to the fore. Another prime example is there's a drink called Lucozade, which exists in England, and it's a little bit like Gatorade. And back in the day it was marketed as the brand was medicinal. So it came in glass bottles and it had very medicinal packaging and stuff because it had electrolytes, it was the kind of thing that you would have after you'd been- Mordy Oberstein: Like coke, literally like Coke. Both the drink and the drug were medicinal. Crystal Carter: So yeah, so people thought of it as a medicinal thing. And then later on people started realizing that athletes were having it because it replaced electrolytes, and so they started marketing it as a sports drink, and that is people listening to how the audience is responding to their brand. And as she said, this is something you should see how users are responding to it, how your audience is responding to your brand. I also liked what she was saying about you're not really starting from scratch. You have input. You have data on how people respond to your brand from sales calls and from going to conferences and talking to people at expos and from talking about your brand, explaining what you do to your mom. Does your mom actually understand what you do? Can you summarize the brand of your company in a couple of words? That's something that you refine and that's something that's really, really important. If you're able to do that really, really quickly, then that means you've really nailed the essence of your brand. And I think also what you were talking about, about the relationship between what can you do for me? That sort of thing. What can you do for me? Who are you? Do you understand who you are? And do I understand who you are and do you understand who I am? I think sometimes there's a thing, it's like it's not necessarily that I don't have confidence in you but sometimes it's like... Not you personally Mordy, but- Mordy Oberstein: You're completely right. Crystal Carter: ...I do. But I think sometimes you have a situation, like I mentioned Dragons Den earlier, but something that happens on that show is they'll say, "Oh, I'm investing in you as a person," or whatever. And I think it's hard to understand what that means, but sometimes with the brand, it's a question of demonstrating that you have confidence in yourself, and if you don't have confidence in yourself, how can you expect somebody else to also have confidence in you? So it might be that you think this brand is great, but it doesn't seem like they think they're great, which makes you worry what they know that you don't know. So I think it's really important that you're confident, but maybe not necessarily overly so, but just confident in your capabilities and aware of your competitors and things like that. And I think that that's something that's really, really useful. Dan had some great points. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. One thing I'll say real quick before we have to move on, and never really when you're going to start thinking about messaging, you're going to bring up tone like what's our tone in our messaging going to be? I will say that the biggest mistake I see people make is the tone is simply a list of adjectives when really tone is actually a way of communicating with your audience in nonverbal ways or less like subtle, more sublime verbal ways. It's basically asking in what way and more importantly, on what emotional level do we want to communicate with our audience? And once you understand that's what tone actually is, you'll immediately realize that it's more than a few adjectives. Anyway, you know who's got a great tone? I always find this tone very fun, really fun, uplifting and exciting. Crystal Carter: I do too. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's Barry, Barry Schwartz, it's Barry Schwarz time on the SERP's Up podcast. When we get into the SEO news, I'm going to say, "Take it away, Barry," at this point. Crystal Carter: All right, go RustyBrick, go. Mordy Oberstein: Snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, three articles for you this week. Two from Search Engine Roundtable. One from Search Engine Land. All three from Barry Schwartz, who clearly has a monopoly on the SEO news. First up from SEO Roundtable, Google Popular Opinion search carousel. What about the Google Popular Opinions search carousel? Let me help you, Barry. Google tests popular Opinion search carousel. As spotted by Brodie Clark was a great follow, follow him over an X. Brodie was searching for Sony XM4, which is a pair of headphones and underneath an Amazon listing, got a carousel that was called Popular Opinions, which presented a series of cards that were review articles of the headphones. Barry pointed out that he saw a similar test a year ago with a section on the cervical perspectives and opinions. What's interesting though is that back then the results Barry got back were from CNET and Gadget, CNN, big, big name sites. In Brodie's case, the results seem a little bit more niche, which I think is interesting. What I think is happening here is Google looking for a way to put results up on the top of the SERP from more specifically topically specific websites that are not just the usual big names. There's been a lot of controversy around Google just defaulting to the big name websites and is that really healthy and are those results really good, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? I don't want to get into the controversy here right now, but what I do see is with a popular opinion is if the results are more niche and more topically specific than they used to be with the tests a year ago, that to me seems like Google is trying to find a way to implement a scenario where there are more topically focused websites that offer perhaps better content up at the top of the SERP. So I like that one. Okay. Also from seoroundtable.com and also from Barry Schwartz because who else would it be? Well, I guess technically Glenn Gabe does write once in a while for SEO Roundtable. By the way, Barry, more Glenn on SEO Roundtable. I like that little diversity of authors there. Anyway, Barry writes Early Signs, Google search ranking update on February 28th and 29th. There's been a... Well, it looks like almost like massive increase in ring fluctuations, not just on the 20th and 29th, but a few days before that. Also, it looks to be like 25th. So a series of ring volatility. Glenn Gabe who will try to link to the show notes on this as well, walk through some cases you've seen of massive reversals and so forth. Sometimes these kind of things could be a precursor to an official algorithm update. So who knows? As of the recording of this new section, it looks like things have calmed down a little bit. By the time when we release this episode, things could be spiking again. Who knows? It's a game of roulette. Onto searchengineland.com. But again, sticking with Barry Schwartz, new Google structured data carousels beta. What about them, Barry? Google announces new structured data carousels beta. Well, they didn't announce it, they added documentation. I digress. Google add in new documentation for a new beta carousel that basically looks when you have, let's say events or products or whatever it might be, but you have multiple iterations of them. So imagine a collection page or an event page with multiple events. If you want to show those multiple items, there's a new carousel that Google might implement, and you can use structurally in a markup to be eligible to appear in this little carousel that is attached to your result. It's not a separate independent cert feature carousel, but imagine you see this often with, let's say, news aggregators where if you search for something related to, say, sports news, ESPN might have a carousel, like multiple stories there. It's like that. Where in your organic result, you'll have multiple swipeable carousel cards. Basically this item list structured data needs to be attached or combined with something that supports the items. So you need to have product markup on there if you have a series of multiple products, right? If you are a local business and your page has multiple, I don't know, vacation rentals listed on the page, so you have to have local business markup or a subtype for a vacation rental listed on there. So it's not like it's independent thing, it's a markup to show the items or the items of what. So there's going to be multiple markups on the page. And with that, I'm done. That is your Snappy news for this week. Thank you, Barry, for your contributions and for your great headlines. Well, that was always fun. Thank you, Barry and the other contributors to the SEO News world out there. Crystal Carter: Yeah, thank you very much for keeping us up to date with everything that's going on. It's like, it's wild though here. There's a lot of SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Lot of ins and outs, sort of what have yous. Different people involved. Speaking of people, speaking of people, that brings us to our follow of the week this week, which is the one, the only Lily Ugbaja who's over at Lily U-G-B-A-J-A over on X slash Twitter, whatever you want to call it. She's up first off contributor to the Wix SEO Hub. Crystal Carter: Contributor to the Wix SEO Hub. She's fantastic. She also has a great TED Talk online as well. One of the things she talks about on the Wix SEO Hub is how she built up our website from scratch and built up all the traffic from scratch and built that up from zero. That's one of the reasons why she's the follow of the week, and she talks about a lot of different tactics there and competitors and pulling things through. And I think she talks about being a little bit scrappy in the marketing, and I think that that's something that's really important when you're trying to get a brand going. I think Glenn Gabe has said, when trying to recover from an algorithm update, throw the kitchen sink at it, do all of the things- Mordy Oberstein: This is welcome wisdom by the way. Just want to shout out to Glen. Crystal Carter: Yeah, so Glen, Lily, everybody, Lily Ugbaja. And I think that it's important to, when you're thinking about your brand, get in there, get stuck in and move things forward until you get to the place where you want to be. And Lily definitely takes that approach. So yeah, she's a great follow. Do that. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. And she takes a content first approach. I think people realize your content is your brand. That's you talking. Some random blog post about whatever, that's actually you communicating with your audience and they're looking how you're doing that. So watch your tone. As we said before, I don't like your tone young man. Listen to my children, never. Crystal Carter: I found a great blog. I don't know if we have time for another tangent. Mordy Oberstein: Always. Crystal Carter: Okay, so I was looking at sheds and I found this great blog. Mordy Oberstein: Like wood sheds, like the store tool? Crystal Carter: Like a shed in your garden. I found this great blog, and my question was, should I build a shed by a wall? And the article that I found was the general thing you would find on a blog, like a marketing blog, but it was so well written, me and my kids, I read it aloud to my family because it was so- Mordy Oberstein: Like a bedtime story? Crystal Carter: It was just so well written. I was like, "Should I build a shed by a wall?" And it was like, "Do you want to build a shed by a wall? That's a bad idea. You shouldn't do that." But then the heading, so they gave all the reasons, and then the last heading was like, "But I still want to build my shed by a wall." And it was so well written. And after that thinking, speaking of tone from that, I get that these people are knowledgeable. They know what they're talking about because there was definitely knowledge in this blog, but they also have a sense of humor. And they also saw me coming. They know. Mordy Oberstein: They know. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: 99.9% of all communication is nonverbal. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that there's definitely something in there, your tone of voice and what you're saying about your brand being... Your blog being your brand, your content being your brand. It's absolutely true. Mordy Oberstein: I only have one question for you. Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: You know what's coming, right? Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: Did you build a shed by the wall? Yeah. Crystal Carter: So I had a shed that was by a wall, and it's causing me problems, and I was trying to figure out a way to get around it, but apparently you can't. So basically note to anybody who's listening, if you have a shed, do not build it by a wall because it will cause damp and the shed will fall down. So don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: Next question. Are you rebuilding the shed yourself? Crystal Carter: I do not have the skills. I have- Mordy Oberstein: I would like to see this. Crystal Carter: I do not have the skills. I mean, it would be like the House of Jack- Mordy Oberstein: Please. No, please do it and like live, like video blogging. Crystal Carter: No, no, I'm not doing that. But I have a professional person who is assisting me with this. He's a very nice man named James. Thanks, James. Mordy Oberstein: Is he your husband? Crystal Carter: No. We are artsy. We don't build things with tools. We don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: We build knowledge. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we read books and stuff, but not about sheds. Mordy Oberstein: Well, apparently you do read books about... Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: All right. Well, I guess you got to do 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 a new episode as we dive into what you never knew about Local pacs. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at Wix.com/seo/learn. Looking into more about SEO, check it all the great content, webinars and resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guest, at Wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, piece of 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

Is programmatic SEO a good option for your site? The benefit can be huge but what about content quality and accuracy? Are you looking to create content at scale dynamically? Should you be? If so, when and how do you provide unique value along the way? Wix’s Crystal Carter and programmatic SEO curmudgeon Mordy Oberstein give their take on the benefits and pitfalls of programmatic SEO. Paul Andre De Vera gives his tips on keeping things personal when working programmatically so that you can still speak to your audience naturally. Don’t change the program… Dive into this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast all about programmatic SEO! Back Getting with the programmatic SEO program Is programmatic SEO a good option for your site? The benefit can be huge but what about content quality and accuracy? Are you looking to create content at scale dynamically? Should you be? If so, when and how do you provide unique value along the way? Wix’s Crystal Carter and programmatic SEO curmudgeon Mordy Oberstein give their take on the benefits and pitfalls of programmatic SEO. Paul Andre De Vera gives his tips on keeping things personal when working programmatically so that you can still speak to your audience naturally. Don’t change the program… Dive into this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast all about programmatic SEO! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 39 | May 24, 2023 | 34 MIN 00:00 / 34:13 This week’s guests Paul Andre De Vera You’ll find Paul Andre de Vera speaking on podcasts/webinars, looking for the next great place to devour a delicious rib-eye steak, and occasionally sipping a glass of whiskey. All while coaching, serving clients, and producing the SEO Video Show. 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 happened in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of Brand SEO at Wix. Joined by Better Head SEO Communications. The person who knows all about all of the things most of the time. Because if I say all of the time, I'll get a snarky look. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: There's no snarky looks. It's only happy looks. Mordy Oberstein: I say, you know all of the things, but everything. Like you're like, oh no, that's a lot of pressure Mordy. I don't like that. So... Crystal Carter: That's true. They say a man who knows something, knows that he knows nothing at all, or at least that's what Erica Badu said that one time. She's very wise. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, she's wise. I think Socrates said like, the only difference between me and you is that I know what I don't know. Crystal Carter: There you go. There you go. Mordy Oberstein: And you're a narcissistic, self-centered... I think that was the implication, what he was saying. Crystal Carter: Erica Badu and Socrates obviously like two grateful... Mordy Oberstein: He's a pod. Crystal Carter: Designs entirely. Mordy Oberstein: This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can combine the power of Python and Wix's full stack dev tool Velo to build out programmatic dynamic content for yourself. Behold the full-on nerdiness and power of Wix. And if you don't believe you can do it, Colt Sliva over on Glassdoor did in his article all about just that because he literally did just that. We'll link to it in the show notes because today, guess what we're talking about? Programmatic SEO. That's right. We're talking about programmatic SEO as in what the heck is programmatic SEO? Is programmatic SEO a zero-sum game? Can everyone get with the program? What works, what doesn't work, and what to be wary of when doing programmatic SEO. And all-time SEO, all star and knowledge bomb dropper, Paul Andre De Vera will join us, share his tips on keeping things personal when working programmatically, and we'll dive into a special tool around programmatic SEO and beyond. As I already mentioned, Wix is Velo, and of course we have the snappiest of SEO News and who should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So program, get your program here as episode number 39 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you get with the program, the programmatic SEO program that is. I went full on, I'm a vendor at a baseball stadium. Crystal Carter: Well, I mean, they're very good at their jobs. I do love that when they, the guy's got the train. They- Mordy Oberstein: Programs! Crystal Carter: Who wants? I'm like, yeah- Mordy Oberstein: Hear hear! At Bryant, that's like, we had our stand-up Brighten SEO. We were giving out beer. I'm like, this is a perfect time to be a baseball stadium and a beer here. They don't do that anymore. You have to go to the stands to get your, that was half the fun. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Guy walking around yelling, hotdog! And then you have to pass it through the row to the person who actually ordered the hotdog. So everyone's hands all over your hotdog. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's all very communal. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Very authentic. Sometimes you buy a thing just because of the experience. I used to go to green grocers and he just had platitudes for everything. I'd be like, oh, can I buy some grapes? He's like, all right, sweetheart, can I have some oranges? All right treacle. And what about some satsumas or something's like, oh, all right my pet. And I just kept buying things just to see if he ran out of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Nice, nice. Crystal Carter: He never did. I don't know how, but yeah, I found it quite amusing. Mordy Oberstein: That is an amazing set. It's almost like Trader Joe's. When you go to Trader Joe's, they have a whole experience, ringing the bell, or wearing the pirate shirt. You go just for that. Crystal Carter: My Trader Joe's experience has never been like that. I've never worn a pirate shirt. Mordy Oberstein: No, I don't wear the pirate shirt, but they're wearing pirate shirts and stuff and Hawaiian shirts and pirate patches and all... It's all thematic at Trader Joe's. Crystal Carter: Thematic programmatic. What are we talking about today? Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so looking to create hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of pages of content that follow the same template or format? Then programmatic SEO might for you. It also might not be for you, but we'll get to that in due course. So programmatic SEO, if I had to define it while standing on one foot, should I stand on, I will stand on one foot. I'm sitting down. I don't know how to do that. It's when you pull data or content in from a database into a content template, and then by natural result you have a heap of pages for your website. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: While some would argue that e-com, Kevin Indig, isn't a case for programmatic SEO, I would perhaps argue and say that it is a really easy case to point to about using programmatic SEO wisely. You pull things in like the product name, the description, which you can use for your title tag and meta description respectively as well, and all the naming from the inventory database. And you plug that in with your usual shipping and return policies you have on every page. And you basically have spun up programmatic content for who knows how many number of product pages without actually typing a single word. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: That's programmatic. I feel like some will disagree. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of people who are using this for e-commerce, incredibly, incredibly productively. Wayfair is someone who used programmatic SEO and has used some of Google's own tools for some of them work in there and they're crushing it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Hey, look. It works and it's good. Crystal Carter: I think it's entirely the kind of thing where you have something that has a lot of attributes, that has a lot of structured data, has a lot of things. For instance, if you think about a sofa, you're going to talk about the material. You're going to talk about how many seats it has. You're going to talk about whether it reclines, whether it has Bluetooth. I saw a sofa with Bluetooth- Mordy Oberstein: No. We were just shopping for a new sofa. Our children have destroyed it. And we had it for 16 years. I love it. It's great. I'm going to keep it, but not in the living room because I can't part with it. Crystal Carter: That's such a dad thing to do. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And there's like all these, I just want a sofa. And it's so much stuff. Sorry, sidetrack. Crystal Carter: Right. But I think when you have a product that has lots of attributes, and particularly if you're thinking about something like Google Merchant Center encourages you, it requires you to add in all of those attributes to your data sets, to the information that you have about your products anyway. So it makes sense to take that data, take those attributes, take that information and use it to generate content in a programmatic way. And so e-commerce is absolutely perfect for this. And it also means that you're much more consistent with your product pages when you're creating your product pages so that everything has the same information- Mordy Oberstein: Which makes making changes and fixing things. And it's also easier. So just one last point before we actually dive into the thick of it. Often is what I think separates our programmatic SEO as a content strategy from regular traditional SEO is that often when you're doing this, your goal is not to rank well for a specific page or specific keyword word, but to spin up so much content that it doesn't really matter. That if you have a hundred thousand pages ranking nine or 10 on the SERP, you'll get all of that same kind of traffic or the amount of traffic that you would've had if you were ranking number one with a far fewer pages kind of thing. So that's of course is kind of tricky from a strategic point of view. And all of the metrics might not be the same or as important when you're working programmatically and dynamically. So that's another thing to kind of keep in mind. But that's sort of the general gist on programmatic SEO. I for one, just going to say this at the onset. I'm a bit of a programmatic SEO, curmudgeon, even though I do think it's a great place to test things, but that's just me. Crystal, what about you? Crystal Carter: I think that it gives you the opportunity to serve content for really long tail keywords. This is something that Miriam Myriam Jessier talks about in one of the articles that we have on the SEO hub. And because you're able to use the information about your products, the entities associated with your products, the keywords associated with your products as fodder for content creation in a programmatic way, it's easy to spin up very long tail, very specific keyword categories or category pages or product pages for specific things. And so I think programmatic SEO is great when it solves a problem. Like any SEO. All of the SEO that you're doing is all about adding value for users. That's at the end of the day, adding value for users. And Google's measuring whether or not you're adding value for users. So when they ranking, that's a reflection of the value that they can ascertain that you add for users. So Etsy does this programmatic SEO, Wayfair I mentioned as well. If you're able to drill down into those Etsy keywords, gold earrings with leopard print trim in a hoop shape, and I'm looking specifically for those things, or shoes in this size and this color of this thing. And I'm able to drill all the way down and not have to filter through all of your pages and not have to navigate to everything, but to get exactly what I want from the SERP, then absolutely that's where programmatic SEO wins. And I think that that's where programmatic SEO really, really succeeds. Mordy Oberstein: So let me ask, when would you specifically recommend or not recommend programmatic SEO? Crystal Carter: If you have a large amount of content and you have a large number of products, and also if you have the tooling to do so, as well and to maintain it, I think also a lot of businesses that are working in a sort of high product turnover, like fast moving consumer goods space, they're going to need to do that because they need to be able to spin up content straight away so that they can sort of say, let's capitalize on say a trend that's happening straight away, or let's take this massive catalog. Because I've worked in, I previously worked for a toy manufacturer and we had all of our products, that we manufactured and we had the one, all these giant spreadsheets and all of that sort of stuff. And if you are trying to manually implement making all these changes to every particular product, then it's impossible. It is an impossible task. So when you have a big product set, then programmatic SEO is a fantastic one. Also, if it's something that you're seeing that your competitors are doing, and you might want to think, I need to keep pace because this is what consumers are going to be expecting to see. So it's always important to think about not just how people are searching on your site or how people are arriving on your site, but how the wider ecosystem is also experiencing a search. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point because it doesn't, first up, doesn't have to be zero-sum. It doesn't mean I only doing programmatic SEO. If you see that competitors doing it for certain types of keywords, certain types of pages or whatever it is, and you can do that for that. And if you want to take a demonstrate for different pages, you can do that for that. You could also programmatically build on certain elements of a page. Why wouldn't you? For example, on the e-comm side. Let's say for whatever reason you want to write custom descriptions. God bless. The shipping and the return policy. If you're not just reusing that on every page programmatically, I don't know why you wouldn't, for example. So that's a very hyperbolic example, but it's not zero-sum. You can use programmatic SEO in certain places on your website. You can programmatically build certain parts of the page. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. But I will say, the way I think about it as well, going back to my point of being an SEO curmudgeon about programmatic SEO is I kind of view it AI. AI generated content. It's very, very similar in my mind because you're talking about the possibility of running into creating a lot of low quality content. Or a lot of un-targeted content. And I feel like sometimes you do need to be careful. Cases where the language structure does matter. So for example, in the product review space. To programmatically build out product review pages, if you're a website that has, that's your whole thing, you're like a CNET and you're programmatically just like you're taking certain inputs, taking output certain inputs and creating pros and cons list out of them whatever you're doing. I think that's going to be a space where you have to be careful. Where you might build it out programmatically, but somehow supplement it at the same time. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. I think that goes back to your point of having a mix of programmatic content and I guess more manually created content. But I think that essentially we're working in a space where a lot of times we have massive data sets that we're trying to wrangle both from an SEO point of view, but also from a sort of just general marketing point of view. And I think that the efficiency that the programmatic SEO potentially combined with it, because this is the other thing that a lot of people are combining programmatic SEO and AI content, particularly for content generation. So for instance, you would say, I have a product with this attribute, this attribute, that attribute and that attribute. And then it'll write a product description for that particular, then you can use generative AI to write a product description for that content. And that is something that is going to be saving a lot of time. And also, again, producing a lot of consistency with those things. Though again, as we have with any AI thing, editing is key and QA is crucial. So checking over those things and making sure that you're not publishing things, that AI generated content that isn't accurate and making sure that you've trained your prompts so that they accurately reflect what your products do, how they work. So I think that we did a webinar on chat GPT and AI writers and how to use them. And one of the really good examples that Ross Hudgins showed was giving a generative tool, a dataset, for instance, say a product dataset and asking them to create a piece of copy based on that. And I think that if you're able to figure out the best prompt that works for your type of data set, then that can help you to scale content very quickly. So I think that it can help you to, could connect with niches really quickly. It can help you to spin up a lot of things. But also I think from a programmatic point of view, if you're talking about thin content, or maybe not necessarily low quality content, but maybe sort of fairly repetitive content, and Google talks about this, they show a case study for Wayfair, for instance, about this, for ads. So for instance, if you're a locksmith and you're working generally in New York, you might want a PPC landing page that's locksmith for the Bronx, locksmith for Brooklyn, locksmith for Westchester, locksmith, for Manhattan, for Harlem, for wherever. And spinning those out programmatically? Yeah, brilliant, because you're not indexing them anyway and you just need them to match what the query is that you're serving for your ads. And this is something that Google is advertising on their Think With Google, there's a great Think With Google example- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, on the ads side. It makes absolute total sense to do that. And even on the SEO side, a lot of it's the same thing. If it's a local pages go, most of that page's content is going to be very, very, very similar. And it's a matter of going in and changing a couple things around here and there and make it a little bit better and unique then do that. One of the other things that kind of touch on, something you were talking about that I wanted to quickly bring up is that when you do this, it's a great environment to test things. So if you want to have a certain way of constructing the page or certain type of description, it's a way of figuring out what really works, what doesn't work. Because you're working with A, a huge amount of page, so the data you're going to get back is going to be way more accurate than, oh, I have a couple of pages made a title tag change here. Is that really, so you are in an environment that already lends itself the testing where the results are way more accurate equals make those changes much quicker and it helps you drive. Okay. Here's how I think Google's kind of understanding me, which is kind of what Colt did in the post that we mentioned before. He spun up a website programmatically and he wanted with the idea of seeing, okay, what sticks? How is Google understanding this content and is this the right way to go with it or is it not the right way to go? So he spun up the programmatic content as a way of seeing what direction to take the final draft, which I thought was really interesting. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Testing is absolutely crucial because Google will very often look at pages as a page type. So for instance, if you see a search console error, they will say, here's an example of a page like this. If you have 45,000 product pages, they're not going to show you the error for every single, the in-detail for every single product page. But they'll say, here's an example of one that you have. And then you can look at that. And so if you submit it up programmatically, then the fix, you might make a big mistake at once, but you can also make a big fix at once. That's really useful to being able to test that. And also, if you've ever done CRO testing, one of the things that can sometimes be a challenge, particularly when you're doing one page at a time, is actually getting the traffic volume to get any kind of data that's of any use. So if you're spinning up, many many pages have the same basic format, the same kind of iterations in terms of your CRO, then you're going to be able to get a lot more data more quickly than if you were to do it one page at a time. I think one of the other benefit, I can't remember if Colt touched on this as well, but one of the other benefits of programmatic SEO is that it's really easy to align it with things like schema markup, for instance. So I'm think I've mentioned them before, but I remember I judged as a search award and one of the entries was from Dairy Queen. And one of the things I love, they spun up all of these and they programmatically did this. They spun up all of these pages for their Dairy Queen locations and it has all of the attributes and they're aligned with the things that are on Google business profile. They're aligned with the things that are in their structured data and they're aligned with the things that are on their page. And so you can see that consistency going all the way through, what the hours are, where the location is, what the amenities are, whether they have delivery or pickup, or whether they accept credit cards and all of that sort of stuff. So they're able to spin those all up and they're also able to roll them all out to multiple channels. So you get all your pages that are marked up in the same way, and you have all the schema that works with all of those. And then you have all of those are also attributed to each of those Google business profiles. So what you get with programmatic SEO is the ability to use your content as a data set and to be able to use it consistently across multiple channels, which is epic. Mordy Oberstein: So taking into a completely different direction, going back to what we were talking about before about trying to add a personal touch, all your programmatic content to help us with that is the host of the SEO Video Show great YouTube show. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: At SEO. Knowledge Bombs. Crystal Carter: Fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: It's fantastic. Here's Paul Andre De Vera about when working with content at scale, how do you ensure you keep the right tone and personal touch with your content? Paul Andre De Vera: Maintaining a personal touch in your content is important to building a strong personal brand voice and establishing connection with your audience. One effective way I achieve this is by writing the way I speak. Recording yourself, taking and getting it transcribed can be an awesome exercise to help you capture your personal tone and language. You can then use transcriptions as a basis for your content, editing and refining it as needed to make sure it meets your personal language and fits within the context of your content strategy. However, when working with tools like Grammarly, it's important not to accept every suggestion blindly. These tools can help identify and correct grammar and spelling errors, and they may also try to substitute words and phrases that are part of your natural speaking style. I personally like using words such as, awesome, love it, fabulous. These are examples of words that Grammarly may flag, but is part of my personal language. Incorporating personal touches like these can help your content feel more genuine and relatable to your audience, building a stronger connection and establishing your brand as approachable and authentic. Just be your silly self consistently online just as you are offline. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Paul. Definitely. Again, check out Paul on Twitter at Paul Andre and check out the SEO Video Show Crystal Carter: On YouTube. Mordy Oberstein: On YouTube. Look, by the way, his point about Grammarly. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: I feel that in every bone of my body. Crystal Carter: Yo. Mordy Oberstein: Because sometimes it's like, change this change. I'm like, no. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: No. Crystal Carter: No. I'm not changing that. Mordy Oberstein: Not changing that. That's a whole linchpin. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Like Grammarly, that's my vibes. That's just my style. That's how I do it. Also with Grammarly, it's obviously they're making it so they and talk about Grammarly all the time. But I remember reading, I'm sure I mentioned this before Toni Morrison had a book and she just, she's, it was one sentence for the whole page and it was beautiful and it was fantastic. But I also say, and and and and and. And sometimes I'm trying to get some rhythm. Mordy Oberstein: Like, like, like, like. Crystal Carter: I do say like. Mordy Oberstein: I'm talking about myself. I say it all the time. Crystal Carter: I'm from California. That's how we do... it is what it is. But I think that, yeah, what he's saying about adding in, making sure that you keep your tone of voice is really important. I think about brands that have a tone and it's really important. So for instance, MailChimp has a tone that they just sort of have a tone, even when it's a small little piece of micro copy, there's definitely a tone of voice to it. There's a couple of other brands that I can think of that are a little bit, there's brands that are a little bit salty sometimes. So the- Mordy Oberstein: Wendy's? Crystal Carter: Duolingo can be a little bit salty sometimes. Duolingo has a very dry sense of humor as a brand, and that's kind of their style. And even sometimes to the point where you can recognize the style, you can recognize someone from their styles. And I think with some of the AI things, like Google I/O thing announced that Google Cloud is making it so that you can use your own data sets to train information. So it might be that you add your language style guide into something to maybe move that into programmatic SEO. There's a lot of moving parts going on at the moment, but I think that making sure that you've got your clear tone of voice when you're spinning things up programmatically is, yeah, really important. Mordy Oberstein: Super important. This again, it tells all the time, and I like my soapbox where brand marketing overlaps with SEO, it's such an under discussed undervalued point. And it's something that I know we talk about, you need to align with your designers and your devs, but a lot of times you need to align more with your brand marketers because they're the ones defining how you're going to have to speak publicly. And if they see the programmatic content and they see that it's not in line with the brand tone of voice, they're not going to be happy. So better get that done beforehand as opposed to after hand, which is, I know not a word, but it definitely- Crystal Carter: After hand? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Why would you say beforehand and then after the fact? Makes no sense. Let's be- Crystal Carter: Should it be before fact and- Mordy Oberstein: It should either be before fact or it should be after hand. Crystal Carter: After... Nobody's saying after hand, it's- Mordy Oberstein: Now we are. Crystal Carter: Stop trying to make fetch happen. Mordy Oberstein: So anyway, after hand that, speaking of programmatic content and SEO, we already mentioned cold sliver and how we use a combination of Python and a little tool we call Velo to dynamically create pages at scale. So we figured we jump into this fellow called Velo with a programmatic edition of Tool Time. Velo is a full stack dev tool inbuilt into Wix. So you can enable dev mode, which by the way, Phil should be getting a Mortal Combat... Enable dev mode. Crystal Carter: We should talk to the team and be like, what we need is an explosion though. It goes... Dev mode. Mordy Oberstein: And just like a firebomb goes off on the page. Crystal Carter: Instead of deploying, you should just go finish him. Mordy Oberstein: Dev mode activated. Finish him. Crystal Carter: And then when you run your code, it should go ….. Mordy Oberstein: I'll see if we can add to the roadmap. Crystal Carter: Okay, I'll do that. I'll do that. Mordy Oberstein: I'll advocate. This is why we advocate very much a lot internally. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: I feel we should add this to our list of things to advocate for. Crystal Carter: Dev mode. Mordy Oberstein: Activate it. Okay. So yeah, back on track. Velo. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So Velo. So Velo, I love Velo. I love Velo so much. Velo is absolutely brilliant. It is a JavaScript like playground essentially within Wix. And you can build JavaScript things all the way through it. And there's lots of fantastic stuff. So we have something called the content manager, and essentially you can take a spreadsheet, it's a spreadsheet sort of format, and it works really well for programmatic- Mordy Oberstein: Programmatic SEO. Because you're connected to a data set and there's your content. Crystal Carter: You can also connect to external datasets, you can add your own datasets, you can connect to other databases as well. And there's lots of tools for Tree to be able to do that. And basically you can use it for, you can use it with JavaScript to create all sorts of fantastic things. So Mark Preston is somebody who created an SEO jobs board, for instance, using Velo. And so you're able to create tools there. And I've also created a few tools myself. I created a Bingo game on my website. Mordy Oberstein: Did you really? You used it to get a Bingo game. I did not know that. How did I not know that? Crystal Carter: I need a bingo game for, it's like a conference SEO bingo game. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's right, you did. I do remember that. Okay, fine. I'm not a horrible friend. Crystal Carter: So the other thing that's great about Velo is that Velo has, so you might say, well, but I'm not a JavaScript person. I don't know all the things. That's okay. Because first of all, our documentation is extremely extensive. Second of all, within Velo, they have tons of guidance in the actual code. So if you input the code incorrectly, it will tell you. It will give you an error or it'll give you a little thing that says, hey, you should have this, or there should be a variable, or you should update that part. So that's really useful. The other thing that's great is that you can use it with an LOM. So for instance, Bard. Bard is trained on loads of bits of code, so is Chat GPT. So I have, I've created something and my JavaScript is, okay. And that's generous. My JavaScript is okay. But I was able to go, I was basically able to take some of the guidance that I got from Velo. So Velo says, oh, this bit of code isn't quite right. And I'm like, okay. So I popped that into GPT and I was like, hey, GPT, I got this error for this code, but I wanted to do this. And GPT was like, yeah, try this bit of code. So then I popped it back into Velo and then I got a different error and then I put that back into GPT, and by the time I'd gone back and forth between these two things, I was able to build something that was amazing. So what's really cool is that we have... It's got so many different functionalities in it. There's something called Velo Examples, which is a collection of lots of really cool things that people have built on Velo. And on each of those pages there is, there's the code, there's a demo, and you can copy the code from it. The other thing that's great about Velo is that the code is transferable. So for instance, we have lots, it's all sort of API based, and we have a library that's Wix SEO. So if you have a piece of code that is for changing the canonical, we had this situation, didn't we Mordy? Mordy, you were like, oh- Mordy Oberstein: A bomb, A podcast website. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Somebody was like, oh, I want to change the canonical on this podcast change. I was like, oh, you can do this. He was like, oh, maybe you can set up a call. I was like, no, literally just copy and paste this code. Mordy Oberstein: The code, yeah. Crystal Carter: Copy and paste this code and put it on that page and it will work because it's all sort of set up to work. Mordy Oberstein: You could do that dynamically. You could dynamically as structured data to whatever you want, kind of set up pages, you want to do it. There's so much you can do with it. Crystal Carter: And you can create your own variable. So if you have a piece of content on your page, let's say you've got the word or something, you can create a variable. You can name that variable, you can use that variable in your code further down. We also have connections into NPM. So there's like lots of API integrations that are built in Google sheets and Google Maps, for instance. But you can also connect into NPM. I literally love Velo. The team behind Velo have nurtured this and have spent so much time making it fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: And there's so much content, by the way. If you, we'll link to a bunch of it. But there's an endless amount of content they've put out there... It's a cavernous library of content Velo, which we'll link to it. It's awesome. Crystal Carter: And I think the thing that's great is working with those things, but also, particularly if you're a noob, like me, to JavaScript, is that the things like GPT, like Bard that are trained on code, you can say in JavaScript, how do I do this? So if there's something that's specific, you can also back up some of the things with general information about JavaScript and things like that. So it's fantastic. And it also opens up a whole world of functionality on Wix, and I think it's going to be fantastic as we go into the headless space. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I was going to say it. It's perfect. Because we've just gotten headless for this. For example, the CMS that you just mentioned. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: You can use that. It's headless. You can take that and you can plug that into your front end, and you can use the Wix function, that CMS functionality kind of wherever. Crystal Carter: And the things that with the headless Wix situation, a lot of the things that they leaned on in the first instance are particularly lean themselves to programmatic SEO and programmatic data creation. So for instance, like the events, the bookings- Mordy Oberstein: Booking, products... Crystal Carter: Products, all of that sort of stuff, it leans itself really well... Lends itself really well to that. So between the headless space and the Velo and all of the amazing functionalities- Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot of automation you could be doing. Crystal Carter: A lot of stuff you can do. I mean, who even needs to touch it? Mordy Oberstein: Who needs humans anymore? Crystal Carter: But I think it's really great, and I think it's great to see the combination of opening up the platform more and also bringing in some of the AI elements that we have and making it really accessible to lots of different developers and lots of different development needs. Mordy Oberstein: It's really cutting edge stuff from really great people. Now you know what else is new? The actual news. So here's this week's Snappy News. Snappy news, two little juicy SEO tidbits for you this week. First up, as reported from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal, Neva, the ad free search engine announces closure. Neva was built, by the way, as a sort of a way to downplay the role of ads and search and increase the role of content creators. It had an AI chat experience, and it had a pretty good little search engine. Unfortunately will be shuttered, which is very unfortunate. You never want to see anything fail. It was a nice idea. It really does though, kind of highlight how hard it is to compete with Google. So as you see things developing in the AI world and you see, oh, Google's going down... Take a deep breath, take pause. It is very hard to compete with Google. From his royal Rustiness, the king of bricks, Mr. Rusty Brick, AKA Barry Schwartz, the fourth. Google helpful content update can demote and now promote content. As you may know, and as we've talked about here on this very podcast, Google announced that the helpful content update will be getting a revamp. This was announced at Google I/O 2023. In specific, Google said the system would help identify "hidden gems". Seeing this, friend of the show, an avid Yankees fan, Glen Gabe, asked Google search liaison Denny Sullivan, if this was an update to the current functioning of the ranking system or a new ability altogether. Denny said, "The helpful content system will be working to identify and show more hidden gems on search, along with still working to ensure unhelpful content is not performing well." So in a nutshell, the helpful content update will not only be about hitting sites with low quality, but will now have a net positive impact of uplifting the hidden gems of the web. I feel like there should be a special badge if you are one of these hidden gems of the web that says, hidden gem of the web, you could plaster on your homepage. And that is this week's Snappy News. I just got to say, I just love by the way, that when the news happens so organically like that, in this case, Glen Gabe asking a question, Barry covering it. They're great people, Glen and Barry. Speaking of people, by the way, that brings us to our follow of the week, which is, we've already mentioned him three or four times at this point. He is Glassdoor's, SEO, former member of the Wix SEO Advisory Board. He's a writer for the Web Almanac. He's Colt Sliva. Crystal Carter: He's such a nice guy. He's so smart. Mordy Oberstein: The nicest dude, right? Crystal Carter: So nice. Mordy Oberstein: The nicest guy. Crystal Carter: And so smart. I think the first time that I came across Colt was he was speaking at SMX about something very clever, and I remember watching the talk and I was like- Mordy Oberstein: It was very clever. Crystal Carter: I remember watching him. I was like, this guy knows stuff. This guy is so smart. Mordy Oberstein: I came across him the first time at, when he was at IOL rank, we were working Gareth Sussman. I think he was on my podcast I was doing at the time. I don't remember anything about- Crystal Carter: Probably. Mordy Oberstein: Probably. Crystal Carter: Probably. Mordy Oberstein: The smartest guy, the nicest guy. I worked with him obviously on the Wix SEO advisory board, but also we worked together on the SEO section, on the web almanac. He was such a resource. I will tell you right now that Web Almanac, or at least the SEO section, would not have happened if it weren't for Colt. Crystal Carter: The other thing I would say about Colt is that he has such a healthy curiosity and people say, oh, what do you need to be in SEO? Like, do you need this skill or that skill or that skill. I'm like, fundamentally, you need to be curious. You need to be the kind of person who would talk about- Mordy Oberstein: John Mueller. Crystal Carter: Yeah, you need to be the kind of person who wants to go down the rabbit hole who wants, hears like, oh, there's a new toilet. They're like, what does it do? What happens if I do this? What if I do that? What if I look at this? Mordy Oberstein: You change the JavaScript around on the toilet, what happens? Crystal Carter: Exactly. And Colt, he likes to build things. He likes to explore things, and he's super approachable and super interested. So yeah, can't say nice enough things about Colt, like do follow Colt. Mordy Oberstein: Don't just follow Colt, interact with Colt, talk to Colt. Crystal Carter: Tell him that we sent you. Tell him that Mordy and Crystal sent you. Mordy Oberstein: Talk to him. He's on Twitter at, S I G N O R C O L T. Of course, we'll link to his Twitter profile in the show notes because I don't expect you remember how to spell that by listening to this in your car. But that does bring us to the end of the podcast. I would programmatically end the podcast now. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: But I don't know how to do that with my VO. I guess I could record an ending and plug that in every single time, but I feel like that would not be doing justice to the audience and to the podcast. Crystal Carter: Yeah, well, you know... Mordy Oberstein: Not a good use of programmatic. Crystal Carter: No, I don't think so. No, not on this particular occasion. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, fine. Crystal Carter: You betcha. Mordy Oberstein: Here's the custom ending. 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 how to get started with international SEO as we chat with drum roll, Aleyda Solis. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO learning lab over at www.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO learning lab 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 Paul Andre De Vera Colt Sliva Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Programmatic content expansion The SEO Video Show Wix Velo News: Neeva, The Ad-Free Search Engine, Announces Closure Google Helpful Content Update Can Demote & Now Promote Content: Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Paul Andre De Vera Colt Sliva Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Programmatic content expansion The SEO Video Show Wix Velo News: Neeva, The Ad-Free Search Engine, Announces Closure Google Helpful Content Update Can Demote & Now Promote Content: 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 happened in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of Brand SEO at Wix. Joined by Better Head SEO Communications. The person who knows all about all of the things most of the time. Because if I say all of the time, I'll get a snarky look. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: There's no snarky looks. It's only happy looks. Mordy Oberstein: I say, you know all of the things, but everything. Like you're like, oh no, that's a lot of pressure Mordy. I don't like that. So... Crystal Carter: That's true. They say a man who knows something, knows that he knows nothing at all, or at least that's what Erica Badu said that one time. She's very wise. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, she's wise. I think Socrates said like, the only difference between me and you is that I know what I don't know. Crystal Carter: There you go. There you go. Mordy Oberstein: And you're a narcissistic, self-centered... I think that was the implication, what he was saying. Crystal Carter: Erica Badu and Socrates obviously like two grateful... Mordy Oberstein: He's a pod. Crystal Carter: Designs entirely. Mordy Oberstein: This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can combine the power of Python and Wix's full stack dev tool Velo to build out programmatic dynamic content for yourself. Behold the full-on nerdiness and power of Wix. And if you don't believe you can do it, Colt Sliva over on Glassdoor did in his article all about just that because he literally did just that. We'll link to it in the show notes because today, guess what we're talking about? Programmatic SEO. That's right. We're talking about programmatic SEO as in what the heck is programmatic SEO? Is programmatic SEO a zero-sum game? Can everyone get with the program? What works, what doesn't work, and what to be wary of when doing programmatic SEO. And all-time SEO, all star and knowledge bomb dropper, Paul Andre De Vera will join us, share his tips on keeping things personal when working programmatically, and we'll dive into a special tool around programmatic SEO and beyond. As I already mentioned, Wix is Velo, and of course we have the snappiest of SEO News and who should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So program, get your program here as episode number 39 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you get with the program, the programmatic SEO program that is. I went full on, I'm a vendor at a baseball stadium. Crystal Carter: Well, I mean, they're very good at their jobs. I do love that when they, the guy's got the train. They- Mordy Oberstein: Programs! Crystal Carter: Who wants? I'm like, yeah- Mordy Oberstein: Hear hear! At Bryant, that's like, we had our stand-up Brighten SEO. We were giving out beer. I'm like, this is a perfect time to be a baseball stadium and a beer here. They don't do that anymore. You have to go to the stands to get your, that was half the fun. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Guy walking around yelling, hotdog! And then you have to pass it through the row to the person who actually ordered the hotdog. So everyone's hands all over your hotdog. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's all very communal. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Very authentic. Sometimes you buy a thing just because of the experience. I used to go to green grocers and he just had platitudes for everything. I'd be like, oh, can I buy some grapes? He's like, all right, sweetheart, can I have some oranges? All right treacle. And what about some satsumas or something's like, oh, all right my pet. And I just kept buying things just to see if he ran out of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Nice, nice. Crystal Carter: He never did. I don't know how, but yeah, I found it quite amusing. Mordy Oberstein: That is an amazing set. It's almost like Trader Joe's. When you go to Trader Joe's, they have a whole experience, ringing the bell, or wearing the pirate shirt. You go just for that. Crystal Carter: My Trader Joe's experience has never been like that. I've never worn a pirate shirt. Mordy Oberstein: No, I don't wear the pirate shirt, but they're wearing pirate shirts and stuff and Hawaiian shirts and pirate patches and all... It's all thematic at Trader Joe's. Crystal Carter: Thematic programmatic. What are we talking about today? Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so looking to create hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of pages of content that follow the same template or format? Then programmatic SEO might for you. It also might not be for you, but we'll get to that in due course. So programmatic SEO, if I had to define it while standing on one foot, should I stand on, I will stand on one foot. I'm sitting down. I don't know how to do that. It's when you pull data or content in from a database into a content template, and then by natural result you have a heap of pages for your website. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: While some would argue that e-com, Kevin Indig, isn't a case for programmatic SEO, I would perhaps argue and say that it is a really easy case to point to about using programmatic SEO wisely. You pull things in like the product name, the description, which you can use for your title tag and meta description respectively as well, and all the naming from the inventory database. And you plug that in with your usual shipping and return policies you have on every page. And you basically have spun up programmatic content for who knows how many number of product pages without actually typing a single word. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: That's programmatic. I feel like some will disagree. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of people who are using this for e-commerce, incredibly, incredibly productively. Wayfair is someone who used programmatic SEO and has used some of Google's own tools for some of them work in there and they're crushing it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Hey, look. It works and it's good. Crystal Carter: I think it's entirely the kind of thing where you have something that has a lot of attributes, that has a lot of structured data, has a lot of things. For instance, if you think about a sofa, you're going to talk about the material. You're going to talk about how many seats it has. You're going to talk about whether it reclines, whether it has Bluetooth. I saw a sofa with Bluetooth- Mordy Oberstein: No. We were just shopping for a new sofa. Our children have destroyed it. And we had it for 16 years. I love it. It's great. I'm going to keep it, but not in the living room because I can't part with it. Crystal Carter: That's such a dad thing to do. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And there's like all these, I just want a sofa. And it's so much stuff. Sorry, sidetrack. Crystal Carter: Right. But I think when you have a product that has lots of attributes, and particularly if you're thinking about something like Google Merchant Center encourages you, it requires you to add in all of those attributes to your data sets, to the information that you have about your products anyway. So it makes sense to take that data, take those attributes, take that information and use it to generate content in a programmatic way. And so e-commerce is absolutely perfect for this. And it also means that you're much more consistent with your product pages when you're creating your product pages so that everything has the same information- Mordy Oberstein: Which makes making changes and fixing things. And it's also easier. So just one last point before we actually dive into the thick of it. Often is what I think separates our programmatic SEO as a content strategy from regular traditional SEO is that often when you're doing this, your goal is not to rank well for a specific page or specific keyword word, but to spin up so much content that it doesn't really matter. That if you have a hundred thousand pages ranking nine or 10 on the SERP, you'll get all of that same kind of traffic or the amount of traffic that you would've had if you were ranking number one with a far fewer pages kind of thing. So that's of course is kind of tricky from a strategic point of view. And all of the metrics might not be the same or as important when you're working programmatically and dynamically. So that's another thing to kind of keep in mind. But that's sort of the general gist on programmatic SEO. I for one, just going to say this at the onset. I'm a bit of a programmatic SEO, curmudgeon, even though I do think it's a great place to test things, but that's just me. Crystal, what about you? Crystal Carter: I think that it gives you the opportunity to serve content for really long tail keywords. This is something that Miriam Myriam Jessier talks about in one of the articles that we have on the SEO hub. And because you're able to use the information about your products, the entities associated with your products, the keywords associated with your products as fodder for content creation in a programmatic way, it's easy to spin up very long tail, very specific keyword categories or category pages or product pages for specific things. And so I think programmatic SEO is great when it solves a problem. Like any SEO. All of the SEO that you're doing is all about adding value for users. That's at the end of the day, adding value for users. And Google's measuring whether or not you're adding value for users. So when they ranking, that's a reflection of the value that they can ascertain that you add for users. So Etsy does this programmatic SEO, Wayfair I mentioned as well. If you're able to drill down into those Etsy keywords, gold earrings with leopard print trim in a hoop shape, and I'm looking specifically for those things, or shoes in this size and this color of this thing. And I'm able to drill all the way down and not have to filter through all of your pages and not have to navigate to everything, but to get exactly what I want from the SERP, then absolutely that's where programmatic SEO wins. And I think that that's where programmatic SEO really, really succeeds. Mordy Oberstein: So let me ask, when would you specifically recommend or not recommend programmatic SEO? Crystal Carter: If you have a large amount of content and you have a large number of products, and also if you have the tooling to do so, as well and to maintain it, I think also a lot of businesses that are working in a sort of high product turnover, like fast moving consumer goods space, they're going to need to do that because they need to be able to spin up content straight away so that they can sort of say, let's capitalize on say a trend that's happening straight away, or let's take this massive catalog. Because I've worked in, I previously worked for a toy manufacturer and we had all of our products, that we manufactured and we had the one, all these giant spreadsheets and all of that sort of stuff. And if you are trying to manually implement making all these changes to every particular product, then it's impossible. It is an impossible task. So when you have a big product set, then programmatic SEO is a fantastic one. Also, if it's something that you're seeing that your competitors are doing, and you might want to think, I need to keep pace because this is what consumers are going to be expecting to see. So it's always important to think about not just how people are searching on your site or how people are arriving on your site, but how the wider ecosystem is also experiencing a search. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point because it doesn't, first up, doesn't have to be zero-sum. It doesn't mean I only doing programmatic SEO. If you see that competitors doing it for certain types of keywords, certain types of pages or whatever it is, and you can do that for that. And if you want to take a demonstrate for different pages, you can do that for that. You could also programmatically build on certain elements of a page. Why wouldn't you? For example, on the e-comm side. Let's say for whatever reason you want to write custom descriptions. God bless. The shipping and the return policy. If you're not just reusing that on every page programmatically, I don't know why you wouldn't, for example. So that's a very hyperbolic example, but it's not zero-sum. You can use programmatic SEO in certain places on your website. You can programmatically build certain parts of the page. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. But I will say, the way I think about it as well, going back to my point of being an SEO curmudgeon about programmatic SEO is I kind of view it AI. AI generated content. It's very, very similar in my mind because you're talking about the possibility of running into creating a lot of low quality content. Or a lot of un-targeted content. And I feel like sometimes you do need to be careful. Cases where the language structure does matter. So for example, in the product review space. To programmatically build out product review pages, if you're a website that has, that's your whole thing, you're like a CNET and you're programmatically just like you're taking certain inputs, taking output certain inputs and creating pros and cons list out of them whatever you're doing. I think that's going to be a space where you have to be careful. Where you might build it out programmatically, but somehow supplement it at the same time. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. I think that goes back to your point of having a mix of programmatic content and I guess more manually created content. But I think that essentially we're working in a space where a lot of times we have massive data sets that we're trying to wrangle both from an SEO point of view, but also from a sort of just general marketing point of view. And I think that the efficiency that the programmatic SEO potentially combined with it, because this is the other thing that a lot of people are combining programmatic SEO and AI content, particularly for content generation. So for instance, you would say, I have a product with this attribute, this attribute, that attribute and that attribute. And then it'll write a product description for that particular, then you can use generative AI to write a product description for that content. And that is something that is going to be saving a lot of time. And also, again, producing a lot of consistency with those things. Though again, as we have with any AI thing, editing is key and QA is crucial. So checking over those things and making sure that you're not publishing things, that AI generated content that isn't accurate and making sure that you've trained your prompts so that they accurately reflect what your products do, how they work. So I think that we did a webinar on chat GPT and AI writers and how to use them. And one of the really good examples that Ross Hudgins showed was giving a generative tool, a dataset, for instance, say a product dataset and asking them to create a piece of copy based on that. And I think that if you're able to figure out the best prompt that works for your type of data set, then that can help you to scale content very quickly. So I think that it can help you to, could connect with niches really quickly. It can help you to spin up a lot of things. But also I think from a programmatic point of view, if you're talking about thin content, or maybe not necessarily low quality content, but maybe sort of fairly repetitive content, and Google talks about this, they show a case study for Wayfair, for instance, about this, for ads. So for instance, if you're a locksmith and you're working generally in New York, you might want a PPC landing page that's locksmith for the Bronx, locksmith for Brooklyn, locksmith for Westchester, locksmith, for Manhattan, for Harlem, for wherever. And spinning those out programmatically? Yeah, brilliant, because you're not indexing them anyway and you just need them to match what the query is that you're serving for your ads. And this is something that Google is advertising on their Think With Google, there's a great Think With Google example- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, on the ads side. It makes absolute total sense to do that. And even on the SEO side, a lot of it's the same thing. If it's a local pages go, most of that page's content is going to be very, very, very similar. And it's a matter of going in and changing a couple things around here and there and make it a little bit better and unique then do that. One of the other things that kind of touch on, something you were talking about that I wanted to quickly bring up is that when you do this, it's a great environment to test things. So if you want to have a certain way of constructing the page or certain type of description, it's a way of figuring out what really works, what doesn't work. Because you're working with A, a huge amount of page, so the data you're going to get back is going to be way more accurate than, oh, I have a couple of pages made a title tag change here. Is that really, so you are in an environment that already lends itself the testing where the results are way more accurate equals make those changes much quicker and it helps you drive. Okay. Here's how I think Google's kind of understanding me, which is kind of what Colt did in the post that we mentioned before. He spun up a website programmatically and he wanted with the idea of seeing, okay, what sticks? How is Google understanding this content and is this the right way to go with it or is it not the right way to go? So he spun up the programmatic content as a way of seeing what direction to take the final draft, which I thought was really interesting. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Testing is absolutely crucial because Google will very often look at pages as a page type. So for instance, if you see a search console error, they will say, here's an example of a page like this. If you have 45,000 product pages, they're not going to show you the error for every single, the in-detail for every single product page. But they'll say, here's an example of one that you have. And then you can look at that. And so if you submit it up programmatically, then the fix, you might make a big mistake at once, but you can also make a big fix at once. That's really useful to being able to test that. And also, if you've ever done CRO testing, one of the things that can sometimes be a challenge, particularly when you're doing one page at a time, is actually getting the traffic volume to get any kind of data that's of any use. So if you're spinning up, many many pages have the same basic format, the same kind of iterations in terms of your CRO, then you're going to be able to get a lot more data more quickly than if you were to do it one page at a time. I think one of the other benefit, I can't remember if Colt touched on this as well, but one of the other benefits of programmatic SEO is that it's really easy to align it with things like schema markup, for instance. So I'm think I've mentioned them before, but I remember I judged as a search award and one of the entries was from Dairy Queen. And one of the things I love, they spun up all of these and they programmatically did this. They spun up all of these pages for their Dairy Queen locations and it has all of the attributes and they're aligned with the things that are on Google business profile. They're aligned with the things that are in their structured data and they're aligned with the things that are on their page. And so you can see that consistency going all the way through, what the hours are, where the location is, what the amenities are, whether they have delivery or pickup, or whether they accept credit cards and all of that sort of stuff. So they're able to spin those all up and they're also able to roll them all out to multiple channels. So you get all your pages that are marked up in the same way, and you have all the schema that works with all of those. And then you have all of those are also attributed to each of those Google business profiles. So what you get with programmatic SEO is the ability to use your content as a data set and to be able to use it consistently across multiple channels, which is epic. Mordy Oberstein: So taking into a completely different direction, going back to what we were talking about before about trying to add a personal touch, all your programmatic content to help us with that is the host of the SEO Video Show great YouTube show. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: At SEO. Knowledge Bombs. Crystal Carter: Fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: It's fantastic. Here's Paul Andre De Vera about when working with content at scale, how do you ensure you keep the right tone and personal touch with your content? Paul Andre De Vera: Maintaining a personal touch in your content is important to building a strong personal brand voice and establishing connection with your audience. One effective way I achieve this is by writing the way I speak. Recording yourself, taking and getting it transcribed can be an awesome exercise to help you capture your personal tone and language. You can then use transcriptions as a basis for your content, editing and refining it as needed to make sure it meets your personal language and fits within the context of your content strategy. However, when working with tools like Grammarly, it's important not to accept every suggestion blindly. These tools can help identify and correct grammar and spelling errors, and they may also try to substitute words and phrases that are part of your natural speaking style. I personally like using words such as, awesome, love it, fabulous. These are examples of words that Grammarly may flag, but is part of my personal language. Incorporating personal touches like these can help your content feel more genuine and relatable to your audience, building a stronger connection and establishing your brand as approachable and authentic. Just be your silly self consistently online just as you are offline. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Paul. Definitely. Again, check out Paul on Twitter at Paul Andre and check out the SEO Video Show Crystal Carter: On YouTube. Mordy Oberstein: On YouTube. Look, by the way, his point about Grammarly. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: I feel that in every bone of my body. Crystal Carter: Yo. Mordy Oberstein: Because sometimes it's like, change this change. I'm like, no. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: No. Crystal Carter: No. I'm not changing that. Mordy Oberstein: Not changing that. That's a whole linchpin. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Like Grammarly, that's my vibes. That's just my style. That's how I do it. Also with Grammarly, it's obviously they're making it so they and talk about Grammarly all the time. But I remember reading, I'm sure I mentioned this before Toni Morrison had a book and she just, she's, it was one sentence for the whole page and it was beautiful and it was fantastic. But I also say, and and and and and. And sometimes I'm trying to get some rhythm. Mordy Oberstein: Like, like, like, like. Crystal Carter: I do say like. Mordy Oberstein: I'm talking about myself. I say it all the time. Crystal Carter: I'm from California. That's how we do... it is what it is. But I think that, yeah, what he's saying about adding in, making sure that you keep your tone of voice is really important. I think about brands that have a tone and it's really important. So for instance, MailChimp has a tone that they just sort of have a tone, even when it's a small little piece of micro copy, there's definitely a tone of voice to it. There's a couple of other brands that I can think of that are a little bit, there's brands that are a little bit salty sometimes. So the- Mordy Oberstein: Wendy's? Crystal Carter: Duolingo can be a little bit salty sometimes. Duolingo has a very dry sense of humor as a brand, and that's kind of their style. And even sometimes to the point where you can recognize the style, you can recognize someone from their styles. And I think with some of the AI things, like Google I/O thing announced that Google Cloud is making it so that you can use your own data sets to train information. So it might be that you add your language style guide into something to maybe move that into programmatic SEO. There's a lot of moving parts going on at the moment, but I think that making sure that you've got your clear tone of voice when you're spinning things up programmatically is, yeah, really important. Mordy Oberstein: Super important. This again, it tells all the time, and I like my soapbox where brand marketing overlaps with SEO, it's such an under discussed undervalued point. And it's something that I know we talk about, you need to align with your designers and your devs, but a lot of times you need to align more with your brand marketers because they're the ones defining how you're going to have to speak publicly. And if they see the programmatic content and they see that it's not in line with the brand tone of voice, they're not going to be happy. So better get that done beforehand as opposed to after hand, which is, I know not a word, but it definitely- Crystal Carter: After hand? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Why would you say beforehand and then after the fact? Makes no sense. Let's be- Crystal Carter: Should it be before fact and- Mordy Oberstein: It should either be before fact or it should be after hand. Crystal Carter: After... Nobody's saying after hand, it's- Mordy Oberstein: Now we are. Crystal Carter: Stop trying to make fetch happen. Mordy Oberstein: So anyway, after hand that, speaking of programmatic content and SEO, we already mentioned cold sliver and how we use a combination of Python and a little tool we call Velo to dynamically create pages at scale. So we figured we jump into this fellow called Velo with a programmatic edition of Tool Time. Velo is a full stack dev tool inbuilt into Wix. So you can enable dev mode, which by the way, Phil should be getting a Mortal Combat... Enable dev mode. Crystal Carter: We should talk to the team and be like, what we need is an explosion though. It goes... Dev mode. Mordy Oberstein: And just like a firebomb goes off on the page. Crystal Carter: Instead of deploying, you should just go finish him. Mordy Oberstein: Dev mode activated. Finish him. Crystal Carter: And then when you run your code, it should go ….. Mordy Oberstein: I'll see if we can add to the roadmap. Crystal Carter: Okay, I'll do that. I'll do that. Mordy Oberstein: I'll advocate. This is why we advocate very much a lot internally. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: I feel we should add this to our list of things to advocate for. Crystal Carter: Dev mode. Mordy Oberstein: Activate it. Okay. So yeah, back on track. Velo. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So Velo. So Velo, I love Velo. I love Velo so much. Velo is absolutely brilliant. It is a JavaScript like playground essentially within Wix. And you can build JavaScript things all the way through it. And there's lots of fantastic stuff. So we have something called the content manager, and essentially you can take a spreadsheet, it's a spreadsheet sort of format, and it works really well for programmatic- Mordy Oberstein: Programmatic SEO. Because you're connected to a data set and there's your content. Crystal Carter: You can also connect to external datasets, you can add your own datasets, you can connect to other databases as well. And there's lots of tools for Tree to be able to do that. And basically you can use it for, you can use it with JavaScript to create all sorts of fantastic things. So Mark Preston is somebody who created an SEO jobs board, for instance, using Velo. And so you're able to create tools there. And I've also created a few tools myself. I created a Bingo game on my website. Mordy Oberstein: Did you really? You used it to get a Bingo game. I did not know that. How did I not know that? Crystal Carter: I need a bingo game for, it's like a conference SEO bingo game. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's right, you did. I do remember that. Okay, fine. I'm not a horrible friend. Crystal Carter: So the other thing that's great about Velo is that Velo has, so you might say, well, but I'm not a JavaScript person. I don't know all the things. That's okay. Because first of all, our documentation is extremely extensive. Second of all, within Velo, they have tons of guidance in the actual code. So if you input the code incorrectly, it will tell you. It will give you an error or it'll give you a little thing that says, hey, you should have this, or there should be a variable, or you should update that part. So that's really useful. The other thing that's great is that you can use it with an LOM. So for instance, Bard. Bard is trained on loads of bits of code, so is Chat GPT. So I have, I've created something and my JavaScript is, okay. And that's generous. My JavaScript is okay. But I was able to go, I was basically able to take some of the guidance that I got from Velo. So Velo says, oh, this bit of code isn't quite right. And I'm like, okay. So I popped that into GPT and I was like, hey, GPT, I got this error for this code, but I wanted to do this. And GPT was like, yeah, try this bit of code. So then I popped it back into Velo and then I got a different error and then I put that back into GPT, and by the time I'd gone back and forth between these two things, I was able to build something that was amazing. So what's really cool is that we have... It's got so many different functionalities in it. There's something called Velo Examples, which is a collection of lots of really cool things that people have built on Velo. And on each of those pages there is, there's the code, there's a demo, and you can copy the code from it. The other thing that's great about Velo is that the code is transferable. So for instance, we have lots, it's all sort of API based, and we have a library that's Wix SEO. So if you have a piece of code that is for changing the canonical, we had this situation, didn't we Mordy? Mordy, you were like, oh- Mordy Oberstein: A bomb, A podcast website. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Somebody was like, oh, I want to change the canonical on this podcast change. I was like, oh, you can do this. He was like, oh, maybe you can set up a call. I was like, no, literally just copy and paste this code. Mordy Oberstein: The code, yeah. Crystal Carter: Copy and paste this code and put it on that page and it will work because it's all sort of set up to work. Mordy Oberstein: You could do that dynamically. You could dynamically as structured data to whatever you want, kind of set up pages, you want to do it. There's so much you can do with it. Crystal Carter: And you can create your own variable. So if you have a piece of content on your page, let's say you've got the word or something, you can create a variable. You can name that variable, you can use that variable in your code further down. We also have connections into NPM. So there's like lots of API integrations that are built in Google sheets and Google Maps, for instance. But you can also connect into NPM. I literally love Velo. The team behind Velo have nurtured this and have spent so much time making it fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: And there's so much content, by the way. If you, we'll link to a bunch of it. But there's an endless amount of content they've put out there... It's a cavernous library of content Velo, which we'll link to it. It's awesome. Crystal Carter: And I think the thing that's great is working with those things, but also, particularly if you're a noob, like me, to JavaScript, is that the things like GPT, like Bard that are trained on code, you can say in JavaScript, how do I do this? So if there's something that's specific, you can also back up some of the things with general information about JavaScript and things like that. So it's fantastic. And it also opens up a whole world of functionality on Wix, and I think it's going to be fantastic as we go into the headless space. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I was going to say it. It's perfect. Because we've just gotten headless for this. For example, the CMS that you just mentioned. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: You can use that. It's headless. You can take that and you can plug that into your front end, and you can use the Wix function, that CMS functionality kind of wherever. Crystal Carter: And the things that with the headless Wix situation, a lot of the things that they leaned on in the first instance are particularly lean themselves to programmatic SEO and programmatic data creation. So for instance, like the events, the bookings- Mordy Oberstein: Booking, products... Crystal Carter: Products, all of that sort of stuff, it leans itself really well... Lends itself really well to that. So between the headless space and the Velo and all of the amazing functionalities- Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot of automation you could be doing. Crystal Carter: A lot of stuff you can do. I mean, who even needs to touch it? Mordy Oberstein: Who needs humans anymore? Crystal Carter: But I think it's really great, and I think it's great to see the combination of opening up the platform more and also bringing in some of the AI elements that we have and making it really accessible to lots of different developers and lots of different development needs. Mordy Oberstein: It's really cutting edge stuff from really great people. Now you know what else is new? The actual news. So here's this week's Snappy News. Snappy news, two little juicy SEO tidbits for you this week. First up, as reported from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal, Neva, the ad free search engine announces closure. Neva was built, by the way, as a sort of a way to downplay the role of ads and search and increase the role of content creators. It had an AI chat experience, and it had a pretty good little search engine. Unfortunately will be shuttered, which is very unfortunate. You never want to see anything fail. It was a nice idea. It really does though, kind of highlight how hard it is to compete with Google. So as you see things developing in the AI world and you see, oh, Google's going down... Take a deep breath, take pause. It is very hard to compete with Google. From his royal Rustiness, the king of bricks, Mr. Rusty Brick, AKA Barry Schwartz, the fourth. Google helpful content update can demote and now promote content. As you may know, and as we've talked about here on this very podcast, Google announced that the helpful content update will be getting a revamp. This was announced at Google I/O 2023. In specific, Google said the system would help identify "hidden gems". Seeing this, friend of the show, an avid Yankees fan, Glen Gabe, asked Google search liaison Denny Sullivan, if this was an update to the current functioning of the ranking system or a new ability altogether. Denny said, "The helpful content system will be working to identify and show more hidden gems on search, along with still working to ensure unhelpful content is not performing well." So in a nutshell, the helpful content update will not only be about hitting sites with low quality, but will now have a net positive impact of uplifting the hidden gems of the web. I feel like there should be a special badge if you are one of these hidden gems of the web that says, hidden gem of the web, you could plaster on your homepage. And that is this week's Snappy News. I just got to say, I just love by the way, that when the news happens so organically like that, in this case, Glen Gabe asking a question, Barry covering it. They're great people, Glen and Barry. Speaking of people, by the way, that brings us to our follow of the week, which is, we've already mentioned him three or four times at this point. He is Glassdoor's, SEO, former member of the Wix SEO Advisory Board. He's a writer for the Web Almanac. He's Colt Sliva. Crystal Carter: He's such a nice guy. He's so smart. Mordy Oberstein: The nicest dude, right? Crystal Carter: So nice. Mordy Oberstein: The nicest guy. Crystal Carter: And so smart. I think the first time that I came across Colt was he was speaking at SMX about something very clever, and I remember watching the talk and I was like- Mordy Oberstein: It was very clever. Crystal Carter: I remember watching him. I was like, this guy knows stuff. This guy is so smart. Mordy Oberstein: I came across him the first time at, when he was at IOL rank, we were working Gareth Sussman. I think he was on my podcast I was doing at the time. I don't remember anything about- Crystal Carter: Probably. Mordy Oberstein: Probably. Crystal Carter: Probably. Mordy Oberstein: The smartest guy, the nicest guy. I worked with him obviously on the Wix SEO advisory board, but also we worked together on the SEO section, on the web almanac. He was such a resource. I will tell you right now that Web Almanac, or at least the SEO section, would not have happened if it weren't for Colt. Crystal Carter: The other thing I would say about Colt is that he has such a healthy curiosity and people say, oh, what do you need to be in SEO? Like, do you need this skill or that skill or that skill. I'm like, fundamentally, you need to be curious. You need to be the kind of person who would talk about- Mordy Oberstein: John Mueller. Crystal Carter: Yeah, you need to be the kind of person who wants to go down the rabbit hole who wants, hears like, oh, there's a new toilet. They're like, what does it do? What happens if I do this? What if I do that? What if I look at this? Mordy Oberstein: You change the JavaScript around on the toilet, what happens? Crystal Carter: Exactly. And Colt, he likes to build things. He likes to explore things, and he's super approachable and super interested. So yeah, can't say nice enough things about Colt, like do follow Colt. Mordy Oberstein: Don't just follow Colt, interact with Colt, talk to Colt. Crystal Carter: Tell him that we sent you. Tell him that Mordy and Crystal sent you. Mordy Oberstein: Talk to him. He's on Twitter at, S I G N O R C O L T. Of course, we'll link to his Twitter profile in the show notes because I don't expect you remember how to spell that by listening to this in your car. But that does bring us to the end of the podcast. I would programmatically end the podcast now. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: But I don't know how to do that with my VO. I guess I could record an ending and plug that in every single time, but I feel like that would not be doing justice to the audience and to the podcast. Crystal Carter: Yeah, well, you know... Mordy Oberstein: Not a good use of programmatic. Crystal Carter: No, I don't think so. No, not on this particular occasion. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, fine. Crystal Carter: You betcha. Mordy Oberstein: Here's the custom ending. 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 how to get started with international SEO as we chat with drum roll, Aleyda Solis. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO learning lab over at www.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO learning lab at you guessed it. wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

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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How can you bring your SEO performance back to life? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter discuss ways you can get your SEO production back on track. Whether your SEO performance has flatlined or the site hasn’t been worked on for a good while we have tips and strategies to kick your SEO back into gear. Sterling Sky’s Carrie Hill joins as she dives into the intricacies behind helping clients who desperately need an SEO resurgence. Plus, this content marketing tool will make getting your content to perform well on the SERP again that much easier. We’re doing some digital CPR this week as we break the cycle of stagnation and teach you how to revive your SEO playbook on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Take your SEO off life support How can you bring your SEO performance back to life? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter discuss ways you can get your SEO production back on track. Whether your SEO performance has flatlined or the site hasn’t been worked on for a good while we have tips and strategies to kick your SEO back into gear. Sterling Sky’s Carrie Hill joins as she dives into the intricacies behind helping clients who desperately need an SEO resurgence. Plus, this content marketing tool will make getting your content to perform well on the SERP again that much easier. We’re doing some digital CPR this week as we break the cycle of stagnation and teach you how to revive your SEO playbook on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 86 | May 8, 2024 | 45 MIN 00:00 / 44:31 This week’s guests Carrie Hill Carrie Hill brings over 18 years of experience in all aspects of SEO to the table. She thrives on unraveling the complexities of Google's ever-changing algorithms and crafting customized strategies for each client's unique needs. Her influence extends beyond Sterling Sky, where she's spearheaded the LocalU Conference Series since 2017, ensuring its success through challenging times and a return to in-person events. But Carrie's life isn't all SEO. In her free time, you might find her curled up with her three dogs and a good book, or unleashing her culinary creativity in the kitchen. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo, for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who rekindles fires across the internet, the one, the only head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I am the fire starter, the twisted fire starter. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, 'cause I was wondering who burned down that lovely- Crystal Carter: No, no, no, that wasn't me. No. Sorry. No, no, no, no. Sorry I didn't start that fire. Mordy Oberstein: I really liked that place. Crystal Carter: No, no… different one. No, it's just like shout out to the [sings]. People know that song, right? Am I that old? It's that bad? Do you know that song? Mordy Oberstein: Anyway though. The Serb's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, searchlight each and every month over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also resuscitate and revitalize your SEO workflows with checklist, cheat sheets and more found on the SEO Learning Hub's resource Center over at wix.com/SEO/learn, but this time /assets, as this week, we're here to help you if your SEO strategy and performance is on life support. Get tips and how to revitalize your SEO as we look into how to hunt down new organic opportunities, how to get your content cadence going again and the risk reward of trying something new for your SEO to help us. Sterling Sky's Carrie Hill will pop into to share how she revitalizes a site's SEO after a search marketing hiatus. Plus we'll explore a tool that can help you find new ideas. You probably already have it, but you don't even know that it's there. And of course, we have the snappies of SEO News and who you should be following for more awesomeness on social media. So somebody called 911 and started singing, staying Alive in Your Head as episode 86 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you resuscitate your SEO back up to 100 or to 120 beats a minute. You know that trick by the way you're doing CPR [singing “Staying Alive”]. And that's how you do the compressions? Crystal Carter: No, I did not know that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Oh, that is some good life skills there. Mordy Oberstein: There's some life skills right here on the SERP's Up podcast. Great episode of the office that talks about that also, which I'm not going to go into here. But yeah, it helps you do the cadence for the compressions. That's the reference. That's why I talk about the Bee Gees. Crystal Carter: Okay, I see that. I see that. I think that makes sense. That makes sense. So we're talking about how to reignite, resuscitate even, the SEO if it's gone kind of flat. And I think that this happens essentially when people take a break from content creation and/or when people sort of maybe forget about the website. There's a lot of times where there are clients who are so busy managing the website and maybe it's a business that isn't a direct to consumer business and maybe it's more of a brochure site. And what will often happen is that businesses will carry out their business, they'll do their day-to-day, and they might not even look at their website very often. They put up the core information about the business, but they might not look at what's on the pages there. And oftentimes if you look at that, then the SEO is kind of flat, right? Might be the same sort of number of traffic for years, months, weeks, certainly months and years. And I think that when you have a situation like that, even if you have blogs, even if you have content, if you are doing some of the sort of SEO best practices that people talk about, things like optimizing images and optimizing Meta descriptions and optimizing even the content that's already there, you might still see that your website is still kind of flat. And if your traffic is a little bit flat, but my general advice is that it probably means you need to do something different. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, if you're doing the same thing, if you've got the same amount of content, then Google will give you the same results. So if you want to reinvigorate your website, if you want to re-engage Google with your website, then probably the best bit of advice I can give to someone is to start making new content. And this might mean that you need to create new blogs. It might mean that you need to create new other pages on your website, but chances are between the last time you updated your website and now things have changed either for your business or within your industry, certainly within the last 18 months with all the AI that's going on, I think most industries have seen some impact from that, for instance. So there's almost certainly something that you can contribute there. But that does a few things. First of all, recency is a consideration when Google is thinking about new content and when Google is thinking about indexing content. Second of all, if Google is seeing that your site map, your site map will say the last time that your content was updated, and on a dynamic site map, very often the most recent content will go to the top of that list. And it's the case that the top of that list says that the last time your content was updated was in March the fourth, 2022, then they're going to go, "Well, we don't need to crawl this again. We already crawled this between now and 2022." So when you update content that says, "Oh, we should refresh this crawl because this site is new." They've done new stuff, they've got new things. The other thing that's great about it is it also gives you another opportunity to share content across different socials, which also will get crawled. It also gives you an opportunity to connect with more folks via backlinks, email, et cetera, et cetera, and to get a burst of traffic coming to your site when you're doing new content. Another great tactic that I've seen from folks, particularly agencies who are doing great work with content and websites that have sort of flatlined a little bit, is to not just do it in dribs and drabs, not just do one blog and then a month later, another blog, and then a month later, another blog, but upload 20, 30 blogs at the same time or 20, 30 pages at the same time, because that gives Google lots of new information about what's going on on your site. And when you link all of that up, that also gives lots of information to Google about the connections across it and all of that sort of stuff. I can see Morty wants to jump in here. Mordy Oberstein: At the same time, if you haven't produced new content, you have another problem, is that your audience thinks you're dead. So if you're going to put out one, "Okay, I'll get the SEO going. I'll put out a new post every month," and over time, "I'm not in a big rush." Let's say you're not in a big rush for whatever reason. I don't know why you wouldn't be in a big rush, but you're not in a big rush. "I'll take my leisurely time ranking again." Fine. You will miss out on all of that potential on your brand for people to realize that you've revitalized, you've been resuscitated, you are still alive. And that can also lead to helping your SEO, because once your people see that your brand is back, they'll share content on social, they might link to your content, all of that momentum, all of that digital light and cadence you'll benefit from if you think about it from your user's point of view. I hate being cliche, but if you think about the user's point of view as well. Crystal Carter: And I think that that's a great point. Since Covid, because a lot of businesses changed during Covid, and I think that one of the things that I find particularly with bricks and mortar businesses is that I will go to their website and their website might say their opening hours or might say what's going on or where they are or what they do, and then I'll go to their social to double check whether or not they're still there. Because it's been a couple of times when I've gone to go to a business that I haven't been to in a while and they're not there and the website says that they are, but their social says it or not. And I think that it is really important from the fad, that SEO perspective to say, "I'm still standing stronger than I ever did as it were." And I think that that's really, really important for Google and for users. And I think that it tells people that you're still on top of the conversation, whatever the new conversation is, particularly if you're a knowledge-based business, it tells people that you're still part of the community, if you're a local business. It tells people lots of things about you. Getting the content going, and it might even be updating some of your old pages as well. If people leave your team and you have a team page, update the team page. If Sarah's not working there anymore, then Sarah shouldn't be on your team page. And we wish Sarah well, I'm sure she's going to do a great job in her new role or whatever, but just update the page. That's fine. That's totally fine. And I think that that is something that Google will reward you for. And also trimming the fat is really useful as well. I think people overlook the fact that getting rid of content is sometimes updating content as well. Mordy Oberstein: I was just talking about this with Carrie Hill, who is our actual guest. I think our webinar with Sterling Sky, I think she mentioned the same thing. It's a great point. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So the way I like to think about it is cutting T-shirt, right? If you cut a T-shirt, you're actually cutting content out, but you're still updating the content at the same time. Mordy Oberstein: Or it's like when you need new shorts, you just take old pants and you cut them to make shorts. So now you have shorts. Crystal Carter: New content. Mordy Oberstein: It's the '80s again, we're wearing cutoff shorts. Crystal Carter: And it makes a new content because the other thing is that if Google's coming to your website and they're seeing lots and lots and lots of old content, that is irrelevant. Let's say you had a charity fun run or something, and Sarah again, who left the team, did the charity fun run. Mordy Oberstein: Sarah, who's been convicted of stealing from charities. Crystal Carter: Now Sarah's a nice person. She's making jewelry now doing. Mordy Oberstein: She's no longer in charge of the charity run. Crystal Carter: She's doing something else. So let's say, and no shade to Sarahs, I know lots of lovely Sarahs, but Mordy Oberstein: My wife's name is Sarah, so what are you... Crystal Carter: Hey, I'm sure she's great at fun runs. No shade to Sarahs, but I think that if she did a charity fun run, and you were like, "Hey, we'd like you to donate to Sarah's charity fun run." Guess what? They can't donate anymore. That was seven years ago. We don't need that page. Gone. Delete. Doesn't need to be there. It probably isn't ranking anymore. It's probably not getting you loads of traffic, but it is clogging up your crawl. So if you can cut those pages, that will also help revive things because Google will say, "Oh, okay, somebody's looking after this site. Somebody is pruning things and making them look good." Similarly, literally like pruning, if you see a tree that's all overgrown, or if you see a hedge that's all overgrown, nobody's looking after that, right? All of the stuff that's hanging over the side of the road. If you see some fantastic topiary, which is a great word, then you're going to say, "Oh, somebody's looking after that." And even though it's shorter than it would be if it was overgrown, you can tell that someone's looking after that and it's better for that reason. So I think make sure that you're pruning your content coherently as well, because that should also be part of creating a revived SEO presence. Mordy Oberstein: And a lot of the times when you're revitalizing your SEO, you're also revitalizing your business. So I'll give you a good example of this. I was reading an article about how Nike wants to revitalize its brand with the Paris Olympic Games, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if you actually look at Nike's organic traffic, it's pretty stagnant over the last few years. And in the article they're saying because they feel their sales have stagnated, they've flatlined. I mean, I would take Nike's flatline any day of the week, but they want to grow up. You're not growing, you're dying kind of thing. And a lot of the times when you're revitalizing your content, because you're talking about revitalizing content, and a lot of the times your content is your brand, your content is your business. So when you're revitalizing your SEO, it's an opportunity to pivot your entire... If your business is stagnant, it's a good time to pivot. I was talking to Ryan L. Smith, who will be a guest on this podcast in a few weeks just yesterday on a different podcast. And he was saying he had a client where they sold wedding cakes. And as they started really creating that identity around selling wedding cakes, people started to ask them about, "Hey, can you do my anniversary?" Or, "Can you do my birthday?" And they saw that as a good time to start pivoting. If you are creating, you should be opening new doors of opportunity for yourself. If you're alive, you should be creating new doors for opportunity for yourself, and you should be using it to, if not pivot, expand on what you do as a business. And that's a great time to start expanding on what you do for SEO and the topics that you're now able to focus on. I will say, and we were talking about this earlier today, and then when you do that, sometimes as you're expanding your offering or you're pivoting your offering, both for your users and for search engines, you need to make sure that you're taking it step by step. Before you sold baseball jerseys and now you're selling, I don't know, you sold hockey sweaters and now you're selling actual sweaters. You need to somehow slowly make the move from selling hockey sweaters to actual sweaters and creating that perception and the content that supports that over time, which may mean you're creating content or pages that are not meant to rank or pull in conversions, but then help you make the pivot so that you can eventually pull in the traffic and pull in the conversions. Crystal Carter: And I think it's important when you're doing that to think about the core of your audience, people who know you, people who like you, your warm leads, your friends, like your internet friends, as it were- Mordy Oberstein: I only have internet friends. Crystal Carter: ... you're not throwing them out of the window. Mordy Oberstein: Let’s gloss right over that! Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. Morning. It's all good. We'll do a whip round as it were. I don't know. We'll sort you out. So a prime example of this is Old Spice, right? I remember when Old Spice revived their brand, so there's Old Spice original, then they had that big campaign, this is probably 10 or 15 years ago now when they had the guy and he was like, "Look at your man. Now look at me. Now look at this." Do you remember those? And they did some great stuff online. They did some great stuff on YouTube, and they really revitalized the brand. It got people really interested in it, in the brand, because this was a brand that everybody knew and loved. It was old faithful, just like peanut butter and jelly. Everybody knew Old Spice and what it did. It was solid and it's a perfectly solid brand, like Nike's, totally solid brand, all of that sort of stuff. And then they were just like, "Let's do something fun. Let's do something fun and interesting." And now they've got lots of different kinds of styles and stuff, and they've got really interesting names. Mordy Oberstein: They were very, I would say bland. They were like old man a little bit. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it was totally fine. But that was kind of their brand. And they were like, "Let's get crazy." Now they've got scents called Night Panther. Mordy Oberstein: Hell, yeah. Crystal Carter: And they're just getting a little bit interesting, but they're building on the brand that they have there to expand that out. Mordy Oberstein: But that's a really good point. One of the things that helps you revitalize your SEO and all the things in this case for your brand, in the case of Old Spice, and I think by the way, that Nike needs to do the same thing, you're kind of going against the grain or against what you were doing before. You're going against your instincts or reference back to a Seinfeld episode. I'm not a big Seinfeld fan. Anyway, but there's an episode where George kind does the opposite of whatever he would normally do, how he would normally react because things are not going well for him. Do that. Pull a Costanza, do the opposite. If your brand is a little bit old man, a little bit boring, if you're Old Spice, go a little crazy with it. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think it comes from a point of confidence as well. So old Spice for instance, we're just going to stick with this for a minute. The thing about them is people know that that's a solid brand, that they know how to make sure that you don't smell the way that you don't want to smell or whatever. We know that they know how to do that job, and we know that they're consistent and we know that they're a solid brand, they're a solid team, they're dependable, all of that sort of stuff. So this extra thing that they're doing is something that where they're like, "Hey, we're trying this new thing. It's kind of fun." And it comes from a place of comfort. It's like you want something that same but different. Mordy Oberstein: Same but different. Crystal Carter: And for instance, I went to a wedding and they had fish and chips. I'm in England, but they have fish and chips, but in a single serving thing, right? Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Crystal Carter: Yeah, right? So it was like a cone, a handheld cone, and it had one bit of fish and a couple of chips and a little bit of peas at the bottom or whatever. And that was fun. "Oh, it's fun." But if they were like, "Oh, we've got fish sticks covered in jelly," that would be weird. That's too weird. Mordy Oberstein: No, that's too weird. Crystal Carter: You don't want to go too weird. You don't want to go too weird. You want to go to something that people recognize that's from you. That's not like Old Spice straight away went into doing something completely different. They said, "We have different scents." That's kind of really where they went. And that's fine. So I think when you're thinking about your branding, you're thinking about your blogs, think of what's in the neighborhood of what you're doing, but is building on it. So it might be that you're talking about the same topic, but to a slightly different audience. Mordy Oberstein: Or in a different way or a different take. And if you have been producing a lot of content and you've stagnated, this might be the strategy for you, do something different. If you're being very methodical about A, B, B, and C, A, B, B, and C, of course you have two, Bs, of course B is the most important letter in the alphabet. Crystal Carter: Obviously. Mordy Oberstein: Then try something different. If you're trying X in your title tags and it's not pulling in clicks, do the opposite. Crystal Carter: And also when we say creating new content, it could be new blogs or it could be your same blogs in a different way. So you could take your blogs and make them into YouTube videos. You could take your blogs and make them into newsletters. You could take your blogs and make them into Twitter posts or infographics or whatever, what have you. And then that doesn't need a new content writer to do all of that. That's just the same information in a different way. But it will get your information to a new audience. And if you're doing something like a podcast, for instance, let's say you interviewed someone for a blog and you could maybe make them into a podcast or maybe you're discussing an event that you did in a podcast, for instance, podcast, again, have another distribution model that will also bring in traffic to your website. So same but different. It's the same content but in a different guise, for instance. And that can revitalize, but basically you need to do something new. Mordy Oberstein: You need to break the cycle of stagnation. To help you understand how she does this, Carrie Hill from Sterling Sky and LocalU is here to tell us how she goes about helping SEO clients who have stopped their work, but need to revive some faltering search performance and come back to SEO and search success. Here's Carrie. Carrie Hill: So what do we do at Sterling Sky when a client comes back after suspending their SEO? We're going to make a few assumptions here because this can be nuanced. So let's kind of create a story and then I'll kind of tell you how we'd handle it. So this person has paused SEO. They have done no work on their website, no SEO in this time period that we're going to talk about. If they've hired another company that's coming in and done some things, or they've tried to do it in-house, we're sort of looking at a different scenario. But let's just say for this first example that nothing's been done on the website since they "paused" SEO. If they were Sterling Sky client, they paused SEO and it's six months later and they've come back and said, "Okay, we're ready to start up again." It's likely we can pretty much start back up where we left off. If it's been more than six months, we're probably going to have to take a step back, do some more evaluation, do a bit of an audit, kind of look at the keywords and the competition and what's going on in their market before we move forward. If it's been six months or less, we're pretty confident that what we have done to date and the research we have to implement to date is probably pretty good. Now, there are things that will have to change. Tactics that worked six months ago might not be working today. Things that didn't work six months ago might be working today. So there's always a bit of reevaluation that you have to plan for when you restart SEO. But if they've left us and then come back to us with no work in the interim, we can pretty much hit the ground running, keep implementing our tactics and moving forward. Now, scenario number two is they suspend SEO and it's a year later and they come back to us. For the most part, we're going to treat them like a brand new client. More than likely we're going to audit them, which is sort of like the baseline of where everybody starts with Sterling Sky. We pretty much don't take on SEO clients if we don't have an audit done first, just so we know kind of where we're starting from, what's there, what's working, what's not working. Quite frankly, a year can make a big difference in search volumes, keyword trends, et cetera. So we're going to sort of start, I don't want to say start from scratch, but we're going to pull back a bit more, do a bit more research before we then start implementing and probably, let's be perfectly honest, making changes to the website because what keywords worked a year ago probably aren't going to be working now or maybe not working as effectively. Maybe some new phrases or new services that they've added in that year could come into play that we have to plan around as well. Now, the third scenario I'm just going to mention is if they've paused SEO and they had a different SEO company previously, or they did it in-house previously, they've not done anything for a year and then they hire us. That's a new client. We're going to start them with an audit. We're going to do our own keyword research with their input of course, and start with making sure that their architecture and technical SEO is on point as we start moving them forward into all of the tactics that we use to ensure that not only do they rank well, they convert well. So that's kind of our process for bringing people back into SEO when they've been on hiatus or sabbatical from the whole SEO realm for a bit of time. Now, if it's been a month or two that they've paused, maybe they ran into a cashflow problem or something, we're probably just going to start right back up again and jump right back into it. But if it's been a bit longer, we kind of pump the brakes a little bit, make sure we have all of our ducks in a row. All of our research is still fresh and looks good to continue implementing as we move forward. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Carrie. Make sure to give Carrie a big follow over on Twitter at Carrie Hill, C-A-R-R-I-E H-I-L-L. Link in the show notes and follow all the good folks over at LocalU and Sterling Sky. It's a good point by the way, where you have a new client who's kind of been a hiatus, and they're coming in from somebody else who's doing some SEO work for them. And you have to start from scratch with an audit. It's always a little bit funny. Now you got to go back to the client and say, "Okay, well, you did some SEO for a while, but we're going to start from the beginning. We don't know what that other agency or consultant did for you, and now we're going to start from scratch." The client's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Start from scratch? We've been doing SEO." Crystal Carter: Yeah, but I think the other thing is that there'll be some scales and there's some things you can build on. You can tell a website is very janky from a technical point of view. Which is why Carrie very rightly mentioned auditing over and over again. And I think that that's super important and is definitely a process in restarting, is that before you restart, you wanted to make sure that there aren't any technical reasons why it's flatlined. And it could be that maybe the industry has moved on and this website has not, and that's something to do. So auditing is super important to make sure that there aren't broken things or things that are out of date. For instance, if there's a schema thing that they haven't implemented, but since they last updated the website has become a standard practice, for instance, that might be something to you think about, or Google Merchant Center or something. Maybe they never didn't sign up for Google Merchant Center or whatever it may be. So I think that that's super important. The auditing is really, really important and is absolutely crucial. And I think that it can be very tricky for clients who want to get started, and when you're like, "We need to do an audit," and they're like, "But I don't want to audit." It's like, "Yeah, but the thing is, if we don't do an audit, then I'm going to have to audit as I go along, which is going to take me twice as long as if I just do an audit from the first instance. And then I can tell you all of the things that are wrong or all of the things that we might be doing, and then we can make a decision as grownup human beings. So why don't we just do the grownup thing and do an audit, please." Mordy Oberstein: Another grownup thing that you could do is, and we're talking about getting your SEO off life support, and we're talking about new content opportunities, is use this SEO tool as we dive into a segment we haven't done in a while called Tool Dive. So when I used to work at Semrush, one of my biggest hills I would die on is the content marketing tool, topic research tool, in the content marketing tool set is the best tool in the whole platform. And no one uses it because it's not in SEO, it's under content marketing. But it was my favorite tool. And when I would do advocacy about the tool set, that would be the tool I would always use. And I always try to showcase, "My baby project." Getting people to understand this tool is awesome and you should use it, but it's not a keyword research tool. It's a topic research tool, and we're talking about getting your SEO off life support and finding new topics. I recommend this tool among others. Also ask as well. But this is a great tool and what you can do with it is, so let's say I'm a local SEO and I'm working with, I don't know, a doctor in Tampa, Florida. So you could put things in like doctor and Tampa Bay and see what shows up and understand what topics other doctors are ranking for or showing or whatever it is. So for example, I get back urgent care, type 2 diabetes, internal medicine, family medicine, board certified, quality care, specialty care as topics. So if I'm trying to revitalize my SEO when I'm a doctor office in Tampa Bay, Florida, then I probably want to talk about urgent care. I probably want to talk about what I specialize in. I probably want to talk about the quality of my care. I probably want to talk about, it talks about here family physician or different types of other medicine. If you specialize in one of those areas, you want talk about that. What the tool basically do is put out all of the topics that are relevant to... And you need to kind of work through because some of them are not relevant to you or shouldn't be relevant to you, and work through what is relevant and what's not relevant to you. And if you're trying to revitalize your SEO, you're probably going to find topics in here that relate to what you do that you have not been focusing on. And there's actually a mind map built in. And what's cool about this is so you can see all the topics. First off, you can dive into questions about the topic. So let's say for example, I choose high blood pressure, so I can get a whole bunch of questions about, as a doctor, have you ever given the wrong diagnosis about blood pressure? What are the best blood thinners? All the different subtopics or questions that your users have about blood pressure and being a doctor in Tampa Bay. But what you can also do is you can put it in a competitor website and the mind map will highlight in blue or green, I forget which one, which of its subtopics your competitor that you entered is ranking for. And you can focus on those first so you can find new topics and at the same time, see not just by keyword but topically which topics or subtopics your competitors are already focused on. Crystal Carter: And I think they've split it out in a really interesting way. So one thing that I was looking at was I was looking at Negroni's and people aren't familiar, Negroni is a trending drink. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, very familiar. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I went out with people and everybody was like, "I wanted Negroni." I was like, "What is the deal? It's like Pinot Grigio." Like 10 years ago, everybody suddenly got into Pinot Grigio, and at the moment people are really into Negroni. Anyway, so they have trending topics within it and then they break it into high resonance with audience. So it'll tell you that Negroni cocktail recipe has a lot of backlinks, that there's a lot of backlinks for that topic, which is really interesting. It gives you the search volume across lots of them and lots of different topics as well. It also breaks you into related searches, which Google will do. So that replicates the user journey for people looking at that topic. So I can see headlines. So it says headlines like Negroni recipes, like top Negroni recipes, classic Negroni recipes, related searches, best of vermouth for Negroni. So I if I had a drinks website, a cocktail recipe website, then that might be something that I'd want to include there. Or if I was a spirits seller, for instance, that'd be a great blog of the vermouth, the ingredient that goes in that particular drink. Mordy Oberstein: That's why I always like the tool because the tool does, it kind of gives you a very holistic understanding of what's included in the subtopic. First, outside of breaking up the subtopics, it breaks down the subtopic, the further subtopics like you're saying here. And it lets you kind of figure out... And what's different about this and versus a keyword research is you don't pick the question. You're taking a look and thematically analyzing what kind of topics or subtopics should I be talking about? You're a vermouth question. Maybe there's other kinds of mixers that need to be factored in that you should also... It should just raise questions about like, "Oh, snap. I never thought to take the topic from that point of view." Crystal Carter: Right. Similarly, they're talking about rock glasses, the types of glasses that you would put that drink in. Mordy Oberstein: I never would've thought of that. Crystal Carter: Orange slices. Then I like the way they split out the questions because they go into what, how can I, like why so can you make it with Campari, for instance, is one. And then they go into can you make it without sweet vermouth? Things like that. So I think that it's something that goes into it and it goes into it in a lot of different ways. I think also for a different perspective is that if you are feeling like you're SEO is a little bit stagnant, using different tools is a great way as well. So if it's a tool that you haven't used or a different part of the tool, because I completely forgot about this. I've used this tool before, but I completely forgot that this was here. Mordy Oberstein: It's not in the SEO section. They should put it in the SEO section. Crystal Carter: Right. This is our call to you, Semrush. And I think that using a different tool, using a different tool set, there are other tools that do this kind of thing as well, can give you some good ideas on where you can get new topics and also get yourself enthused. I think sometimes what happens with topics is that you have talked about the topic and you're like, "Oh, I talked about this so many times." My great aunt who's dearly departed was really, really lovely and she told me the same stories whenever I saw her, but when I introduced her to my husband, she told him all these different stories that I never heard and I was like, "Aunt Sonia, why don't you tell me this?" She was like, "I don't know, I didn't feel the need." So I think sometimes when you get new tools, you get new things out of them and maybe it helps you revive the way that you feel about your content even, which is a great thing to do. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. All the time. I do that, by the way, you know there's something to do with this tool, but if I go on LinkedIn and the collaborative questions and I don't like the articles or whatever, but I like seeing the question. It helps me think like, "Oh, how would I answer that? What's my take on that?" So getting a fresh look at something is a great idea. By the way, in the tool here itself, in the Semrush tool, you can filter it by trending topics. It helps you see what's hot, what's what's current event or news-y kind of thing. So you can sort of break down the topics that way as well. It's a great tool. Have a look at it, tell them we sent you, I guess, I don't know, we're not getting a referral out of this, but just want to show the love. Anyway, check out the content marketing tool inside of Semrush. It's a hidden gem to borrow an SEO term. You know what's also a hidden gem? Barry Schwartz is a hidden gem. Crystal Carter: He's not hidden at all. Mordy Oberstein: No, he is. You ever see him out and about? I never seen him out and about. He's hiding in his SEO cave. He's a hidden gem. Crystal Carter: He has thousands of followers. He comes out sometimes to give out baseball cards. Well, to talk about baseball cards. Or were they basketball cards? Basketball cards. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I have seen him play hockey in his driveway, so he comes out for that also. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Actually I am on BarrySEOMemes.com, I ask in my FAQ about Barry, "Does he play hockey?" And I have a link to the tweet that shows him playing hockey. He does the slap shot a little bit wrong, and everyone does this. The way that the slap shot gets momentum is when you first smack it on the ice or the ground, the stick bends backwards, and then when it hits the ball or the puck, like a slingshot slings forward. So you actually are meant to hit the stick on the ground before you hit the actual puck to get momentum. That's physics for you. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: How many people know that? I didn't know that growing up until I watch a video about this. Anyway, here's this week's Snappy SEO News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy news, three articles for you this week. Two from Barry Schwartz of course, and one from some guy named Mordy oberstein. Never heard of him before. Anyway, Mordy Oberstein wrote, or I wrote, on Search Engine Land three key observations about the March 2024 core update. So I got a hold of some big data from Semrush and went through sort of why it's hard to analyze the impact of the March 2024 core update. Basically due to the extended rollout, 45 day rollout, it makes looking at metrics like the peak level of ring volatility, almost meaningless to a larger or greater extent. Ran through some data on the impact of the core update at the top of the search. So one ranking pattern that I saw throughout my analysis or just running through 300 manually researching some 300 different search over the course of the update, was that there was a lot of movement or ranking shifts between narrow around positions five through 10, let's say the bottom half of page one, what we call page one. But when you looked at position one through five, the more of that very top of the SERP, I didn't see as much volatility there. So one of the things we looked at in the Semrush data set was the percentage of new URLs ranking in the top 10 that prior to the update didn't rank top 20, meaning before the update, these URLs did not even crack the top 20 results on the SERP, and now they rank top 10. And what we see is there's around 9% of the URLs ranking after the March, 2024 core update came from beyond position 20 with the implication meeting that Google realized that they were under rewarding significantly these URLs. If you look back at the previous core update, which was the November 2023 core update, that number is only around 6.5%. So that's a big increase in rank volatility and the drasticness rather of the rank volatility among the top 10 results. But when you look at the top five results, the percentage of new URLs that didn't rank top 20, even top 20, that now ranked top five after the March, 2024 core update is 3%. Back in November, it was 2%. Not as big of a gap. I would say marginal, but not notably significant, meaning a lot of the update across the web, and it's a very important word, across the web with the March 2024 core update, a lot of the drasticness of that big movement happened at positions five through 10, but not as much at one through five or not as much as you might've expected considering this was a huge update. The March, 2024 is a huge, huge update. You might've expected to be far more movement or drastic movement among the top five results. But Semrush's data says that's showing that that does not mean that this update was not more powerful than other core updates. In fact, I believe it was. And that's why you need to not just look at the normalized data across the entire web, which is what that Semrush's data set is doing, but you need to look at it more vertically. You need to dig deeper into the websites that were affected, whether positively or negatively, and to the extent of which they were. If you look at, just like I show in the article a bunch of examples, how heavy-handed, I think this update might have been. Anyway, I'll link to the article. We can read the whole thing there on Search Engine Land. Onto SE Roundtable, this from Barry Schwartz, "Google SGE, AI answers now cost 80% less to generate." So one of the big things that people were worried about with Google releasing the SGE, is it always going to cost them so much money. Now we're finding out that now looks like they've kind of perhaps handled that. Barry wrote quote, "I was never worried about Google reducing its costs to generate those AI answers." I agree. I was not really worried that Google was going to be able to figure out the money side of this or the cost to actually produce the results. I think the bigger question is, can Google figure out a way to actually make them, I think, fundamentally useful? To quote friend of the show, Mike King from iPoll rank, paraphrasing him, basically, "Have you ever read an SGE result and walked away feeling, 'Wow, that was incredibly unique and insightful?' Neither have I." Onto the next article and our last article of the day from, again, Barry Schwartz on SE Roundtable. "Google search tests, custom filters and templates." So there was a test, this was spotted by nine to five Google.com I believe. And what it basically is a test where you can now set custom filters and have them apply again and again and again and have them save. So I haven't actually used this, I can't see the test, but it looks like it's very similar to Advanced Search where you can set, let's say you want to say, "I only want results from these websites." You can now kind of save those to replicate over and over and over again across various keywords. So that's really interesting to me because we've been talking about a more personalized results page or Google results page for a while. Something like this would kind of limit what you're seeing, maybe create a filter bubble of sort. That's a different conversation for a different time, but it would result in a much more personalized kind of SERP experience, which is something that SEOs have been talking about forever. If Google does roll out something like this in earnest, that would be very much a paradigm shift in my opinion. And that is this week's Snappy News. If you're looking for a daily dose of some snappy ish kind of news, please check out, It's New. Our Daily, well, Monday through Friday daily news series with the great Barry Schwartz, of course Crystal and myself and Greg Finn from the marketing Clock Team, where we run through all of the news or some of the news for each and every day. You can find it on the Wix SEO Hub. It's right there at the top. You'll see a little card for it, It's New. And also it's on the Rusty Brick YouTube channel. And now I'm officially done with the Snappy News. Goal. Barry scorred a goal, the SEO News this week, didn't he? Crystal Carter: Did he do the Flying V? That's literally all I know about hockey. Mordy Oberstein: The Flying V. Crystal Carter: The only thing I know about hockey is what I learned from the Mighty Dicls. Mordy Oberstein: I was watching the movie with my kids and they're like, "Yeah, it's boring.' Like, "What?" Crystal Carter: Do you know what? My kids did the same thing. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my God. And you know what? Watching as an adult now, it is a little boring. Crystal Carter: We recently rewatched the Sandlot though. That's so good, right? Please tell me. Mordy Oberstein: My kids love that. My 7-year-old and my 6-year-old are talking about Babe Ruth now, and I'm trying to explain, he's dead. They're like, "Where’s Babe Ruth." Crystal Carter: The great Bambino. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the great Bambino. I thought you said the great Bambi. Great. If you haven't seen this movie, absolutely watch this movie. Crystal Carter: You're killing me Smalls. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, killing Smalls – so good, forever. And also, check out our follow of the week, who's also a great find, Xlili Gonzalez over at Rickety Roo at Xlili, X-L-I-L-I. Link in the show notes to her X profile, an Wix SEO contributor. Little tease here, part of our Wix SEO course, which is forthcoming and a great person to get some ideas to revitalize your SEO strategy on social media. Crystal Carter: She's absolutely fantastic, super nice, and also really gets enthusiastic about great opportunities for clients. She did a great article on the Wix SEO Hub about Microsoft Clarity. She also appeared on the Microsoft Clarity website from Microsoft. I'm talking about this, and again, CRO is a great way to think about how to revitalize your content as well. We have the Microsoft Clarity app on Wix, and she talks about that in her article. And if you are trying to figure out what should we do? How can we revitalize this content? How are people using the content? You can look at a tool like Microsoft Clarity to go, "Oh, actually people are really interested in this part of the website. We should lean into that. This is a good place to start. Let's keep going." Xlili is a great follow for that. Mordy Oberstein: And you can access Microsoft Clarity inside of Wix with our integration with Microsoft Clarity. So double win. Follow Xlili, get Microsoft Clarity inside of Wix. Everyone wins on multiple levels. Boom. Goal. Score. Home run. Another references. Anyway, I hope you feel rejuvenated after this. Like a good IPA, you feel refreshed. Crystal Carter: I was going to say like a spa day, but whatever. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, either because of all the IPA, not only do you feel refreshed, you also feel slightly drunk. So double win. Crystal Carter: Yeah. There we go. There we go. Cool. How do you revitalize yourself after the getting drunk? Mordy Oberstein: Or they can drink that other drink you mentioned before, which I don't know what that- Crystal Carter: Negroni? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, maybe that's what it was. The topic research. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I only drink straight. I don't drink mixed drinks. Crystal Carter: You only drink whiskey? Mordy Oberstein: I drink whiskey straight. Don't even put ice in it. Crystal Carter: What's your favorite whiskey? Mordy Oberstein: Woodford Reserve. Crystal Carter: Wow, that was quick. That's quick. That's an American whiskey? Mordy Oberstein: It's a bourbon. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay, okay. Right, right, right. Not scotch? Mordy Oberstein: No, I like scotch too, but that's my favorite. I like bourbon. Crystal Carter: I live in the UK and the people are big on the Glens. If it ain't a Glen, we're not messing with it. Mordy Oberstein: Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, Glengoyle. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Et cetera, et cetera. Mordy Oberstein: Glen Gabe Crystal Carter: Glen Gabe needs his own scotch. Yes. Can we please arrange that? Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. We'll talk to him. Crystal Carter: Right. Single-Domain main malt? Single-domain main malt. Mordy Oberstein: I love it. Crystal Carter: Come on. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, so good. Well, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry we're back next week of the new episode as we dive into accessibility and SEO. Look forward wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO learning Hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check out all the great content of webinars and resources and beyond over the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it. Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Carrie Hill Celeste Gonzalez Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube News: 3 key observations about the Google March 2024 core update Google SGE AI Answers Now Cost 80% Less To Generate Google Search Tests Custom Filters & Templates Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Carrie Hill Celeste Gonzalez Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube News: 3 key observations about the Google March 2024 core update Google SGE AI Answers Now Cost 80% Less To Generate Google Search Tests Custom Filters & Templates Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo, for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who rekindles fires across the internet, the one, the only head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I am the fire starter, the twisted fire starter. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, 'cause I was wondering who burned down that lovely- Crystal Carter: No, no, no, that wasn't me. No. Sorry. No, no, no, no. Sorry I didn't start that fire. Mordy Oberstein: I really liked that place. Crystal Carter: No, no… different one. No, it's just like shout out to the [sings]. People know that song, right? Am I that old? It's that bad? Do you know that song? Mordy Oberstein: Anyway though. The Serb's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, searchlight each and every month over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also resuscitate and revitalize your SEO workflows with checklist, cheat sheets and more found on the SEO Learning Hub's resource Center over at wix.com/SEO/learn, but this time /assets, as this week, we're here to help you if your SEO strategy and performance is on life support. Get tips and how to revitalize your SEO as we look into how to hunt down new organic opportunities, how to get your content cadence going again and the risk reward of trying something new for your SEO to help us. Sterling Sky's Carrie Hill will pop into to share how she revitalizes a site's SEO after a search marketing hiatus. Plus we'll explore a tool that can help you find new ideas. You probably already have it, but you don't even know that it's there. And of course, we have the snappies of SEO News and who you should be following for more awesomeness on social media. So somebody called 911 and started singing, staying Alive in Your Head as episode 86 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you resuscitate your SEO back up to 100 or to 120 beats a minute. You know that trick by the way you're doing CPR [singing “Staying Alive”]. And that's how you do the compressions? Crystal Carter: No, I did not know that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Oh, that is some good life skills there. Mordy Oberstein: There's some life skills right here on the SERP's Up podcast. Great episode of the office that talks about that also, which I'm not going to go into here. But yeah, it helps you do the cadence for the compressions. That's the reference. That's why I talk about the Bee Gees. Crystal Carter: Okay, I see that. I see that. I think that makes sense. That makes sense. So we're talking about how to reignite, resuscitate even, the SEO if it's gone kind of flat. And I think that this happens essentially when people take a break from content creation and/or when people sort of maybe forget about the website. There's a lot of times where there are clients who are so busy managing the website and maybe it's a business that isn't a direct to consumer business and maybe it's more of a brochure site. And what will often happen is that businesses will carry out their business, they'll do their day-to-day, and they might not even look at their website very often. They put up the core information about the business, but they might not look at what's on the pages there. And oftentimes if you look at that, then the SEO is kind of flat, right? Might be the same sort of number of traffic for years, months, weeks, certainly months and years. And I think that when you have a situation like that, even if you have blogs, even if you have content, if you are doing some of the sort of SEO best practices that people talk about, things like optimizing images and optimizing Meta descriptions and optimizing even the content that's already there, you might still see that your website is still kind of flat. And if your traffic is a little bit flat, but my general advice is that it probably means you need to do something different. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, if you're doing the same thing, if you've got the same amount of content, then Google will give you the same results. So if you want to reinvigorate your website, if you want to re-engage Google with your website, then probably the best bit of advice I can give to someone is to start making new content. And this might mean that you need to create new blogs. It might mean that you need to create new other pages on your website, but chances are between the last time you updated your website and now things have changed either for your business or within your industry, certainly within the last 18 months with all the AI that's going on, I think most industries have seen some impact from that, for instance. So there's almost certainly something that you can contribute there. But that does a few things. First of all, recency is a consideration when Google is thinking about new content and when Google is thinking about indexing content. Second of all, if Google is seeing that your site map, your site map will say the last time that your content was updated, and on a dynamic site map, very often the most recent content will go to the top of that list. And it's the case that the top of that list says that the last time your content was updated was in March the fourth, 2022, then they're going to go, "Well, we don't need to crawl this again. We already crawled this between now and 2022." So when you update content that says, "Oh, we should refresh this crawl because this site is new." They've done new stuff, they've got new things. The other thing that's great about it is it also gives you another opportunity to share content across different socials, which also will get crawled. It also gives you an opportunity to connect with more folks via backlinks, email, et cetera, et cetera, and to get a burst of traffic coming to your site when you're doing new content. Another great tactic that I've seen from folks, particularly agencies who are doing great work with content and websites that have sort of flatlined a little bit, is to not just do it in dribs and drabs, not just do one blog and then a month later, another blog, and then a month later, another blog, but upload 20, 30 blogs at the same time or 20, 30 pages at the same time, because that gives Google lots of new information about what's going on on your site. And when you link all of that up, that also gives lots of information to Google about the connections across it and all of that sort of stuff. I can see Morty wants to jump in here. Mordy Oberstein: At the same time, if you haven't produced new content, you have another problem, is that your audience thinks you're dead. So if you're going to put out one, "Okay, I'll get the SEO going. I'll put out a new post every month," and over time, "I'm not in a big rush." Let's say you're not in a big rush for whatever reason. I don't know why you wouldn't be in a big rush, but you're not in a big rush. "I'll take my leisurely time ranking again." Fine. You will miss out on all of that potential on your brand for people to realize that you've revitalized, you've been resuscitated, you are still alive. And that can also lead to helping your SEO, because once your people see that your brand is back, they'll share content on social, they might link to your content, all of that momentum, all of that digital light and cadence you'll benefit from if you think about it from your user's point of view. I hate being cliche, but if you think about the user's point of view as well. Crystal Carter: And I think that that's a great point. Since Covid, because a lot of businesses changed during Covid, and I think that one of the things that I find particularly with bricks and mortar businesses is that I will go to their website and their website might say their opening hours or might say what's going on or where they are or what they do, and then I'll go to their social to double check whether or not they're still there. Because it's been a couple of times when I've gone to go to a business that I haven't been to in a while and they're not there and the website says that they are, but their social says it or not. And I think that it is really important from the fad, that SEO perspective to say, "I'm still standing stronger than I ever did as it were." And I think that that's really, really important for Google and for users. And I think that it tells people that you're still on top of the conversation, whatever the new conversation is, particularly if you're a knowledge-based business, it tells people that you're still part of the community, if you're a local business. It tells people lots of things about you. Getting the content going, and it might even be updating some of your old pages as well. If people leave your team and you have a team page, update the team page. If Sarah's not working there anymore, then Sarah shouldn't be on your team page. And we wish Sarah well, I'm sure she's going to do a great job in her new role or whatever, but just update the page. That's fine. That's totally fine. And I think that that is something that Google will reward you for. And also trimming the fat is really useful as well. I think people overlook the fact that getting rid of content is sometimes updating content as well. Mordy Oberstein: I was just talking about this with Carrie Hill, who is our actual guest. I think our webinar with Sterling Sky, I think she mentioned the same thing. It's a great point. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So the way I like to think about it is cutting T-shirt, right? If you cut a T-shirt, you're actually cutting content out, but you're still updating the content at the same time. Mordy Oberstein: Or it's like when you need new shorts, you just take old pants and you cut them to make shorts. So now you have shorts. Crystal Carter: New content. Mordy Oberstein: It's the '80s again, we're wearing cutoff shorts. Crystal Carter: And it makes a new content because the other thing is that if Google's coming to your website and they're seeing lots and lots and lots of old content, that is irrelevant. Let's say you had a charity fun run or something, and Sarah again, who left the team, did the charity fun run. Mordy Oberstein: Sarah, who's been convicted of stealing from charities. Crystal Carter: Now Sarah's a nice person. She's making jewelry now doing. Mordy Oberstein: She's no longer in charge of the charity run. Crystal Carter: She's doing something else. So let's say, and no shade to Sarahs, I know lots of lovely Sarahs, but Mordy Oberstein: My wife's name is Sarah, so what are you... Crystal Carter: Hey, I'm sure she's great at fun runs. No shade to Sarahs, but I think that if she did a charity fun run, and you were like, "Hey, we'd like you to donate to Sarah's charity fun run." Guess what? They can't donate anymore. That was seven years ago. We don't need that page. Gone. Delete. Doesn't need to be there. It probably isn't ranking anymore. It's probably not getting you loads of traffic, but it is clogging up your crawl. So if you can cut those pages, that will also help revive things because Google will say, "Oh, okay, somebody's looking after this site. Somebody is pruning things and making them look good." Similarly, literally like pruning, if you see a tree that's all overgrown, or if you see a hedge that's all overgrown, nobody's looking after that, right? All of the stuff that's hanging over the side of the road. If you see some fantastic topiary, which is a great word, then you're going to say, "Oh, somebody's looking after that." And even though it's shorter than it would be if it was overgrown, you can tell that someone's looking after that and it's better for that reason. So I think make sure that you're pruning your content coherently as well, because that should also be part of creating a revived SEO presence. Mordy Oberstein: And a lot of the times when you're revitalizing your SEO, you're also revitalizing your business. So I'll give you a good example of this. I was reading an article about how Nike wants to revitalize its brand with the Paris Olympic Games, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if you actually look at Nike's organic traffic, it's pretty stagnant over the last few years. And in the article they're saying because they feel their sales have stagnated, they've flatlined. I mean, I would take Nike's flatline any day of the week, but they want to grow up. You're not growing, you're dying kind of thing. And a lot of the times when you're revitalizing your content, because you're talking about revitalizing content, and a lot of the times your content is your brand, your content is your business. So when you're revitalizing your SEO, it's an opportunity to pivot your entire... If your business is stagnant, it's a good time to pivot. I was talking to Ryan L. Smith, who will be a guest on this podcast in a few weeks just yesterday on a different podcast. And he was saying he had a client where they sold wedding cakes. And as they started really creating that identity around selling wedding cakes, people started to ask them about, "Hey, can you do my anniversary?" Or, "Can you do my birthday?" And they saw that as a good time to start pivoting. If you are creating, you should be opening new doors of opportunity for yourself. If you're alive, you should be creating new doors for opportunity for yourself, and you should be using it to, if not pivot, expand on what you do as a business. And that's a great time to start expanding on what you do for SEO and the topics that you're now able to focus on. I will say, and we were talking about this earlier today, and then when you do that, sometimes as you're expanding your offering or you're pivoting your offering, both for your users and for search engines, you need to make sure that you're taking it step by step. Before you sold baseball jerseys and now you're selling, I don't know, you sold hockey sweaters and now you're selling actual sweaters. You need to somehow slowly make the move from selling hockey sweaters to actual sweaters and creating that perception and the content that supports that over time, which may mean you're creating content or pages that are not meant to rank or pull in conversions, but then help you make the pivot so that you can eventually pull in the traffic and pull in the conversions. Crystal Carter: And I think it's important when you're doing that to think about the core of your audience, people who know you, people who like you, your warm leads, your friends, like your internet friends, as it were- Mordy Oberstein: I only have internet friends. Crystal Carter: ... you're not throwing them out of the window. Mordy Oberstein: Let’s gloss right over that! Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. Morning. It's all good. We'll do a whip round as it were. I don't know. We'll sort you out. So a prime example of this is Old Spice, right? I remember when Old Spice revived their brand, so there's Old Spice original, then they had that big campaign, this is probably 10 or 15 years ago now when they had the guy and he was like, "Look at your man. Now look at me. Now look at this." Do you remember those? And they did some great stuff online. They did some great stuff on YouTube, and they really revitalized the brand. It got people really interested in it, in the brand, because this was a brand that everybody knew and loved. It was old faithful, just like peanut butter and jelly. Everybody knew Old Spice and what it did. It was solid and it's a perfectly solid brand, like Nike's, totally solid brand, all of that sort of stuff. And then they were just like, "Let's do something fun. Let's do something fun and interesting." And now they've got lots of different kinds of styles and stuff, and they've got really interesting names. Mordy Oberstein: They were very, I would say bland. They were like old man a little bit. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it was totally fine. But that was kind of their brand. And they were like, "Let's get crazy." Now they've got scents called Night Panther. Mordy Oberstein: Hell, yeah. Crystal Carter: And they're just getting a little bit interesting, but they're building on the brand that they have there to expand that out. Mordy Oberstein: But that's a really good point. One of the things that helps you revitalize your SEO and all the things in this case for your brand, in the case of Old Spice, and I think by the way, that Nike needs to do the same thing, you're kind of going against the grain or against what you were doing before. You're going against your instincts or reference back to a Seinfeld episode. I'm not a big Seinfeld fan. Anyway, but there's an episode where George kind does the opposite of whatever he would normally do, how he would normally react because things are not going well for him. Do that. Pull a Costanza, do the opposite. If your brand is a little bit old man, a little bit boring, if you're Old Spice, go a little crazy with it. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think it comes from a point of confidence as well. So old Spice for instance, we're just going to stick with this for a minute. The thing about them is people know that that's a solid brand, that they know how to make sure that you don't smell the way that you don't want to smell or whatever. We know that they know how to do that job, and we know that they're consistent and we know that they're a solid brand, they're a solid team, they're dependable, all of that sort of stuff. So this extra thing that they're doing is something that where they're like, "Hey, we're trying this new thing. It's kind of fun." And it comes from a place of comfort. It's like you want something that same but different. Mordy Oberstein: Same but different. Crystal Carter: And for instance, I went to a wedding and they had fish and chips. I'm in England, but they have fish and chips, but in a single serving thing, right? Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Crystal Carter: Yeah, right? So it was like a cone, a handheld cone, and it had one bit of fish and a couple of chips and a little bit of peas at the bottom or whatever. And that was fun. "Oh, it's fun." But if they were like, "Oh, we've got fish sticks covered in jelly," that would be weird. That's too weird. Mordy Oberstein: No, that's too weird. Crystal Carter: You don't want to go too weird. You don't want to go too weird. You want to go to something that people recognize that's from you. That's not like Old Spice straight away went into doing something completely different. They said, "We have different scents." That's kind of really where they went. And that's fine. So I think when you're thinking about your branding, you're thinking about your blogs, think of what's in the neighborhood of what you're doing, but is building on it. So it might be that you're talking about the same topic, but to a slightly different audience. Mordy Oberstein: Or in a different way or a different take. And if you have been producing a lot of content and you've stagnated, this might be the strategy for you, do something different. If you're being very methodical about A, B, B, and C, A, B, B, and C, of course you have two, Bs, of course B is the most important letter in the alphabet. Crystal Carter: Obviously. Mordy Oberstein: Then try something different. If you're trying X in your title tags and it's not pulling in clicks, do the opposite. Crystal Carter: And also when we say creating new content, it could be new blogs or it could be your same blogs in a different way. So you could take your blogs and make them into YouTube videos. You could take your blogs and make them into newsletters. You could take your blogs and make them into Twitter posts or infographics or whatever, what have you. And then that doesn't need a new content writer to do all of that. That's just the same information in a different way. But it will get your information to a new audience. And if you're doing something like a podcast, for instance, let's say you interviewed someone for a blog and you could maybe make them into a podcast or maybe you're discussing an event that you did in a podcast, for instance, podcast, again, have another distribution model that will also bring in traffic to your website. So same but different. It's the same content but in a different guise, for instance. And that can revitalize, but basically you need to do something new. Mordy Oberstein: You need to break the cycle of stagnation. To help you understand how she does this, Carrie Hill from Sterling Sky and LocalU is here to tell us how she goes about helping SEO clients who have stopped their work, but need to revive some faltering search performance and come back to SEO and search success. Here's Carrie. Carrie Hill: So what do we do at Sterling Sky when a client comes back after suspending their SEO? We're going to make a few assumptions here because this can be nuanced. So let's kind of create a story and then I'll kind of tell you how we'd handle it. So this person has paused SEO. They have done no work on their website, no SEO in this time period that we're going to talk about. If they've hired another company that's coming in and done some things, or they've tried to do it in-house, we're sort of looking at a different scenario. But let's just say for this first example that nothing's been done on the website since they "paused" SEO. If they were Sterling Sky client, they paused SEO and it's six months later and they've come back and said, "Okay, we're ready to start up again." It's likely we can pretty much start back up where we left off. If it's been more than six months, we're probably going to have to take a step back, do some more evaluation, do a bit of an audit, kind of look at the keywords and the competition and what's going on in their market before we move forward. If it's been six months or less, we're pretty confident that what we have done to date and the research we have to implement to date is probably pretty good. Now, there are things that will have to change. Tactics that worked six months ago might not be working today. Things that didn't work six months ago might be working today. So there's always a bit of reevaluation that you have to plan for when you restart SEO. But if they've left us and then come back to us with no work in the interim, we can pretty much hit the ground running, keep implementing our tactics and moving forward. Now, scenario number two is they suspend SEO and it's a year later and they come back to us. For the most part, we're going to treat them like a brand new client. More than likely we're going to audit them, which is sort of like the baseline of where everybody starts with Sterling Sky. We pretty much don't take on SEO clients if we don't have an audit done first, just so we know kind of where we're starting from, what's there, what's working, what's not working. Quite frankly, a year can make a big difference in search volumes, keyword trends, et cetera. So we're going to sort of start, I don't want to say start from scratch, but we're going to pull back a bit more, do a bit more research before we then start implementing and probably, let's be perfectly honest, making changes to the website because what keywords worked a year ago probably aren't going to be working now or maybe not working as effectively. Maybe some new phrases or new services that they've added in that year could come into play that we have to plan around as well. Now, the third scenario I'm just going to mention is if they've paused SEO and they had a different SEO company previously, or they did it in-house previously, they've not done anything for a year and then they hire us. That's a new client. We're going to start them with an audit. We're going to do our own keyword research with their input of course, and start with making sure that their architecture and technical SEO is on point as we start moving them forward into all of the tactics that we use to ensure that not only do they rank well, they convert well. So that's kind of our process for bringing people back into SEO when they've been on hiatus or sabbatical from the whole SEO realm for a bit of time. Now, if it's been a month or two that they've paused, maybe they ran into a cashflow problem or something, we're probably just going to start right back up again and jump right back into it. But if it's been a bit longer, we kind of pump the brakes a little bit, make sure we have all of our ducks in a row. All of our research is still fresh and looks good to continue implementing as we move forward. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Carrie. Make sure to give Carrie a big follow over on Twitter at Carrie Hill, C-A-R-R-I-E H-I-L-L. Link in the show notes and follow all the good folks over at LocalU and Sterling Sky. It's a good point by the way, where you have a new client who's kind of been a hiatus, and they're coming in from somebody else who's doing some SEO work for them. And you have to start from scratch with an audit. It's always a little bit funny. Now you got to go back to the client and say, "Okay, well, you did some SEO for a while, but we're going to start from the beginning. We don't know what that other agency or consultant did for you, and now we're going to start from scratch." The client's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Start from scratch? We've been doing SEO." Crystal Carter: Yeah, but I think the other thing is that there'll be some scales and there's some things you can build on. You can tell a website is very janky from a technical point of view. Which is why Carrie very rightly mentioned auditing over and over again. And I think that that's super important and is definitely a process in restarting, is that before you restart, you wanted to make sure that there aren't any technical reasons why it's flatlined. And it could be that maybe the industry has moved on and this website has not, and that's something to do. So auditing is super important to make sure that there aren't broken things or things that are out of date. For instance, if there's a schema thing that they haven't implemented, but since they last updated the website has become a standard practice, for instance, that might be something to you think about, or Google Merchant Center or something. Maybe they never didn't sign up for Google Merchant Center or whatever it may be. So I think that that's super important. The auditing is really, really important and is absolutely crucial. And I think that it can be very tricky for clients who want to get started, and when you're like, "We need to do an audit," and they're like, "But I don't want to audit." It's like, "Yeah, but the thing is, if we don't do an audit, then I'm going to have to audit as I go along, which is going to take me twice as long as if I just do an audit from the first instance. And then I can tell you all of the things that are wrong or all of the things that we might be doing, and then we can make a decision as grownup human beings. So why don't we just do the grownup thing and do an audit, please." Mordy Oberstein: Another grownup thing that you could do is, and we're talking about getting your SEO off life support, and we're talking about new content opportunities, is use this SEO tool as we dive into a segment we haven't done in a while called Tool Dive. So when I used to work at Semrush, one of my biggest hills I would die on is the content marketing tool, topic research tool, in the content marketing tool set is the best tool in the whole platform. And no one uses it because it's not in SEO, it's under content marketing. But it was my favorite tool. And when I would do advocacy about the tool set, that would be the tool I would always use. And I always try to showcase, "My baby project." Getting people to understand this tool is awesome and you should use it, but it's not a keyword research tool. It's a topic research tool, and we're talking about getting your SEO off life support and finding new topics. I recommend this tool among others. Also ask as well. But this is a great tool and what you can do with it is, so let's say I'm a local SEO and I'm working with, I don't know, a doctor in Tampa, Florida. So you could put things in like doctor and Tampa Bay and see what shows up and understand what topics other doctors are ranking for or showing or whatever it is. So for example, I get back urgent care, type 2 diabetes, internal medicine, family medicine, board certified, quality care, specialty care as topics. So if I'm trying to revitalize my SEO when I'm a doctor office in Tampa Bay, Florida, then I probably want to talk about urgent care. I probably want to talk about what I specialize in. I probably want to talk about the quality of my care. I probably want to talk about, it talks about here family physician or different types of other medicine. If you specialize in one of those areas, you want talk about that. What the tool basically do is put out all of the topics that are relevant to... And you need to kind of work through because some of them are not relevant to you or shouldn't be relevant to you, and work through what is relevant and what's not relevant to you. And if you're trying to revitalize your SEO, you're probably going to find topics in here that relate to what you do that you have not been focusing on. And there's actually a mind map built in. And what's cool about this is so you can see all the topics. First off, you can dive into questions about the topic. So let's say for example, I choose high blood pressure, so I can get a whole bunch of questions about, as a doctor, have you ever given the wrong diagnosis about blood pressure? What are the best blood thinners? All the different subtopics or questions that your users have about blood pressure and being a doctor in Tampa Bay. But what you can also do is you can put it in a competitor website and the mind map will highlight in blue or green, I forget which one, which of its subtopics your competitor that you entered is ranking for. And you can focus on those first so you can find new topics and at the same time, see not just by keyword but topically which topics or subtopics your competitors are already focused on. Crystal Carter: And I think they've split it out in a really interesting way. So one thing that I was looking at was I was looking at Negroni's and people aren't familiar, Negroni is a trending drink. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, very familiar. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I went out with people and everybody was like, "I wanted Negroni." I was like, "What is the deal? It's like Pinot Grigio." Like 10 years ago, everybody suddenly got into Pinot Grigio, and at the moment people are really into Negroni. Anyway, so they have trending topics within it and then they break it into high resonance with audience. So it'll tell you that Negroni cocktail recipe has a lot of backlinks, that there's a lot of backlinks for that topic, which is really interesting. It gives you the search volume across lots of them and lots of different topics as well. It also breaks you into related searches, which Google will do. So that replicates the user journey for people looking at that topic. So I can see headlines. So it says headlines like Negroni recipes, like top Negroni recipes, classic Negroni recipes, related searches, best of vermouth for Negroni. So I if I had a drinks website, a cocktail recipe website, then that might be something that I'd want to include there. Or if I was a spirits seller, for instance, that'd be a great blog of the vermouth, the ingredient that goes in that particular drink. Mordy Oberstein: That's why I always like the tool because the tool does, it kind of gives you a very holistic understanding of what's included in the subtopic. First, outside of breaking up the subtopics, it breaks down the subtopic, the further subtopics like you're saying here. And it lets you kind of figure out... And what's different about this and versus a keyword research is you don't pick the question. You're taking a look and thematically analyzing what kind of topics or subtopics should I be talking about? You're a vermouth question. Maybe there's other kinds of mixers that need to be factored in that you should also... It should just raise questions about like, "Oh, snap. I never thought to take the topic from that point of view." Crystal Carter: Right. Similarly, they're talking about rock glasses, the types of glasses that you would put that drink in. Mordy Oberstein: I never would've thought of that. Crystal Carter: Orange slices. Then I like the way they split out the questions because they go into what, how can I, like why so can you make it with Campari, for instance, is one. And then they go into can you make it without sweet vermouth? Things like that. So I think that it's something that goes into it and it goes into it in a lot of different ways. I think also for a different perspective is that if you are feeling like you're SEO is a little bit stagnant, using different tools is a great way as well. So if it's a tool that you haven't used or a different part of the tool, because I completely forgot about this. I've used this tool before, but I completely forgot that this was here. Mordy Oberstein: It's not in the SEO section. They should put it in the SEO section. Crystal Carter: Right. This is our call to you, Semrush. And I think that using a different tool, using a different tool set, there are other tools that do this kind of thing as well, can give you some good ideas on where you can get new topics and also get yourself enthused. I think sometimes what happens with topics is that you have talked about the topic and you're like, "Oh, I talked about this so many times." My great aunt who's dearly departed was really, really lovely and she told me the same stories whenever I saw her, but when I introduced her to my husband, she told him all these different stories that I never heard and I was like, "Aunt Sonia, why don't you tell me this?" She was like, "I don't know, I didn't feel the need." So I think sometimes when you get new tools, you get new things out of them and maybe it helps you revive the way that you feel about your content even, which is a great thing to do. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. All the time. I do that, by the way, you know there's something to do with this tool, but if I go on LinkedIn and the collaborative questions and I don't like the articles or whatever, but I like seeing the question. It helps me think like, "Oh, how would I answer that? What's my take on that?" So getting a fresh look at something is a great idea. By the way, in the tool here itself, in the Semrush tool, you can filter it by trending topics. It helps you see what's hot, what's what's current event or news-y kind of thing. So you can sort of break down the topics that way as well. It's a great tool. Have a look at it, tell them we sent you, I guess, I don't know, we're not getting a referral out of this, but just want to show the love. Anyway, check out the content marketing tool inside of Semrush. It's a hidden gem to borrow an SEO term. You know what's also a hidden gem? Barry Schwartz is a hidden gem. Crystal Carter: He's not hidden at all. Mordy Oberstein: No, he is. You ever see him out and about? I never seen him out and about. He's hiding in his SEO cave. He's a hidden gem. Crystal Carter: He has thousands of followers. He comes out sometimes to give out baseball cards. Well, to talk about baseball cards. Or were they basketball cards? Basketball cards. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I have seen him play hockey in his driveway, so he comes out for that also. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Actually I am on BarrySEOMemes.com, I ask in my FAQ about Barry, "Does he play hockey?" And I have a link to the tweet that shows him playing hockey. He does the slap shot a little bit wrong, and everyone does this. The way that the slap shot gets momentum is when you first smack it on the ice or the ground, the stick bends backwards, and then when it hits the ball or the puck, like a slingshot slings forward. So you actually are meant to hit the stick on the ground before you hit the actual puck to get momentum. That's physics for you. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: How many people know that? I didn't know that growing up until I watch a video about this. Anyway, here's this week's Snappy SEO News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy news, three articles for you this week. Two from Barry Schwartz of course, and one from some guy named Mordy oberstein. Never heard of him before. Anyway, Mordy Oberstein wrote, or I wrote, on Search Engine Land three key observations about the March 2024 core update. So I got a hold of some big data from Semrush and went through sort of why it's hard to analyze the impact of the March 2024 core update. Basically due to the extended rollout, 45 day rollout, it makes looking at metrics like the peak level of ring volatility, almost meaningless to a larger or greater extent. Ran through some data on the impact of the core update at the top of the search. So one ranking pattern that I saw throughout my analysis or just running through 300 manually researching some 300 different search over the course of the update, was that there was a lot of movement or ranking shifts between narrow around positions five through 10, let's say the bottom half of page one, what we call page one. But when you looked at position one through five, the more of that very top of the SERP, I didn't see as much volatility there. So one of the things we looked at in the Semrush data set was the percentage of new URLs ranking in the top 10 that prior to the update didn't rank top 20, meaning before the update, these URLs did not even crack the top 20 results on the SERP, and now they rank top 10. And what we see is there's around 9% of the URLs ranking after the March, 2024 core update came from beyond position 20 with the implication meeting that Google realized that they were under rewarding significantly these URLs. If you look back at the previous core update, which was the November 2023 core update, that number is only around 6.5%. So that's a big increase in rank volatility and the drasticness rather of the rank volatility among the top 10 results. But when you look at the top five results, the percentage of new URLs that didn't rank top 20, even top 20, that now ranked top five after the March, 2024 core update is 3%. Back in November, it was 2%. Not as big of a gap. I would say marginal, but not notably significant, meaning a lot of the update across the web, and it's a very important word, across the web with the March 2024 core update, a lot of the drasticness of that big movement happened at positions five through 10, but not as much at one through five or not as much as you might've expected considering this was a huge update. The March, 2024 is a huge, huge update. You might've expected to be far more movement or drastic movement among the top five results. But Semrush's data says that's showing that that does not mean that this update was not more powerful than other core updates. In fact, I believe it was. And that's why you need to not just look at the normalized data across the entire web, which is what that Semrush's data set is doing, but you need to look at it more vertically. You need to dig deeper into the websites that were affected, whether positively or negatively, and to the extent of which they were. If you look at, just like I show in the article a bunch of examples, how heavy-handed, I think this update might have been. Anyway, I'll link to the article. We can read the whole thing there on Search Engine Land. Onto SE Roundtable, this from Barry Schwartz, "Google SGE, AI answers now cost 80% less to generate." So one of the big things that people were worried about with Google releasing the SGE, is it always going to cost them so much money. Now we're finding out that now looks like they've kind of perhaps handled that. Barry wrote quote, "I was never worried about Google reducing its costs to generate those AI answers." I agree. I was not really worried that Google was going to be able to figure out the money side of this or the cost to actually produce the results. I think the bigger question is, can Google figure out a way to actually make them, I think, fundamentally useful? To quote friend of the show, Mike King from iPoll rank, paraphrasing him, basically, "Have you ever read an SGE result and walked away feeling, 'Wow, that was incredibly unique and insightful?' Neither have I." Onto the next article and our last article of the day from, again, Barry Schwartz on SE Roundtable. "Google search tests, custom filters and templates." So there was a test, this was spotted by nine to five Google.com I believe. And what it basically is a test where you can now set custom filters and have them apply again and again and again and have them save. So I haven't actually used this, I can't see the test, but it looks like it's very similar to Advanced Search where you can set, let's say you want to say, "I only want results from these websites." You can now kind of save those to replicate over and over and over again across various keywords. So that's really interesting to me because we've been talking about a more personalized results page or Google results page for a while. Something like this would kind of limit what you're seeing, maybe create a filter bubble of sort. That's a different conversation for a different time, but it would result in a much more personalized kind of SERP experience, which is something that SEOs have been talking about forever. If Google does roll out something like this in earnest, that would be very much a paradigm shift in my opinion. And that is this week's Snappy News. If you're looking for a daily dose of some snappy ish kind of news, please check out, It's New. Our Daily, well, Monday through Friday daily news series with the great Barry Schwartz, of course Crystal and myself and Greg Finn from the marketing Clock Team, where we run through all of the news or some of the news for each and every day. You can find it on the Wix SEO Hub. It's right there at the top. You'll see a little card for it, It's New. And also it's on the Rusty Brick YouTube channel. And now I'm officially done with the Snappy News. Goal. Barry scorred a goal, the SEO News this week, didn't he? Crystal Carter: Did he do the Flying V? That's literally all I know about hockey. Mordy Oberstein: The Flying V. Crystal Carter: The only thing I know about hockey is what I learned from the Mighty Dicls. Mordy Oberstein: I was watching the movie with my kids and they're like, "Yeah, it's boring.' Like, "What?" Crystal Carter: Do you know what? My kids did the same thing. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my God. And you know what? Watching as an adult now, it is a little boring. Crystal Carter: We recently rewatched the Sandlot though. That's so good, right? Please tell me. Mordy Oberstein: My kids love that. My 7-year-old and my 6-year-old are talking about Babe Ruth now, and I'm trying to explain, he's dead. They're like, "Where’s Babe Ruth." Crystal Carter: The great Bambino. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the great Bambino. I thought you said the great Bambi. Great. If you haven't seen this movie, absolutely watch this movie. Crystal Carter: You're killing me Smalls. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, killing Smalls – so good, forever. And also, check out our follow of the week, who's also a great find, Xlili Gonzalez over at Rickety Roo at Xlili, X-L-I-L-I. Link in the show notes to her X profile, an Wix SEO contributor. Little tease here, part of our Wix SEO course, which is forthcoming and a great person to get some ideas to revitalize your SEO strategy on social media. Crystal Carter: She's absolutely fantastic, super nice, and also really gets enthusiastic about great opportunities for clients. She did a great article on the Wix SEO Hub about Microsoft Clarity. She also appeared on the Microsoft Clarity website from Microsoft. I'm talking about this, and again, CRO is a great way to think about how to revitalize your content as well. We have the Microsoft Clarity app on Wix, and she talks about that in her article. And if you are trying to figure out what should we do? How can we revitalize this content? How are people using the content? You can look at a tool like Microsoft Clarity to go, "Oh, actually people are really interested in this part of the website. We should lean into that. This is a good place to start. Let's keep going." Xlili is a great follow for that. Mordy Oberstein: And you can access Microsoft Clarity inside of Wix with our integration with Microsoft Clarity. So double win. Follow Xlili, get Microsoft Clarity inside of Wix. Everyone wins on multiple levels. Boom. Goal. Score. Home run. Another references. Anyway, I hope you feel rejuvenated after this. Like a good IPA, you feel refreshed. Crystal Carter: I was going to say like a spa day, but whatever. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, either because of all the IPA, not only do you feel refreshed, you also feel slightly drunk. So double win. Crystal Carter: Yeah. There we go. There we go. Cool. How do you revitalize yourself after the getting drunk? Mordy Oberstein: Or they can drink that other drink you mentioned before, which I don't know what that- Crystal Carter: Negroni? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, maybe that's what it was. The topic research. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I only drink straight. I don't drink mixed drinks. Crystal Carter: You only drink whiskey? Mordy Oberstein: I drink whiskey straight. Don't even put ice in it. Crystal Carter: What's your favorite whiskey? Mordy Oberstein: Woodford Reserve. Crystal Carter: Wow, that was quick. That's quick. That's an American whiskey? Mordy Oberstein: It's a bourbon. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay, okay. Right, right, right. Not scotch? Mordy Oberstein: No, I like scotch too, but that's my favorite. I like bourbon. Crystal Carter: I live in the UK and the people are big on the Glens. If it ain't a Glen, we're not messing with it. Mordy Oberstein: Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, Glengoyle. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Et cetera, et cetera. Mordy Oberstein: Glen Gabe Crystal Carter: Glen Gabe needs his own scotch. Yes. Can we please arrange that? Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. We'll talk to him. Crystal Carter: Right. Single-Domain main malt? Single-domain main malt. Mordy Oberstein: I love it. Crystal Carter: Come on. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, so good. Well, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry we're back next week of the new episode as we dive into accessibility and SEO. Look forward wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO learning Hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check out all the great content of webinars and resources and beyond over the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it. Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. 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Is it time to break free of the SERP silo? What content will work in 2025? And how does AI and the LLM factor into the SEO equation now? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by a panel of guests to give their unique takes on what is coming for SEO in 2025. From the importance of breaking silos and collaborating across departments for better SEO strategies to local SEO tips to insights on structuring AI-generated content to top content strategies for 2025 this is one episode you don’t want to miss! Join episode 117 of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast to gear up and avoid the bunny slopes as we ski down SEO in 2025. Back Looking ahead to SEO in 2025 Is it time to break free of the SERP silo? What content will work in 2025? And how does AI and the LLM factor into the SEO equation now? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by a panel of guests to give their unique takes on what is coming for SEO in 2025. From the importance of breaking silos and collaborating across departments for better SEO strategies to local SEO tips to insights on structuring AI-generated content to top content strategies for 2025 this is one episode you don’t want to miss! Join episode 117 of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast to gear up and avoid the bunny slopes as we ski down SEO in 2025. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 117 | January 14, 2025 | 32 MIN 00:00 / 32:12 This week’s guests Ray Saddiq Ray is the Global Head of Marketing at Rise at Seven. He is an organic growth specialist. With extensive experience across in-house and agency environments, Ray specialises in both Social and SEO strategies to deliver impactful results. His background spans marketing, organic social media, and organic search, making him a go-to thought leader for crafting strategies that connect brands with their audiences from the FYP to the search results. Celeste Gonzalez Celeste Gonzalez leads RooLabs, RicketyRoo's SEO testing division, where she drives innovative strategies and engages with the SEO community. She is passionate about pushing SEO boundaries and sharing insights on both successes and challenges in the industry. Mike King An artist and a technologist all rolled into one, Mike is the Founder and CEO of digital marketing agency, iPullRank. Mike consults with companies all over the world, including brands ranging from SAP, American Express, HSBC, SanDisk, General Mills, and FTD, to a laundry list of promising eCommerce, publisher, and financial services organizations. Paul Andre De Vera You’ll find Paul Andre de Vera speaking on podcasts/webinars, looking for the next great place to devour a delicious rib-eye steak, and occasionally sipping a glass of whiskey. All while coaching, serving clients, and producing the SEO Video Show. Debbie Chew Debbie Chew is an SEO Manager at Dialpad with over 8 years of experience in digital marketing. She specializes in content and link building, and is passionate about sharing her learnings with other marketers. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who has covered all the facets of 2024 and knows how to look ahead to 2025, our one and only head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I am an expert on 2024. I have been here the whole time. I did every single day of 2024. Can confirm. Mordy Oberstein: I checked out on a few days, I'll be honest with you. There was a few days I missed. Crystal Carter: I was here the whole time. I saw all of it. I saw all of it. First eyewitness account, this is primary source. Mordy Oberstein: It was too much for my eyes. I had to like ... Crystal Carter: It was a lot. There was a lot. Every year I feel like we get to the end of the year and people were like, "Wow." Mordy Oberstein: No, no. This year was real wow. We'll get to it in a second. From an SEO point of view. I'm not talking about anything else. Purely from an SEO point of view. Crystal Carter: Yeah, there's a lot to cover. There's been a lot of what-have-yous, a lot of ins and outs. Mordy Oberstein: Ins and outs, a lot of what-have-yous. Big Lebowski. Yeah, indeed. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. Look for it in your inboxes each and every month, where you can see and plan out your entire site with our new visual site map that not only helps you better see, and dare I say, visualize your client's entire site, but leverages AI to help you build custom wire frames. Links in the show notes. Do check it out, as today's all about having vision, as we look forward to 2025 and what it has in store for SEO. Is it time to break free of the SERP silo? What content will work in 2025? And how does AI in the grand old LLM factor into the SEO equation now? We'll hear from not one, not two, not three, not four, not five ... I could go on, not six, but many SEOs, such as Mike King, the latest soloist, Ray Saddiq, Paul Andre de Vera, Victor Pan, and many more as they weigh in on what's in store for you in 2025. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So while the snow's still soft on 2025, ratchet down those ankle straps and strap your feet in as we ollie and nollie our boards down the mountain that is SEO in 2025. Crystal Carter: You dropping skateboard references on the podcast? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Snowboard. I had to look them up. I have no clue. Crystal Carter: You snowboarding? Okay. Mordy Oberstein: It's snowboarding. Crystal Carter: I'm aware that you can ollie on a skateboard. I guess you can ollie on a snowboard because your feet don't have to come off. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Crystal Carter: An ollie, I can never remember what that is. I know skateboarders, they talk in- Mordy Oberstein: It's the opposite of an ollie, no? Crystal Carter: Possibly. It's like if you're going switch or doing tail taps and half cab disaster, there's lots of skateboard terminology that people say. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding. We're all about that stuff. I know nothing about it, which is funny- Crystal Carter: Everything's above board. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Crystal Carter: Just play one on TV. Mordy Oberstein: I just play one on our SEO podcast. I literally Googled all that. I don't know what it even means. Crystal Carter: You know what the first time I went snowboarding, we actually Googled top 10 tips for snowboarding, printed it out- Mordy Oberstein: And you broke your leg? Crystal Carter: No, not the first time. No. We printed it out and then printed out the MapQuest and drove up a mountain in a Hyundai, and yeah, it was good times. Good times. That's the- Mordy Oberstein: You know what's funny? Probably that first result of the top 10 tips, probably very similar to the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh, eighth, ninth 10th offering the top 10 tips. Crystal Carter: Those are the good old days. Mordy Oberstein: Well, that was 2024 for you. So as we gently and non-controversially move into recapping 2024 just a bit, because SEO enters in a really weird place. I don't think it's ever been weirder. Isn't that weird? To quote Austin Powers, because it is weird. Crystal Carter: May you live in interesting times. Mordy Oberstein: I just want to recap some of the larger issues, stories, developments in SEO in 2024, such as now that the helpful content update is no more, it's baked into the core algorithm and sites that were hit by it back in September don't seemingly, at this point in time of the recording of this podcast, have been able to actually recover in a significant way. Seeing like 20% recoveries was the max. So that was a big deal. Reddit's here, Reddit's there, Reddit's everywhere, and there's not a drop of organic results to spare. Crystal Carter: I didn't know you had bars, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I could snowboard and rhyme on the same podcast. Podcast is imagination land. So there's that. There were creator summits at Google Health where sites were told, "Nope, not going to happen for you." Crystal Carter: Good luck out there. Mordy Oberstein: Break a leg. I don't know. Yeah? That happened. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I guess they were just kind of told it depends. I don't know. Yeah, there was a lot going on. Mordy Oberstein: Interesting plan for a creator. So let's bring them all in and tell them we don't know. Sucks for you, I guess. Crystal Carter: I think it's just really tricky for people because Google shifts around, but this has been so much shifting. I've been saying to people, Google's in beta mode right now. And we've been in, as SEOs, there are people who've been doing SEO since 1999, and a lot of stuff hadn't changed that much over the course of that time, but in the last three, four years. Mordy Oberstein: In the last three days. Crystal Carter: Right, right, exactly. At time of recording, the head of Google recently said there's going to be monumental change coming in the next little while. Mordy Oberstein: That was a great ... We covered that on its new. If you missed that, you should watch that because there are some salty points that I will not say in this podcast about that interview. Just ask Congress. Okay. Stop, cannot go further. I will get too salty too quickly. But yeah, and on the flip side of that, some of these sites have terrible ad experiences and Google traffic isn't guaranteed, which is another issue. Maybe we're too siloed and SEO should kind of get out of the bubble. Brand is now in focus in the SEO space Like never before. Everyone's talking about branding, and branding, and branding, but not exactly about how to do the branding, which is a different problem. But we're talking about branding. AIOs? I don't know how they got so far down on the list. That should have been more on the top of the list. This list. It's not a sequential order of SEO insanity, it's just a random list. So AI overviews kind of been hit or miss. Drink urine, eat glue, that was part of the equation in 2024. Crystal Carter: Right. Seemed to have improved over the course of it, I will say. I will say that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. They have improved. More links, more links, Crystal Carter: More links, more value, less just repeating the exact same featured snippet underneath of it. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: Little bit of that. So we'll see. We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: Right. What's the CTR? All that one actually knows, so that's good. Also, manual actions on some pretty big websites for parasite SEO. Third-party content hosted on the website. It has nothing to do with whatever your website does. Penalized by Google. Moral of the story, write it yourself. Okay, that was again salty, because Google's like ... "Well, if you're writing it yourself, that seems to be fine," which was Greg Finn's point on Its New multiple times. So I'm just dealing Greg Salty Thunder on that one. But Forbes, a lot. Entrepreneur, all these big sites who were hosting third-party content on their website were dinged. Manual action dinged by Google on those folders. So that was a shot across the bow to publishers. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Forbes had quite the year this year. Everybody's been talking about Forbes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? Because it seems like they lost a lot of traffic. Oh, you meant it like, "Oh, it was complicated." Got it. Not like, "Wow, that was a great year." Crystal Carter: They've had quite a year. A lot going on. Everybody's talking about Forbes. People have a lot to say about Forbes. People have a lot of opinions about what's going on there, including Google, apparently. Mordy Oberstein: Apparently. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But everybody acts like they're saints also, so whatever. Anywho. Wow, this is starting off great. There's a ton that I probably missed. The net result of all of this is there's mass confusion, uncertainty, and change within the SEO space, and I'm not being hyperbolic. Crystal Carter: Not at all. Not at all. And I think that we're even starting to see this in how people are approaching talking to clients as well. So people are having to diversify their SEO offering, people are having to do things a little bit more different, a little bit more nuanced, a little ... And I haven't seen 360 marketing everywhere. I've seen 360 marketing quoted as a strategy more times than I've ever seen before. Everybody is going to 360, and I think that that's good. I think that's good, and I've spoken on this years ago that it's something that's high value. And Mordy, you've been talking about brand for years. Mordy Oberstein: For years. Years. Crystal Carter: Years. Years. And we don't want to be like the harbingers of, "I told you so," but also- Mordy Oberstein: No. I told you also. Crystal Carter: But we did tell you so. Just saying. Just saying. Just putting it out there. And so hopefully people are able to get involved and see what's going on there. Mordy Oberstein: So with that, we got a bunch of folks together and we asked them, okay, with all this craziness going on in the SEO space, what are your top tips for 2025? And they're like, "Punt." No, I'm just kidding. They had actual ... Punt is a football reference, whatever. It just means kick it down the field and see what happens. They have some actual really good advice for you. So let's get right to it. We're going to start off with Ray Saddiq, who is the global head of marketing at Rice at seven, who talks about working with other teams. Here's what Ray had to say. Ray Saddiq: So I think that search has changed massively, and it's time for you as an SEO to start working with the other teams in your department. So if you are in-house, go ahead and we'll start speaking to your social team, because social search is a thing at the moment, so it's time that you go and start speaking to them. But also speak to your PR team as well, because it's crazy how many links can be built. I've noticed over here on the US side, especially how many people aren't working directly with their PR team to build links into the right places on their website. So have a look at that, check that out. Look into digital PR as well if you haven't already. It's a huge thing. I know there's still a few people I spoke to today who aren't really looking into it at the moment, so now's the time. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Ray. That's a great point. Someone asked me, I don't remember who it was ... Humble brag, I get asked for so many of these round up tips for the end of the year, and one of my ... Somebody- Ray Saddiq: Everybody asks me so many things. Mordy Oberstein: I know. Look at me. Ray Saddiq: Totally asking me questions. Mordy Oberstein: Sound like such a creep. No, but I just have a bad memory. So I don't remember where it was, but I wrote ... I think it was for Aleyda's SEO FOMO thing. Sit with comms. My biggest tip for you is sit with comms, which is kind of what Ray is saying. So great minds think alike. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And I think that SEOs are growing up. We need to mature into the full marketers that we are, because we always have been a core part of the marketing team and we just need to mature into that. And I think that that's exactly what he's talking about from a PR point of view. One of the other things that's happened this year is that LLMs have also become destinations for search. So I've got an article that goes all into that, but one of the things that I talk about is that links are part of that. All of the things we've done for SEO contribute to that, including getting links in high value publications, which PR is the only way to do that. You're not going to get a link from time. You're not going to get a link in the Atlantic without doing some solid PR. So absolutely great advice. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's really solid. Speaking of which, and talking with other teams, Debbie Chew, who's the SEO manager over our Stripe, goes into that with a little bit more detail. So here's Debbie. Debbie Chew: One SEO tip for SEO 2025 would be to break out of your silos. So in SEO, we kind of live in a bubble sometimes. Maybe if we're lucky, we might be working with paid, but there are a bunch of other teams that really understand our customer and that we can tap into. So let's look at our sales team, our customer service team, what data can they share with us about our customers, and what data can the SEO team share back with them and use that within kind your SEO strategy and then have them use that as well. So make sure to break out of your silos and pull all that data together and create a great success for your business. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Debbie. Really appreciate that. That's really the point. I feel like the internet is in the age of resonance. There's so much digital noise, there's so much digital chatter that you really have to resonate with that audience, and the only way to really do that, and that part of your job as an SEO is to resonate, not just to get clicks and not just to get traffic, but to actually resonate, which is ... I don't know why I have to say that. And the only way to do that is to really, I think, is to understand the brand positioning of the company that you're working with or the client that you're working with, which means you need to talk to these other teams that break out of your silo, like Debbie just said. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And she also mentioned at the data point, the only way you're going to effectively connect with these folks is with some authenticity, and you can only get authenticity by knowing what you're talking about, and the only way what you're talking about is with data. So you need to get data from the teams that are working with them. And it might be that the data unlocks always, always data unlocks stuff that you didn't quite see. You're like, "Oh, turns out we're really big in Wisconsin." And you're like, "Oh, okay, maybe we should do some stuff in Wisconsin. I didn't realize that that was a thing. Or maybe you feel like you're big in Wisconsin and you can use the data to back that up so that you can get money to do something in Wisconsin, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Or then they say, "Oh no, we're not really big in Wisconsin. We're actually big in Cleveland, so we have to do stuff in Cleveland." They're like, "Oh, Cleveland." Okay. Speaking of breaking out of silos and working with other teams, maybe it's time to break out of search just a little bit, not put all of your eggs in one basket. So here's Celeste Gonzalez, director of RooLabs, over at Rickety Roo, on that point. Celeste Gonzalez: My one SEO tip for 2025 would be, towards local businesses, don't put all your eggs in one SEO basket. Diversify your channels. Be where your audience is. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Celeste. I could not agree more, not just for local businesses, but in general. I think one of the ideas that's coming out of SEO from 2024 is that search for many websites is a vehicle. And it's not the only vehicle, it's simply one vehicle to build up that brand presence, to build up the visibility that you want to have to build up, the engagement or the performance, whatever it is, it's one vehicle. And especially if you're not one of these giant websites like, I don't know, Wix ... Like Wix, it's going to be much harder for you to get onto that SERP and to use search as a vehicle the way that you might have done in the past. I think it's one of the main themes out of 2024. So definitely diversifying that portfolio a bit makes a lot of sense. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And I think it doesn't just apply to local businesses. I think it's absolutely important for local businesses, because you are going to be connecting with your customers in so many different ways. And Facebook is a channel that really, really works for local businesses, for instance. There's always a local schools group, people are using the marketplace to find things on Facebook. So I use Facebook more for local things than almost anything else, and I think that that's for instance, really useful. And making sure that your website connects with that, making sure that you've got listings, making sure you've got your Google business profile, absolutely helps your local business to perform online. So if you are working in the local space, if you are a local business owner or you're supporting a local business owner as a consultant, adding more channels to what you do will absolutely help you in 2024, 2025, 2026, going forward. Mordy Oberstein: That's just channel nine. Nothing ever good was ever on channel nine. Right? Crystal Carter: I don't know what you're talking about. Mordy Oberstein: Channel nine. That was UPN when I was a kid. Crystal Carter: Oh, I used to watch tons of UPN. Mordy Oberstein: There was reruns of Family Matters, I'll be honest. Crystal Carter: Tons. Mordy Oberstein: They had the most- Crystal Carter: I watched tons of UPN back in the day. Moesha was on UPN. Mordy Oberstein: The WB also. Also who bought ... Crystal Carter: They also had loads of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: 7th Heaven, Jessica Buell was on that. All right, whatever. Anywho, one of the other big themes out of 2024 is obviously around content generation. We're talking about content generation, one of the things we're talking about is AI. So here's Mike King, founder of iPoll Rank, on how to generate content with AI. Mike King: Use retrieval augmented generation for creating content with generative AI. And when you do it, generate the content in components. Don't just say, "Give me a giant blog post." Give me the intro to the blog post, give me the main body area, give me the TLDR. Break it down into components in alignment with the design of the website and you're going to get much more usable content a lot faster. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Mike. And that's very similar, by the way, to what Mike talked about on our webinar with him and Ross Hudgens. If you give AI a walled garden to operate in, and boundaries to operate in, you usually get way, way better results. Crystal Carter: And in his webinar that we did with him and Ross Hudgens, which we reference a lot because it's got really, really good value in it, they point out that they've both been using AI for years. So they know what they're talking about. They didn't just jump on the bandwagon. They've been driving the bandwagon for years. And I think that it really, really does help if you break it down, if you give it good inputs, if you give it good prompts, if you're breaking it down that way. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Now, to break down content itself a little bit for you in 2025 and what might work that you might not be focused on, here's Paul Andre de Vera, host of the SEO show on some fresh content ideas. Paul Andre De Vera: My one tip for SEO 2025 is live streaming. What's the freshest content out there? What's fresher than fresh? Live streaming? Live video. Last year I was talking about video's great. Get videos ranking on page one of Google button. If you look at right now, every time I schedule a live on my YouTube, they're ranking on page one almost instantly. So check it out. Live streaming is my number one tip for 2025. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Dre. That is really interesting to see that he's doing the live streams on LinkedIn and they're popping up on the SERP right away. That's interesting. Crystal Carter: That is really interesting. The live LinkedIn is a fascinating development. They've really been investing in video in the last little while since everybody's taken to LinkedIn as a refuge after all of the other social media platforms fell apart. So they've been putting a lot of video in there, and the live does seem to get a little bit of traction, so we'll see how that develops in the next little while. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, absolutely. So we don't only have those tips for you. We collected a whole bunch of tips from a whole bunch of different SEOs that'll be part of a roundup post, but I wanted to pull some of those into the podcast as well. So Victor Pan, who is the SEO over a HubSpot, had a really interesting tip. He wrote, "Don't waste a crisis. When site traffic is down," because we're talking about, "Oh, it's a volatile world out there. Site traffic might be down," it's easy to patch these with the short-term solutions. For example, 2025 coming, or here, depending on how many content plus year keywords your site ranks for, you'll have a predictable traffic decline on pages ranking for 2024 keywords. The short term solution would be to scrape and update page content and titles manually. Gross. Don't waste this crisis, or forget the lesson from yesteryear. Quantify the loss from last year, document an editorial process to proactively avoid future traffic declines while elevating content quality. Record the win and wear it proudly with your colleagues. When you lose traffic, don't lose the lesson. Crystal Carter: Yo teachable moments. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Teachable moments. This is absolutely key. I think also sometimes people are like, "Oh, the traffic is down. Sometimes that means you got their attention." And if you're the person who's like, "I told you so. I told you we shouldn't have done this thing that we did anyway," then that's a great time to also give the teachable moment to the rest of your team and remind them why you are the SEO that you are. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: And just like, yeah, remember? Oh, now you're coming to me now. Oh, okay." So just have your answers ready to go. And yeah, as he says, don't let the teachable moment go past. Actually learn from it. Totally, totally great advice. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great quote. So switching over to eCom a little bit, Chris Long VP of marketing at Go Fish Digital wrote, "Retailers, Google is becoming your new category page. In effort to compete with Amazon they're turning the search results into a de facto category page experience. Fast and navigation pricing comparisons and more, all directly available in the search results. This means that you need to spend even more time on your products as opposed to your category pages," which is really interesting. By the way, I think it's really interesting that Google's going so heavy on the homepage or the traditional SERP page with all of the products and not trying to push you into Google shopping more heavily so as to compete brand-wise with Amazon. I think it's a short-term win for Google. I'm not sure it's a long-term win for Google, but that's a different point aside. Crystal Carter: Yeah, they are coming for Amazon hard. And I think also, I think for SEOs, this is going to be changing around the funnel. I think Chris is right. This is your product page, so you need to make sure that anything that's pulling through from your feed, going into Google, is optimized for that experience. And also making sure that your bottom of the funnel is locked tight and frictionless. And I think that people need to think about that going forward and optimize for all search interactions. So yeah, Chris has great, great insights on that. Mordy Oberstein: Chris always has great insights, has a great- Crystal Carter: He's good. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Chris is really good. Okay. Naomi Francis Parker, who's the SEO manager over at Charlotte Tilbury Beauty said, "Pay attention to your brand identity. Make sure it's clear across all places of search. This includes social media, GPTs, and digital search engines like Google and Bing. If 2024 taught us anything it's that the way users are searching is changing at a much faster pace than anyone, platforms included, could have anticipated. Couple that with the constantly changing SERP and it's clear that ranking as a concept is becoming outdated. Entity SEO has always been around because it's how search engines understand brands, people, et cetera. But it's already more important now than ever before. It's no longer just about how you appear in Google. It's about how you appear online at all." Yes, could not agree more. The way you appear, are mentioned, discuss related to as a brand across the entire digital landscape is how GPTs and how AI LLMs of the world are going to pick you up and understand you. Crystal Carter: Right. They need to understand your whole digital presence. And that's always been the case. And I think that as she's saying entities, you need to understand your entity. She's mentioning the LLM. I'm going to shout out my article that talks about that on the SEO hub, and it gets into that. One of the things that's important about LLMs is they're all trained on Wikipedia. 66 million pages of copyright-free, human-vetted information that's all coming from the knowledge graph, and pulling through all of those different entities and all those different elements. If your entity doesn't make sense online, then it's unlikely that your entity is going to make sense on an LLM. So you need to make sure that your entity, which pulls from lots of different data points, including what's on your website, but lots of other places, makes sense. And that's SEO these days. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And there's plenty of places where you can control if you don't have a Wiki Wikipedia page, you can crunch base if you're a business or a persona online. There's all LinkedIn. There's tons of places where- Crystal Carter: Your local business profile. Mordy Oberstein: Personality and persona are picked up. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Lots of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Lots of places. Crystal Carter: Handle that. Handle it. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Last but not least, Aleyda Solis, SEO consultant, founder of Orainti, and of course, SEO FOMO, and learning SEO.io. Crystal Carter: And contributor/instructor for the WIC Studio SEO learning course, where you can learn SEO from Aleyda Solis. Mordy's waving because I'm waving my finger now. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, everyone. We're both waving fingers. Crystal Carter: Waving fingers because- Mordy Oberstein: Waving our finger at you. How silly it would be if you didn't take up that free SEO course from Aleyda. Crystal Carter: You totally should. Mordy Oberstein: Checkout the SEO Learning Hub, Studio SEO Learning Hub. Crystal Carter: Yes, do that. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Aleyda said, "It's clear that Google wants to feature real authoritative brands at the top of the SERPs, which is also clearly helpful to increase CTR and optimize conversions. Grow your brand authority by understanding your company brand positioning, and take into account in your SEO strategy. Target your brand to key queries, specify your brand details, structure data, optimize your knowledge panel details, etc." So great minds think alike. I literally did a video on why brands, like if your sales team or marketing team, don't focus on the messaging. Focus on the positioning, because that tells you, A, who you are as a brand, and it helps you also understand who the client and the consumer is. It's like the perfect intersection. Focus on understanding positioning, which is I guess my tip of the year if we're talking about all this brand stuff. SEOs are talking and chirping a lot about it, and it's hard. It's long term, it's a different kind of mentality. I will give you my one tip to fall back on it all. It all hinges on creating meaningful brand identity for yourself. And when I say meaningful, I've said this before, it means there are two levels, or multiple levels, of emotions that the human experience revolves around. What are surface level emotions and what are more deep, more integral things that you must have. I always say fun. In the vein of Barry Shores, I don't have to have fun. I don't have to have fun today. I don't have to have fun tomorrow. I can have fun on the weekend, or if I'm Barry, I will never have fun at all. If your brand identity is focused on, "Let's have fun," that's a very fleeting experience. If your brand identities focus on more meaningful experiences that are integral to the human experience, like connection, overcoming struggle, things that are must haves for the human experience, that's much more meaningful, that's much more powerful, and it'll keep you much more centered. Focus on those more existential parts of your brand identity and less on the fleeting parts of your brand identity. And the rest of the brand will follow that. So if you're in SEO, you're looking at where do I start with brand? Start there. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: That's my tip for 2025. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. I got it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Hey Crystal, what's your tip for 2025? Smooth transition. Crystal Carter: Sorry. Sorry. You were dropping the knowledge and I was just pondering it. Mordy Oberstein: You were caught in my aura. Crystal Carter: I was just pondering that. I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's really interesting." I forgot I was on a podcast. Mordy Oberstein: That's it. Thank you? Crystal Carter: So my tip, and I've been saying this all over the place. I've said it in two different Brighton SEOs, have done a couple of podcasts, and I've written this article. Basically, you need to be treating LLMs as a channel, and we need to be treating them as a channel for traffic. We need to be tracking them. I have a deck that shares a regex that Jess Schultz shared where you can track the traffic from LLMs. You can see how many clicks you're getting. And guess what. You're getting clicks from LLMs. And while they are not currently overtaking Google in terms of search, we are looking at billions, billions of traffic that's going to LLMs every day. And people are looking to it for solutions because sometimes it has less friction than standard search, and we need to make sure that we can manage that. And I think that we have been approaching this as if it's completely different, or it's not relevant, or whatever, but it's not completely different. All of these search enabled LLMs, of which there are many, are relying on results from search engines. Legacy results and previous results, previous crawls, things like that. And we can manage that, and I think that that's something that should be a new skill for SEOs. I think it's exciting. Gartner said that search could drop by as much as 25% or something in the next few years. But I think that we are SEOs, we can do anything. We ruin the internet. This ain't nothing. Are you kidding me? So I think that this is a brave new world, and I think that it's super exciting. So I'm excited to see how this goes forward. Mordy Oberstein: Your confidence is inspiring. Crystal Carter: I hope so. I hope so. I love a new thing. It's one of the reasons why I love working in marketing and SEO, because there's always a new thing to learn and try. You know in the Matrix where it says, "Can you fly a helicopter?" and he goes, "Yes, I can." That's how I feel sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: I know kung fu. Crystal Carter: Right? That's how I feel sometimes. And I feel like that's where we are right now. And I think that if you're in a place where you're like, "I want to do things the way I did before, I feel you. I see you, I understand you, but it's new. We got to do new stuff. Mordy Oberstein: That brings to this week's follow of the week. This week's follow of the week are all the people we already mentioned. Is that lazy? I'm sorry. No, but there's so many people. There's Ray Saddiq, Debbie Chew, Celeste Gonzalez, Mike King, Paul Andre De Vera, Victor Pan, Chris Long, Aleyda Solis. My friend is Parker, Crystal, myself, a lot of people to follow. Crystal Carter: I think also you should follow George Wynn, our head of editorial- Mordy Oberstein: Oh yes. Crystal Carter: At the Wix Studio Learning Hub, SEO Learning Hub, because George was the one who brought all these folks together. So George was able to interview some folks at Brighton SEO. He also put together a fantastic article with all of these tips, which you should absolutely check out. And yeah, he's got some great advice and he helps make sure that we sound like we know what we're talking about on the SEO Learning Hub. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, so George is the follow of the week? Crystal Carter: Yeah, follow George. Mordy Oberstein: Is that even lazier than saying, "Follow all the people in the episode"? Crystal Carter: If you follow George, you will also find all of these other folks because he put them in the article. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Follow George, wherever he may go. Crystal Carter: I will follow him. Mordy Oberstein: It's just scary right now. I don't know. Crystal Carter: I don't know. My kid's never seen Sister Act. I feel like I need to sort that out. Mordy Oberstein: My kids never saw that either. That's an old-school movie. Crystal Carter: I like it. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's a great movie. It's just not one I see- Crystal Carter: I like Sister Act 2 better though. Mordy Oberstein: I don't remember it as well. Crystal Carter: Sister Act 2 I was obsessed with because I had Lauryn Hill. I watched a movie a million times and had the soundtrack. Obsessed. Mordy Oberstein: I just don't remember it as well. I remember the first one really well. Crystal Carter: Yeah, no. Obsessed. Absolutely obsessed. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, whatever. Whoopee. And on that high note, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into email marketing and how it relates to search marketing in 2025. 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 the great content, webinars, and our free SEO course over on the Wix Studio Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Ray Saddiq Debbie Chew Celeste Gonzalez Paul Andre De Vera Mike King Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Ray Saddiq Debbie Chew Celeste Gonzalez Paul Andre De Vera Mike King Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who has covered all the facets of 2024 and knows how to look ahead to 2025, our one and only head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I am an expert on 2024. I have been here the whole time. I did every single day of 2024. Can confirm. Mordy Oberstein: I checked out on a few days, I'll be honest with you. There was a few days I missed. Crystal Carter: I was here the whole time. I saw all of it. I saw all of it. First eyewitness account, this is primary source. Mordy Oberstein: It was too much for my eyes. I had to like ... Crystal Carter: It was a lot. There was a lot. Every year I feel like we get to the end of the year and people were like, "Wow." Mordy Oberstein: No, no. This year was real wow. We'll get to it in a second. From an SEO point of view. I'm not talking about anything else. Purely from an SEO point of view. Crystal Carter: Yeah, there's a lot to cover. There's been a lot of what-have-yous, a lot of ins and outs. Mordy Oberstein: Ins and outs, a lot of what-have-yous. Big Lebowski. Yeah, indeed. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. Look for it in your inboxes each and every month, where you can see and plan out your entire site with our new visual site map that not only helps you better see, and dare I say, visualize your client's entire site, but leverages AI to help you build custom wire frames. Links in the show notes. Do check it out, as today's all about having vision, as we look forward to 2025 and what it has in store for SEO. Is it time to break free of the SERP silo? What content will work in 2025? And how does AI in the grand old LLM factor into the SEO equation now? We'll hear from not one, not two, not three, not four, not five ... I could go on, not six, but many SEOs, such as Mike King, the latest soloist, Ray Saddiq, Paul Andre de Vera, Victor Pan, and many more as they weigh in on what's in store for you in 2025. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So while the snow's still soft on 2025, ratchet down those ankle straps and strap your feet in as we ollie and nollie our boards down the mountain that is SEO in 2025. Crystal Carter: You dropping skateboard references on the podcast? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Snowboard. I had to look them up. I have no clue. Crystal Carter: You snowboarding? Okay. Mordy Oberstein: It's snowboarding. Crystal Carter: I'm aware that you can ollie on a skateboard. I guess you can ollie on a snowboard because your feet don't have to come off. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Crystal Carter: An ollie, I can never remember what that is. I know skateboarders, they talk in- Mordy Oberstein: It's the opposite of an ollie, no? Crystal Carter: Possibly. It's like if you're going switch or doing tail taps and half cab disaster, there's lots of skateboard terminology that people say. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding. We're all about that stuff. I know nothing about it, which is funny- Crystal Carter: Everything's above board. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Crystal Carter: Just play one on TV. Mordy Oberstein: I just play one on our SEO podcast. I literally Googled all that. I don't know what it even means. Crystal Carter: You know what the first time I went snowboarding, we actually Googled top 10 tips for snowboarding, printed it out- Mordy Oberstein: And you broke your leg? Crystal Carter: No, not the first time. No. We printed it out and then printed out the MapQuest and drove up a mountain in a Hyundai, and yeah, it was good times. Good times. That's the- Mordy Oberstein: You know what's funny? Probably that first result of the top 10 tips, probably very similar to the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh, eighth, ninth 10th offering the top 10 tips. Crystal Carter: Those are the good old days. Mordy Oberstein: Well, that was 2024 for you. So as we gently and non-controversially move into recapping 2024 just a bit, because SEO enters in a really weird place. I don't think it's ever been weirder. Isn't that weird? To quote Austin Powers, because it is weird. Crystal Carter: May you live in interesting times. Mordy Oberstein: I just want to recap some of the larger issues, stories, developments in SEO in 2024, such as now that the helpful content update is no more, it's baked into the core algorithm and sites that were hit by it back in September don't seemingly, at this point in time of the recording of this podcast, have been able to actually recover in a significant way. Seeing like 20% recoveries was the max. So that was a big deal. Reddit's here, Reddit's there, Reddit's everywhere, and there's not a drop of organic results to spare. Crystal Carter: I didn't know you had bars, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I could snowboard and rhyme on the same podcast. Podcast is imagination land. So there's that. There were creator summits at Google Health where sites were told, "Nope, not going to happen for you." Crystal Carter: Good luck out there. Mordy Oberstein: Break a leg. I don't know. Yeah? That happened. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I guess they were just kind of told it depends. I don't know. Yeah, there was a lot going on. Mordy Oberstein: Interesting plan for a creator. So let's bring them all in and tell them we don't know. Sucks for you, I guess. Crystal Carter: I think it's just really tricky for people because Google shifts around, but this has been so much shifting. I've been saying to people, Google's in beta mode right now. And we've been in, as SEOs, there are people who've been doing SEO since 1999, and a lot of stuff hadn't changed that much over the course of that time, but in the last three, four years. Mordy Oberstein: In the last three days. Crystal Carter: Right, right, exactly. At time of recording, the head of Google recently said there's going to be monumental change coming in the next little while. Mordy Oberstein: That was a great ... We covered that on its new. If you missed that, you should watch that because there are some salty points that I will not say in this podcast about that interview. Just ask Congress. Okay. Stop, cannot go further. I will get too salty too quickly. But yeah, and on the flip side of that, some of these sites have terrible ad experiences and Google traffic isn't guaranteed, which is another issue. Maybe we're too siloed and SEO should kind of get out of the bubble. Brand is now in focus in the SEO space Like never before. Everyone's talking about branding, and branding, and branding, but not exactly about how to do the branding, which is a different problem. But we're talking about branding. AIOs? I don't know how they got so far down on the list. That should have been more on the top of the list. This list. It's not a sequential order of SEO insanity, it's just a random list. So AI overviews kind of been hit or miss. Drink urine, eat glue, that was part of the equation in 2024. Crystal Carter: Right. Seemed to have improved over the course of it, I will say. I will say that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. They have improved. More links, more links, Crystal Carter: More links, more value, less just repeating the exact same featured snippet underneath of it. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: Little bit of that. So we'll see. We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: Right. What's the CTR? All that one actually knows, so that's good. Also, manual actions on some pretty big websites for parasite SEO. Third-party content hosted on the website. It has nothing to do with whatever your website does. Penalized by Google. Moral of the story, write it yourself. Okay, that was again salty, because Google's like ... "Well, if you're writing it yourself, that seems to be fine," which was Greg Finn's point on Its New multiple times. So I'm just dealing Greg Salty Thunder on that one. But Forbes, a lot. Entrepreneur, all these big sites who were hosting third-party content on their website were dinged. Manual action dinged by Google on those folders. So that was a shot across the bow to publishers. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Forbes had quite the year this year. Everybody's been talking about Forbes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? Because it seems like they lost a lot of traffic. Oh, you meant it like, "Oh, it was complicated." Got it. Not like, "Wow, that was a great year." Crystal Carter: They've had quite a year. A lot going on. Everybody's talking about Forbes. People have a lot to say about Forbes. People have a lot of opinions about what's going on there, including Google, apparently. Mordy Oberstein: Apparently. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But everybody acts like they're saints also, so whatever. Anywho. Wow, this is starting off great. There's a ton that I probably missed. The net result of all of this is there's mass confusion, uncertainty, and change within the SEO space, and I'm not being hyperbolic. Crystal Carter: Not at all. Not at all. And I think that we're even starting to see this in how people are approaching talking to clients as well. So people are having to diversify their SEO offering, people are having to do things a little bit more different, a little bit more nuanced, a little ... And I haven't seen 360 marketing everywhere. I've seen 360 marketing quoted as a strategy more times than I've ever seen before. Everybody is going to 360, and I think that that's good. I think that's good, and I've spoken on this years ago that it's something that's high value. And Mordy, you've been talking about brand for years. Mordy Oberstein: For years. Years. Crystal Carter: Years. Years. And we don't want to be like the harbingers of, "I told you so," but also- Mordy Oberstein: No. I told you also. Crystal Carter: But we did tell you so. Just saying. Just saying. Just putting it out there. And so hopefully people are able to get involved and see what's going on there. Mordy Oberstein: So with that, we got a bunch of folks together and we asked them, okay, with all this craziness going on in the SEO space, what are your top tips for 2025? And they're like, "Punt." No, I'm just kidding. They had actual ... Punt is a football reference, whatever. It just means kick it down the field and see what happens. They have some actual really good advice for you. So let's get right to it. We're going to start off with Ray Saddiq, who is the global head of marketing at Rice at seven, who talks about working with other teams. Here's what Ray had to say. Ray Saddiq: So I think that search has changed massively, and it's time for you as an SEO to start working with the other teams in your department. So if you are in-house, go ahead and we'll start speaking to your social team, because social search is a thing at the moment, so it's time that you go and start speaking to them. But also speak to your PR team as well, because it's crazy how many links can be built. I've noticed over here on the US side, especially how many people aren't working directly with their PR team to build links into the right places on their website. So have a look at that, check that out. Look into digital PR as well if you haven't already. It's a huge thing. I know there's still a few people I spoke to today who aren't really looking into it at the moment, so now's the time. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Ray. That's a great point. Someone asked me, I don't remember who it was ... Humble brag, I get asked for so many of these round up tips for the end of the year, and one of my ... Somebody- Ray Saddiq: Everybody asks me so many things. Mordy Oberstein: I know. Look at me. Ray Saddiq: Totally asking me questions. Mordy Oberstein: Sound like such a creep. No, but I just have a bad memory. So I don't remember where it was, but I wrote ... I think it was for Aleyda's SEO FOMO thing. Sit with comms. My biggest tip for you is sit with comms, which is kind of what Ray is saying. So great minds think alike. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And I think that SEOs are growing up. We need to mature into the full marketers that we are, because we always have been a core part of the marketing team and we just need to mature into that. And I think that that's exactly what he's talking about from a PR point of view. One of the other things that's happened this year is that LLMs have also become destinations for search. So I've got an article that goes all into that, but one of the things that I talk about is that links are part of that. All of the things we've done for SEO contribute to that, including getting links in high value publications, which PR is the only way to do that. You're not going to get a link from time. You're not going to get a link in the Atlantic without doing some solid PR. So absolutely great advice. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's really solid. Speaking of which, and talking with other teams, Debbie Chew, who's the SEO manager over our Stripe, goes into that with a little bit more detail. So here's Debbie. Debbie Chew: One SEO tip for SEO 2025 would be to break out of your silos. So in SEO, we kind of live in a bubble sometimes. Maybe if we're lucky, we might be working with paid, but there are a bunch of other teams that really understand our customer and that we can tap into. So let's look at our sales team, our customer service team, what data can they share with us about our customers, and what data can the SEO team share back with them and use that within kind your SEO strategy and then have them use that as well. So make sure to break out of your silos and pull all that data together and create a great success for your business. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Debbie. Really appreciate that. That's really the point. I feel like the internet is in the age of resonance. There's so much digital noise, there's so much digital chatter that you really have to resonate with that audience, and the only way to really do that, and that part of your job as an SEO is to resonate, not just to get clicks and not just to get traffic, but to actually resonate, which is ... I don't know why I have to say that. And the only way to do that is to really, I think, is to understand the brand positioning of the company that you're working with or the client that you're working with, which means you need to talk to these other teams that break out of your silo, like Debbie just said. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And she also mentioned at the data point, the only way you're going to effectively connect with these folks is with some authenticity, and you can only get authenticity by knowing what you're talking about, and the only way what you're talking about is with data. So you need to get data from the teams that are working with them. And it might be that the data unlocks always, always data unlocks stuff that you didn't quite see. You're like, "Oh, turns out we're really big in Wisconsin." And you're like, "Oh, okay, maybe we should do some stuff in Wisconsin. I didn't realize that that was a thing. Or maybe you feel like you're big in Wisconsin and you can use the data to back that up so that you can get money to do something in Wisconsin, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Or then they say, "Oh no, we're not really big in Wisconsin. We're actually big in Cleveland, so we have to do stuff in Cleveland." They're like, "Oh, Cleveland." Okay. Speaking of breaking out of silos and working with other teams, maybe it's time to break out of search just a little bit, not put all of your eggs in one basket. So here's Celeste Gonzalez, director of RooLabs, over at Rickety Roo, on that point. Celeste Gonzalez: My one SEO tip for 2025 would be, towards local businesses, don't put all your eggs in one SEO basket. Diversify your channels. Be where your audience is. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Celeste. I could not agree more, not just for local businesses, but in general. I think one of the ideas that's coming out of SEO from 2024 is that search for many websites is a vehicle. And it's not the only vehicle, it's simply one vehicle to build up that brand presence, to build up the visibility that you want to have to build up, the engagement or the performance, whatever it is, it's one vehicle. And especially if you're not one of these giant websites like, I don't know, Wix ... Like Wix, it's going to be much harder for you to get onto that SERP and to use search as a vehicle the way that you might have done in the past. I think it's one of the main themes out of 2024. So definitely diversifying that portfolio a bit makes a lot of sense. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And I think it doesn't just apply to local businesses. I think it's absolutely important for local businesses, because you are going to be connecting with your customers in so many different ways. And Facebook is a channel that really, really works for local businesses, for instance. There's always a local schools group, people are using the marketplace to find things on Facebook. So I use Facebook more for local things than almost anything else, and I think that that's for instance, really useful. And making sure that your website connects with that, making sure that you've got listings, making sure you've got your Google business profile, absolutely helps your local business to perform online. So if you are working in the local space, if you are a local business owner or you're supporting a local business owner as a consultant, adding more channels to what you do will absolutely help you in 2024, 2025, 2026, going forward. Mordy Oberstein: That's just channel nine. Nothing ever good was ever on channel nine. Right? Crystal Carter: I don't know what you're talking about. Mordy Oberstein: Channel nine. That was UPN when I was a kid. Crystal Carter: Oh, I used to watch tons of UPN. Mordy Oberstein: There was reruns of Family Matters, I'll be honest. Crystal Carter: Tons. Mordy Oberstein: They had the most- Crystal Carter: I watched tons of UPN back in the day. Moesha was on UPN. Mordy Oberstein: The WB also. Also who bought ... Crystal Carter: They also had loads of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: 7th Heaven, Jessica Buell was on that. All right, whatever. Anywho, one of the other big themes out of 2024 is obviously around content generation. We're talking about content generation, one of the things we're talking about is AI. So here's Mike King, founder of iPoll Rank, on how to generate content with AI. Mike King: Use retrieval augmented generation for creating content with generative AI. And when you do it, generate the content in components. Don't just say, "Give me a giant blog post." Give me the intro to the blog post, give me the main body area, give me the TLDR. Break it down into components in alignment with the design of the website and you're going to get much more usable content a lot faster. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Mike. And that's very similar, by the way, to what Mike talked about on our webinar with him and Ross Hudgens. If you give AI a walled garden to operate in, and boundaries to operate in, you usually get way, way better results. Crystal Carter: And in his webinar that we did with him and Ross Hudgens, which we reference a lot because it's got really, really good value in it, they point out that they've both been using AI for years. So they know what they're talking about. They didn't just jump on the bandwagon. They've been driving the bandwagon for years. And I think that it really, really does help if you break it down, if you give it good inputs, if you give it good prompts, if you're breaking it down that way. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Now, to break down content itself a little bit for you in 2025 and what might work that you might not be focused on, here's Paul Andre de Vera, host of the SEO show on some fresh content ideas. Paul Andre De Vera: My one tip for SEO 2025 is live streaming. What's the freshest content out there? What's fresher than fresh? Live streaming? Live video. Last year I was talking about video's great. Get videos ranking on page one of Google button. If you look at right now, every time I schedule a live on my YouTube, they're ranking on page one almost instantly. So check it out. Live streaming is my number one tip for 2025. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Dre. That is really interesting to see that he's doing the live streams on LinkedIn and they're popping up on the SERP right away. That's interesting. Crystal Carter: That is really interesting. The live LinkedIn is a fascinating development. They've really been investing in video in the last little while since everybody's taken to LinkedIn as a refuge after all of the other social media platforms fell apart. So they've been putting a lot of video in there, and the live does seem to get a little bit of traction, so we'll see how that develops in the next little while. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, absolutely. So we don't only have those tips for you. We collected a whole bunch of tips from a whole bunch of different SEOs that'll be part of a roundup post, but I wanted to pull some of those into the podcast as well. So Victor Pan, who is the SEO over a HubSpot, had a really interesting tip. He wrote, "Don't waste a crisis. When site traffic is down," because we're talking about, "Oh, it's a volatile world out there. Site traffic might be down," it's easy to patch these with the short-term solutions. For example, 2025 coming, or here, depending on how many content plus year keywords your site ranks for, you'll have a predictable traffic decline on pages ranking for 2024 keywords. The short term solution would be to scrape and update page content and titles manually. Gross. Don't waste this crisis, or forget the lesson from yesteryear. Quantify the loss from last year, document an editorial process to proactively avoid future traffic declines while elevating content quality. Record the win and wear it proudly with your colleagues. When you lose traffic, don't lose the lesson. Crystal Carter: Yo teachable moments. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Teachable moments. This is absolutely key. I think also sometimes people are like, "Oh, the traffic is down. Sometimes that means you got their attention." And if you're the person who's like, "I told you so. I told you we shouldn't have done this thing that we did anyway," then that's a great time to also give the teachable moment to the rest of your team and remind them why you are the SEO that you are. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: And just like, yeah, remember? Oh, now you're coming to me now. Oh, okay." So just have your answers ready to go. And yeah, as he says, don't let the teachable moment go past. Actually learn from it. Totally, totally great advice. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great quote. So switching over to eCom a little bit, Chris Long VP of marketing at Go Fish Digital wrote, "Retailers, Google is becoming your new category page. In effort to compete with Amazon they're turning the search results into a de facto category page experience. Fast and navigation pricing comparisons and more, all directly available in the search results. This means that you need to spend even more time on your products as opposed to your category pages," which is really interesting. By the way, I think it's really interesting that Google's going so heavy on the homepage or the traditional SERP page with all of the products and not trying to push you into Google shopping more heavily so as to compete brand-wise with Amazon. I think it's a short-term win for Google. I'm not sure it's a long-term win for Google, but that's a different point aside. Crystal Carter: Yeah, they are coming for Amazon hard. And I think also, I think for SEOs, this is going to be changing around the funnel. I think Chris is right. This is your product page, so you need to make sure that anything that's pulling through from your feed, going into Google, is optimized for that experience. And also making sure that your bottom of the funnel is locked tight and frictionless. And I think that people need to think about that going forward and optimize for all search interactions. So yeah, Chris has great, great insights on that. Mordy Oberstein: Chris always has great insights, has a great- Crystal Carter: He's good. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Chris is really good. Okay. Naomi Francis Parker, who's the SEO manager over at Charlotte Tilbury Beauty said, "Pay attention to your brand identity. Make sure it's clear across all places of search. This includes social media, GPTs, and digital search engines like Google and Bing. If 2024 taught us anything it's that the way users are searching is changing at a much faster pace than anyone, platforms included, could have anticipated. Couple that with the constantly changing SERP and it's clear that ranking as a concept is becoming outdated. Entity SEO has always been around because it's how search engines understand brands, people, et cetera. But it's already more important now than ever before. It's no longer just about how you appear in Google. It's about how you appear online at all." Yes, could not agree more. The way you appear, are mentioned, discuss related to as a brand across the entire digital landscape is how GPTs and how AI LLMs of the world are going to pick you up and understand you. Crystal Carter: Right. They need to understand your whole digital presence. And that's always been the case. And I think that as she's saying entities, you need to understand your entity. She's mentioning the LLM. I'm going to shout out my article that talks about that on the SEO hub, and it gets into that. One of the things that's important about LLMs is they're all trained on Wikipedia. 66 million pages of copyright-free, human-vetted information that's all coming from the knowledge graph, and pulling through all of those different entities and all those different elements. If your entity doesn't make sense online, then it's unlikely that your entity is going to make sense on an LLM. So you need to make sure that your entity, which pulls from lots of different data points, including what's on your website, but lots of other places, makes sense. And that's SEO these days. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And there's plenty of places where you can control if you don't have a Wiki Wikipedia page, you can crunch base if you're a business or a persona online. There's all LinkedIn. There's tons of places where- Crystal Carter: Your local business profile. Mordy Oberstein: Personality and persona are picked up. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Lots of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Lots of places. Crystal Carter: Handle that. Handle it. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Last but not least, Aleyda Solis, SEO consultant, founder of Orainti, and of course, SEO FOMO, and learning SEO.io. Crystal Carter: And contributor/instructor for the WIC Studio SEO learning course, where you can learn SEO from Aleyda Solis. Mordy's waving because I'm waving my finger now. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, everyone. We're both waving fingers. Crystal Carter: Waving fingers because- Mordy Oberstein: Waving our finger at you. How silly it would be if you didn't take up that free SEO course from Aleyda. Crystal Carter: You totally should. Mordy Oberstein: Checkout the SEO Learning Hub, Studio SEO Learning Hub. Crystal Carter: Yes, do that. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Aleyda said, "It's clear that Google wants to feature real authoritative brands at the top of the SERPs, which is also clearly helpful to increase CTR and optimize conversions. Grow your brand authority by understanding your company brand positioning, and take into account in your SEO strategy. Target your brand to key queries, specify your brand details, structure data, optimize your knowledge panel details, etc." So great minds think alike. I literally did a video on why brands, like if your sales team or marketing team, don't focus on the messaging. Focus on the positioning, because that tells you, A, who you are as a brand, and it helps you also understand who the client and the consumer is. It's like the perfect intersection. Focus on understanding positioning, which is I guess my tip of the year if we're talking about all this brand stuff. SEOs are talking and chirping a lot about it, and it's hard. It's long term, it's a different kind of mentality. I will give you my one tip to fall back on it all. It all hinges on creating meaningful brand identity for yourself. And when I say meaningful, I've said this before, it means there are two levels, or multiple levels, of emotions that the human experience revolves around. What are surface level emotions and what are more deep, more integral things that you must have. I always say fun. In the vein of Barry Shores, I don't have to have fun. I don't have to have fun today. I don't have to have fun tomorrow. I can have fun on the weekend, or if I'm Barry, I will never have fun at all. If your brand identity is focused on, "Let's have fun," that's a very fleeting experience. If your brand identities focus on more meaningful experiences that are integral to the human experience, like connection, overcoming struggle, things that are must haves for the human experience, that's much more meaningful, that's much more powerful, and it'll keep you much more centered. Focus on those more existential parts of your brand identity and less on the fleeting parts of your brand identity. And the rest of the brand will follow that. So if you're in SEO, you're looking at where do I start with brand? Start there. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: That's my tip for 2025. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. I got it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Hey Crystal, what's your tip for 2025? Smooth transition. Crystal Carter: Sorry. Sorry. You were dropping the knowledge and I was just pondering it. Mordy Oberstein: You were caught in my aura. Crystal Carter: I was just pondering that. I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's really interesting." I forgot I was on a podcast. Mordy Oberstein: That's it. Thank you? Crystal Carter: So my tip, and I've been saying this all over the place. I've said it in two different Brighton SEOs, have done a couple of podcasts, and I've written this article. Basically, you need to be treating LLMs as a channel, and we need to be treating them as a channel for traffic. We need to be tracking them. I have a deck that shares a regex that Jess Schultz shared where you can track the traffic from LLMs. You can see how many clicks you're getting. And guess what. You're getting clicks from LLMs. And while they are not currently overtaking Google in terms of search, we are looking at billions, billions of traffic that's going to LLMs every day. And people are looking to it for solutions because sometimes it has less friction than standard search, and we need to make sure that we can manage that. And I think that we have been approaching this as if it's completely different, or it's not relevant, or whatever, but it's not completely different. All of these search enabled LLMs, of which there are many, are relying on results from search engines. Legacy results and previous results, previous crawls, things like that. And we can manage that, and I think that that's something that should be a new skill for SEOs. I think it's exciting. Gartner said that search could drop by as much as 25% or something in the next few years. But I think that we are SEOs, we can do anything. We ruin the internet. This ain't nothing. Are you kidding me? So I think that this is a brave new world, and I think that it's super exciting. So I'm excited to see how this goes forward. Mordy Oberstein: Your confidence is inspiring. Crystal Carter: I hope so. I hope so. I love a new thing. It's one of the reasons why I love working in marketing and SEO, because there's always a new thing to learn and try. You know in the Matrix where it says, "Can you fly a helicopter?" and he goes, "Yes, I can." That's how I feel sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: I know kung fu. Crystal Carter: Right? That's how I feel sometimes. And I feel like that's where we are right now. And I think that if you're in a place where you're like, "I want to do things the way I did before, I feel you. I see you, I understand you, but it's new. We got to do new stuff. Mordy Oberstein: That brings to this week's follow of the week. This week's follow of the week are all the people we already mentioned. Is that lazy? I'm sorry. No, but there's so many people. There's Ray Saddiq, Debbie Chew, Celeste Gonzalez, Mike King, Paul Andre De Vera, Victor Pan, Chris Long, Aleyda Solis. My friend is Parker, Crystal, myself, a lot of people to follow. Crystal Carter: I think also you should follow George Wynn, our head of editorial- Mordy Oberstein: Oh yes. Crystal Carter: At the Wix Studio Learning Hub, SEO Learning Hub, because George was the one who brought all these folks together. So George was able to interview some folks at Brighton SEO. He also put together a fantastic article with all of these tips, which you should absolutely check out. And yeah, he's got some great advice and he helps make sure that we sound like we know what we're talking about on the SEO Learning Hub. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, so George is the follow of the week? Crystal Carter: Yeah, follow George. Mordy Oberstein: Is that even lazier than saying, "Follow all the people in the episode"? Crystal Carter: If you follow George, you will also find all of these other folks because he put them in the article. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Follow George, wherever he may go. Crystal Carter: I will follow him. Mordy Oberstein: It's just scary right now. I don't know. Crystal Carter: I don't know. My kid's never seen Sister Act. I feel like I need to sort that out. Mordy Oberstein: My kids never saw that either. That's an old-school movie. Crystal Carter: I like it. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's a great movie. It's just not one I see- Crystal Carter: I like Sister Act 2 better though. Mordy Oberstein: I don't remember it as well. Crystal Carter: Sister Act 2 I was obsessed with because I had Lauryn Hill. I watched a movie a million times and had the soundtrack. Obsessed. Mordy Oberstein: I just don't remember it as well. I remember the first one really well. Crystal Carter: Yeah, no. Obsessed. Absolutely obsessed. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, whatever. Whoopee. And on that high note, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into email marketing and how it relates to search marketing in 2025. 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 the great content, webinars, and our free SEO course over on the Wix Studio Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or 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

Vinnie is a content expert with over 5 years of SEO and content marketing experience. He's worked with Ahrefs, Empire Flippers, and is committed to crafting exceptional content and educating others on the symbiotic relationship between content creation and effective link building. Vinnie Wong Founder and Chief Strategist, Content Cartography Vinnie is a content expert with over 5 years of SEO and content marketing experience. He's worked with Ahrefs, Empire Flippers, and is committed to crafting exceptional content and educating others on the symbiotic relationship between content creation and effective link building. Articles & Resources 8 Aug 2024 The noindex tag: What it is, why you need it, and when to use it for better SEO 21 Feb 2024 Thin content: What it is and how to do better for your users and your website 4 May 2023 Why rank tracking is important for SEO Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO