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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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

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

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

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

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

How do you make local SEO scaleable? When should you be scaling your local SEO? How do you maintain consistency with your local SEO across a multi-location organization? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter talk about how you can level up your local SEO production. Learn what you should be doing in order to work more efficiently when doing SEO for sites with a local business presence. Sterling Sky’s Elizabeth Rule stops by giving direction on scaling your SEO when dealing with a multi-location business with some of her top tips. Climb on as this week’s SERP’s Up SEO Podcast will help you scale the ladder of local SEO! Back How to scale local SEO How do you make local SEO scaleable? When should you be scaling your local SEO? How do you maintain consistency with your local SEO across a multi-location organization? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter talk about how you can level up your local SEO production. Learn what you should be doing in order to work more efficiently when doing SEO for sites with a local business presence. Sterling Sky’s Elizabeth Rule stops by giving direction on scaling your SEO when dealing with a multi-location business with some of her top tips. Climb on as this week’s SERP’s Up SEO Podcast will help you scale the ladder of local SEO! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 51 | August 16, 2023 | 37 MIN 00:00 / 36:59 This week’s guests Elizabeth Rule Elizabeth is an expert local SEO analyst who has been working in the industry since 2015. She has a passion for content creation and loves working with local businesses to develop their website’s authority and expertise through well written, helpful content As a Google Business Profile Product Expert she is also in the unique position to help businesses crack the code to gain valuable visibility in local search maps and help solve complex GBP issues. In 2023, she was nominated as one of BrightLocal's Rising Stars of Local SEO. She currently works as a Local SEO Analyst at Sterling Sky, a Local SEO Agency in Canada and the USA. She is also a faculty member and speaker at Local U SEO Conference. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy, overseeing the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, the always on point, always on target, always insightful, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you for that fantastic intro. I'm exactly where I want to be. Mordy Oberstein: For free. Crystal Carter: In the building. She's in the place. There's one announcer, speaking of local things, there's a local announcer in Cleveland, or he was in Cleveland who used to do the Cavaliers commentating, and every time anyone did a slam dunk, he would go, "Throw the hammer down." It was amazing. I feel like they should get him do commentary for Thor. So whenever Thor throws the hammer down, he would go, "And Thor throws the hammer down." Mordy Oberstein: Or if you're a carpenter, you could hire him to watch you as you work. Crystal Carter: Precisely. I feel like you could get a sound on your phone or something, and then just whenever you finish doing your carpentry, you just go- Mordy Oberstein: Every time you're hammering. Crystal Carter: Right, that sort of thing. But that's one of the fantastic things though about local sports announcers, is that each city will have their local announcers and it is unique to that location. So it's something that adds local color and helps you create a bespoke experience for people in that vicinity. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, bespoke. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you cannot only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also grab competitor analysis insights without ever leaving Wix, with our brand new SEO ranking app, a huge pull of competitor insights. Look for it in the Wix app market today. What does that have to do with today's topic? Absolutely nothing-ish. Well, no, no, not true, not true. Let me find the connection on the spot, fresh for you off the cuff. You can use the tool that I just mentioned to advance your local SEO efforts. Because oh, oh, oh, today is local SEO. We're talking how you can make your local SEO scalable. We're talking about leveling up local SEO production, scaling local landing pages like a beast, when to scale local SEO and when not to, and how to maintain consistency when scaling local SEO. To help us scale the ladder of local SEO, Elizabeth Rule over a sterling sky shares her most important tip to know when working with a business that has multiple locations. Plus, we take a look at what Google's People Also Ask teaches us about SMBs and SEO. And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following in social media for more SEO awesomeness. So put on your best Spider-Man costume and join us as we scale the walls of local SEO in episode number 51 of the SERP's Up podcast. Disclaimer; if you wear a Spider-Man costume does not mean you'll be able to scale walls. Crystal Carter: No. You won't. Mordy Oberstein: But do try. Crystal Carter: No, please don't try. Don't try. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry. I mean, don't try. Don't try. Unless the wall is you're not high up and you're just trying to climb a wall, in which case you would look a little bit weird, but no harm would come to you. Crystal Carter: I'm sure Spider-Man jumped over short walls as well sometimes, if he was just in somebody's backyard or something. There's no need to do a full leap and bound, if you can just do a little hop. Mordy Oberstein: No, no. If you're Spider-Man, you jump over with maximum effort. Crystal Carter: Okay, I got you. I got you. Well, we are your friendly neighborhood SEOs, and we are going to be talking today about what it means to scale local SEO, why this is something that even needs to be discussed, and some of the challenges that I've experienced and other folks have experienced along the way. So when we say scaling local SEO, essentially what we mean is when you have multiple location businesses, or you might even have a franchise business model where you need to essentially scale your local SEO tasks. So these are all of the standard local SEO tasks. Things like location landing pages, like your Google business profile, like your citation management, reviews management, local keyword research. All of those things that you would do for a single business for local SEO, you now need to do for multiple businesses across local SEO. And this can get very complex very quickly, even as soon as you have two businesses, you have to start thinking about this. I've worked with clients who have three or four locations and they have similar challenges to clients who have had closer to 400 locations via franchisees. And this is something that can be really, really tricky. And the thing that's tricky about it is maintaining consistency and making sure that you're monitoring the implementation that you've established. So it's one of those things that actually thinking about some of the superhero things that you're talking about, it's a little bit like Batman. If you're trying to scale local SEO, one of the first things you need is tools. Just like Batman. Mordy Oberstein: And a Cape. Crystal Carter: And a Cape. And someone named Alfred as well will generally help. Mordy Oberstein: An acrobatic sidekick. Crystal Carter: Yes, of course. These are all important things when you're scaling. Mordy Oberstein: And a really awesome car. Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Shall I keep going? Crystal Carter: Theme song? Theme song. I think a theme song would be good. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, always need a theme song. Crystal Carter: Yeah, of course, obviously. So, you're going to need some tools. Tools are going to be incredibly important for you and incredibly useful for you. So if you think about something like Bright Local or something like Uberall, these are tools that come to mind when I think about managing citations for instance. And if you're not sure what a citation is, this is essentially a listing in the Yellow Pages or Yelp or in other things like that, you're going to want to make sure that you've got all of the listings for where your business is and your business information consistent across every single place your citation is listed. And this can get very tricky very quickly because if you're not managing this with a tool, with a centralized tool, then sometimes what can happen is you can have duplication, you can have the wrong information, people can leave the business, and then maybe you don't have the information to hand or don't have access to the accounts and things like that, which is why tools like Uberall, like Bright Local exist. So those can be really, really helpful. Mordy Oberstein: Also, there's Uberall app in the Wix marketplace, parenthetically. Crystal Carter: There is an Uberall. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry to interrupt, sorry. Had to, marketer's going to market. Crystal Carter: There is an Uberall app in the Wix marketplace, so you can get a look at that and get a taste of what that can do for you. And I've worked with clients where they don't know who set it up, they don't know where it came from. And so even if you only have one or two businesses at business locations, this is something that's really useful. The other thing that's really useful to think about is a Google business profile. They have some tools set up for helping you to manage multiple location businesses. So you can put all of the business locations for a single business into a folder. So if you have a Dairy Queen for instance, you can have a Dairy Queen folder and then you can have all the different locations for all of the places where you can go and get a lovely frosty treat there as well. Crystal Carter: The other tools you might want to think about is tools for social posting and managing some of the posts on your Google business profile. So one of the things that can again get really, really tricky with multiple business locations is, do you have separate Facebook pages for everything? Do you have a centralized Facebook page thing as well? These are things that can come up a lot, and also it's something that can be tricky to manage because if you don't have them all underneath the same account, then it can be tricky to get the logins and all of those sorts of things. So it's also really important to have your systems in place. So you want to make sure that you've got good systems. And when you're thinking about your location pages, that's something that's important as well. So making sure that you're templatizing how your pages are created. So things like your location, schema, your FAQ, your imagery, even how your heading tags are organized and how the page looks can be really important. So if you look at large scale businesses like McDonald's, they will have a template that is the same for every single location to make sure that it's consistent across every single location, so that everyone who comes to find a McDonald's location will be able to find that information. Mordy Oberstein: That's not to say though that you should have the exact same content across all 4,000 location pages, which is a very common problem, which is a no. Don't do that. Crystal Carter: Right. No, you absolutely shouldn't. You should have unique information, but the format of it should be similar. So for instance, again, you're going to have your schema, your location, your map, what services are available, all of that sort of thing. But they should also be specific to you. And you also touched on a point about content. Content can be very tricky when scaling local SEO, because you get into site architecture. Do you have one blog for everyone? Do you have mini blogs for other people? Do you have one website for everyone and then send out the information there? Do you have micro sites for each location? These are things to think about as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's really complicated, especially on the blog side. For example, let's say you're not McDonald's and you're not trying to rank for french fry, because it doesn't matter, right? Because as long as they get to McDonald's, there's a McDonald's near you no matter what. But if you're, let's say, only in LA, Boston, and Miami, then the blog content will probably have to be locally centric. So let's say you're offering medical services, I don't know, medical testing. So you have medical testing in Miami and medical testing in Boston. Ranking for medical testing as a keyword itself is probably not entirely relevant. Great if you can, but there's a lot of traffic that just could be not qualified because all the other locations people are searching from are not relevant to you. Then how do you do that? Because now you have one blog with multo….. If I'm coming from Boston, I don't care about the blog post about Miami. Crystal Carter: Right. So then you have to plan your content strategy to include touch points where you are doing specific local things. Like let's say you've got your medical testing or something, and let's say the medical test is for diabetes, and let's say there is a diabetes fun run, or something, like a charity fund run that's happening in Boston where your business is. Well, yeah, you should have some content around that if you're involved in that particular thing. But do you put that on the main blog? Do you put that on the thing? How do you spread that around? So you have to think about your site architecture, you have to think about your blog strategy. Crystal Carter: So you have to think about your site architecture. You have to think about your blog strategy and your content strategy so that your content includes those things and that you're surfacing it in places that are important. So for instance, if you have a location page for your Boston business and you have one blog a month that's specifically dedicated to Boston stuff, then you should make sure that on the feed for your Boston location page that you have the Boston specific blogs on that feed. There's no point putting the Miami specific ones on the Boston one. That will make things confusing. But you also want to think about things like your imagery so that you've got local imagery on there, that you've got people for the local team that are visible on that particular page as well. But basically when you're thinking about scaling SEO, you need to be extremely organized. The long and short of it is that you need to be extremely organized. And even if you're just thinking about three businesses, four businesses, or even if you're thinking about 400 business locations that you need to manage, you need to have systems in place so that you don't end up tripping over yourself, duplicating content, sending people to the wrong page, ranking on places where you shouldn't be, having content that's out of date or that is inaccurate in one location and not another, and things like that. So essentially you need to be extremely organized and you're going to need tools. We have a blog on the Wix SEO learning hub that says, do you need SEO tools? Not for everything, not all the time, but for this, you're going to need some tools. You're going to need some tools. Mordy Oberstein: Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with tools. Those are great. By the way, quick thing on the blog, if you're doing this, and let's say you have a location in Miami, Boston, and New York, so you could just make the locations of categories. So you show up at the blog, right? It's just blog or whatever. It describes the blog itself, and then you have the categories, and if you're from Boston, you click through the Boston. If you're from New York, you click through New York. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's one way to do it. You can do them with sub folders. There's a couple of ways to do it, so to have a think about your architecture, but yeah, you do need to think about your architecture. And also if you're planning on expanding further, that's something to think about as well. So how you're going to potentially expand. The other one to think about, I worked with a client who is dealing with franchisees and they were spinning up all kinds of websites and content and things, because another way that sometimes people do content for local things is they'll syndicate essentially. So you have one central blog that creates content and send it out to franchisees, and then franchisees can publish it on their smaller blogs things. The trick with that though is that you end up with a lot of content that's very similar across a lot of different URLs, which can be tricky. Mordy Oberstein: It's a big problem getting it all indexed. It's something you really have to think about, right? You think, okay, fine, I'm smart, right? I've automated all the content, it's all coming from a spreadsheet. It's all being automatically populated, which by the way, separate point, I will read to you from Google's guidelines around the helpful content update, describing something that is not helpful. Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics equals unhelpful. Side point. But yeah, if those pages are too similar outset of it not being helpful or it being unhelpful, Google will be like, this page looks like that page. I index it. Crystal Carter: And even if you think about users, users can't tell. They'll be like, this looks the same as the other page, and I can't tell this is the same page. I can't tell if this is the same page that I just looked at or not. So these are important things to think about, and I think with franchisees it's really useful to give them guidance. And I think for this particular client, it had all gotten very out of hand, and so my team had to just bring it all back in. So we centralized everything, and I'm working on another project right now with a local charity that's doing a similar thing and they've got 50 plus locations and everyone's been kind of doing things as ad hoc, which also can happen with legacy products. So for instance, this is an organization that's been around for a while and they have some content that was on Facebook, for instance, before Facebook centralized more of the multi-location pages. So that means that they have to retrofit how they are distributing their content and scaling their activity. So now that there's more tools available, they're able to centralize it. But again, this is one of the reasons why keeping things organized both within the actual content that you're outputting, but also who is the contact for the information about the location. If you're working with franchises or if you're working with multiple marketing teams, then you're going to need to make sure that you have the details for all of the multiple marketing teams and that you have access to all of the accounts for all the listing pages, for all the other things. Because I think one of the things that people forget about local SEO is there's a lot of off page SEO that happens with local SEO, and you sort of need to be able to do that and need to be able to manage that, and you have to be extremely, extremely organized in order to scale your local SEO. So if you learn nothing else from this, get yourself together, get a spreadsheet, get a checklist, get yourself together, make a plan before you start scaling local SEO. Mordy Oberstein: That's especially because it can be super complicated on the site structure side. For example, let's say you're a business that you have in New York, you have five locations, and in Boston, Massachusetts rather, you only have one location, but now the hierarchy is going to have to be different from New York if you want each page to have... Each location rather than have a specific page. A good one, yeah. Crystal Carter: Precisely. And I think sometimes you get where businesses are pretty much right next to each other, and that can be tricky as well. Mordy Oberstein: It's also very confusing. By the way, real quick one, if you can pull this out one way to differentiate for you, forget SEO for a second, because it is really weird. Sometimes you show up on a website and you're looking at multiple pages, say, I don't know. Let's say I'm looking at, I don't know, Bob's Burger, Bob's got a burger place on one block and like a Starbucks. There's a Starbucks on this street and Starbucks on the next street, and I don't even know which one I'm looking at anymore because they're exactly the same. Show a picture of the branch at the top of the page because it'll usually look different. Crystal Carter: Yeah, photos are really, really important, and I talked about this before, but photos are also particularly important with regards to visual search because if somebody is doing a visual search or Google's looking up what's near them, Google is able to discern location landmarks from images when they're doing their visual search information assessment. So if you're able to add in some landmarks, for instance, if you have a Bob's Burgers that's on Coney Island and you've got the big wheel behind you, Google's going to be able to place you and they can geotarget those things, particularly if there's a specific landmark on it. If you're Bob's Burgers on Liberty Island, is that the island that the Statue of Liberty's on? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Yes. By the way, my immediate association to Liberty Island, when you said that was X-Men. If you're from New York and I've been to Liberty Island like a dozen times. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: My state, that's how we're wired. That's pathetic. Sorry, everybody. Crystal Carter: I was thinking of Liberty City, which I think is the GTA game from years ago. Mordy Oberstein: There is a Liberty Science Center in New Jersey. Crystal Carter: There we go. But yeah, look, I think it's just really important to keep organized. We've got some great resources around local SEO on the Wix SEO hub from some fantastic local SEOs, Claire Carlisle, Crystal Tang, Darren Shaw. They talk about a lot of this stuff, and they're all very well versed in scaling local SEO and also Amanda Jordan also has some great information about local landing pages. If you have a look at those and potentially get in touch with them, they're all super friendly and super, super involved with this kind of thing. So if you are interested in scaling this, and if you're looking at your local SEO situation and you have multiple locations and you are not organized and you are seeing that you do not have the consistent information for your businesses across all of your locations, that you don't quite have a content plan that's working for all of your locations, then have a look, get in touch, and try to get yourself together a little bit. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, I know we mentioned it in the intro, when you have to start thinking about local SEO at scale, and when you have more than one location, like two. Crystal Carter: Literally. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of local SEO at scale, we wanted to know what the most important thing to consider when working with a business that has multiple locations from an SEO point of view. So we asked just that to Elizabeth Rule, an SEO analyst over at Sterling Sky. So here's Elizabeth on what she thinks is the most important thing to remember or to know when working with a business that has multiple locations from an SEO point of view. Elizabeth Rule: Hey there, this is Elizabeth Rule, a local SEO analyst with Sterling Sky. One of the most important things I think business owners should know about managing multiple locations is that more isn't necessarily better when it comes to Google Maps. So Google Maps rankings, most people know the three pack that shows up directly in the search results. What people don't know is that Google really doesn't show the same business twice in that map pack, that three pack ever. So if you have two locations for the same business in one city, you're going to have a really tough time ranking both of those in the same map pack. So if your locations are too close together that they would be eligible to show in the map pack together just because of their proximity, it's probably better to just focus on one and put all your effort into one of those locations to help it do better, rather than having two locations that are too close together. Trying to get both of those to rank is going to be pretty much impossible. What we recommend business owners do is to get locations outside of their main city to expand their service area if they're looking to get more traction on Google Maps. But you of course want to own your backyard first, but if you're looking to expand, you're really going to want to look outside of your current city to do that if you're looking to expand on Google Maps. But there is always the opportunity to expand organically, really anywhere. So business owners that are looking to expand their visibility outside of their current one location, I always tell them instead of looking for another location to get a Google business profile, which is extremely expensive most of the time, try adding more service area pages to your site and optimizing those for the people that are located- Elizabeth Rule: And optimizing those for the people that are located in your service area you're not currently serving because they're not finding you on Google Maps. Organic is still a great way to get a lot of local traffic and it's pretty inexpensive. You can create tons of service area pages and optimize them, add the information people are looking for pretty cheaply compared to getting an entire lease and maintaining a location, a physical location to have a Google Business Profile listing. So this is my biggest tip for people trying to manage multiple locations on Google Maps or local search, invest in service area pages aka city pages. They are going to be one of the biggest in best investments you can do for your local site to improve that local SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much Elizabeth for that. You can definitely follow Elizabeth over on Twitter @ownyourserp. That's O-W-N Y-O-U-R S-E-R-P. Own your SERP, get it? Own your SERP because it's a local business. You got to own your SERP. Elizabeth works over with Sterling Sky, with Jay Hawkins. Sterling Sky does amazing content about local SEO, a bunch of studies and Elizabeth is constantly sharing her knowledge about local SEO on Twitter, and you definitely want to give her a follow, join in the conversation with her. She's a lot of fun. And again, check her out on Twitter @ownyourserp. A link to her profile in the show notes. Now, speaking of local SEO, one of the things that you never actually look at when you're doing local, but you should be, is the PAA box? Crystal Carter: Mm-hmm. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Why? I'm going to show you why, because it's a wealth of information. As we go ahead and have some fun with Google's People Also Ask. So when you search for, are you thinking about rather local SEO and research and tools, as you mentioned before, one of the things you're probably not thinking about are the People Also Ask box. Crystal Carter: Yeah. But you absolutely should. You absolutely completely, completely, completely, absolutely should. I've looked at the ODEON Luxe Leicester Square, for instance in London, and it's a prime example of the kinds of things that you'll get there. The thing about the PAA is that they are actually from the questions that people are asking. And what it will do is it will tell you the kinds of things that people want to know about your business. And this is something that I actually got clued up to from Lily Ray, and she was saying that it's worth looking at these things and seeing which questions you are answering on your website and which questions other people are answering on their website. And looking at the Leicester Square results I found, so for instance, they were asking how many seats does the ODEON Leicester Square have and the answer comes from Wikipedia. What's the biggest cinema in Leicester Square? And it says, oh Leicester Square ODEON and that comes from London Tourist Guide. Which screen is the best screen at the ODEON Leicester Square and that comes from insideci.co.uk. None of those are from Leicester Square ODEON. Y'all, guys. Guys, this is a huge opportunity for you. Mordy Oberstein: Super Hot Chili Pepper song talks about Leicester Square. That's totally random. No, that's totally random. Crystal Carter: My favorite thing is that in England you always get Americans who are like, "I'm going to Leicester Square." Mordy Oberstein: Nice. I had an Uncle Lester when I was a kid. My grandfather's friend, Uncle Lester. Anyway, one of the things that I like to do with this is when you were looking at a local business, if you look at the People Also Ask box, which again, those four questions, it's usually four, that Google shows that are questions that people also ask that you expand them. You get an answer with a URL to where the answer came from. Kind of like a featured snippet in there is you get to profile like what might be some problems with this business and also what are some unique things you could probably create content around. For example, I used to work in the West Village in New York City, and there was a great cafe on MacDougal Street between Bleecker and West Third, West Fourth, West Fourth called Caffe Reggio. And it's famous, it's been in a bunch of movies. I think it's in The Godfather. Yeah. For example, it says, what movie is Caffe Reggio in? What is Caffe Reggio known for? What is a history of Caffe Reggio? No one's asking what time do they serve their breakfast menu until, no one's asking how many flavors of coffee do they have at Caffe Reggio. They want to know about the movie. So you should have content about the movie on the website, which I didn't check. Maybe they do or don't. I don't know. I didn't look. I should have looked. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's absolutely worth doing it. I think it's also interesting you mentioned the problems. I've definitely had it where I've looked up at something and I've looked up the business and then it said something that was a negative that I'd never even thought of. Mordy Oberstein: I saw the same thing for Peter Luger was a famous steakhouse in Brooklyn. So the questions from the People Also Asked box are one, does Peter Luger have a Michelin Star? Two, how much do Peter Luger waiters make? We'll ignore that for a minute. Three, why did Peter Luger lose a Michelin Star? Crystal Carter: Okay, right. Mordy Oberstein: So addressing that Michelin Star fiasco, I'm assuming it's probably something- Crystal Carter: I'm sure Peter's making great food. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Peter Luger is famous. I don't know what the deal... I have no idea. I've never eaten there before, so I don't know. But it's something that you're going to have to, if you're a local SEO, it's something you're going to have to deal with because if that's in the People Also Ask box, it's probably in the reviews also. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it can sometimes be hot gossip. It's like you're going around, you're just searching for whatever it is- Mordy Oberstein: Meet up at Peter Lugers? Crystal Carter: Like you're going around and you're just searching for whatever, and then they're just like, "Why did so-and-so disappear?" And you're like, "What? I didn't even know that was a... that's a thing? I didn't even know that happened." And then suddenly you're looking at this saying for this other type of information from this business, but I think it's again, the business that we talked about, own your SERP. This is entirely a perfect example of how you should own your SERP for good, for bad, whatever. If your people are asking questions about you, you should be answering them. They shouldn't be getting that information from someone else. Mordy Oberstein: How about this one? Speaking of famous New York eatery landmarks, Tavern On The Green in Central Park. One of the questions in there, first one is, why is Tavern On The Green famous? What do people wear to Tavern On The Green? And three, is Tavern On The Green still around? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, that's a scandalous one for a business. Close down at one point and they opened up again. I think it's happened multiple times if I remember correctly. Let's mean you're going as a marketer and as an SEO, you clearly have something to deal with here because people don't even know that you're still around. So your client being SEO, SEO, SEO, SEO, maybe you need to go one step beyond SEO to like local advertising or local community stuff because people don't actually know that you're actually still around. They think you're not still around. So let them know you're still alive. Crystal Carter: Right. And also I think it can again, give you opportunities to sort of see about potential links as well. So for instance, if there's an article that's an older article that's saying that you closed and maybe you closed and reopened, or maybe you closed and you moved and someone posted a blog mistakenly maybe that said, "This business isn't here anymore. It's not there, you can't find it," and you're like, "No, we are here. We're just down the street," then it can give you an idea of maybe which communities you need to reach out to, maybe where you need to do some more link building in order to make sure that people know that you are still indeed around. Mordy Oberstein: And you know what we're going to do right now then, we're going to help the SEO news sites build their links as we get into this week's snappy news. The links to which will be in the show notes to read all the articles there. You're welcome to all the SEO publications that we're going to link to. Here's this week's snappy SEO news. Snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news. Let's start with a good SEO scandal. Who doesn't love a good SEO scandal. From Search Engine Land's Danny Goodwin, Google warns against content pruning as CNET deletes thousands of pages. So CNET said they want to prune their content by deleting old pages of content as they believe Google only awards new content. I've seen many, many sites do this, and it's really the wrong way to go more often than not. In this case, Danny Goodwin writes quoting CNET, that content deprecation "sends a signal to Google that says CNET is fresh, relevant, and worthy of being placed higher than our competitors in search results," that Danny says was according to an internal memo over at CNET. Danny goes on to write "Deleting content does not signal those three things. Publishing relevant, trustworthy, helpful, quality content for your audience on a technically sound website is what makes you worthy of greater organic visibility." Danny, I could not agree more. As I've said, I've seen sites delete content that wasn't getting a lot of traffic as they thought it would help Google see what pages should actually rank. More often than not, in my honest opinion, you are removing pages that help position your site as an authority. Just because a page per se doesn't get traffic or doesn't rank doesn't mean that it's not part of that authority equation that helps the other pages that do rank rank. So read the whole article. There's a lot of little juicy little tidbits in there. It's a great little case study about SEO and I think is for most instances an SEO myth. Okay, a little bit of sad news for you from Roger Montti over at Search Engine Journal, he writes, "Google downgrades visibility of HowTo and FAQ rich results." So the FAQ feature took FAQ structured data markup and produced a set of expandable cards that was essentially your FAQ on your actual webpage on this Google Results page, on the SERP itself. It really made your results take up a lot more space on the results page and the HowTo carousel is very similar in that it was a set of visual cards that appeared on your result or within your result as a carousel that walked you through how to do something. So say how to sew a button, you get a little set of- Mordy Oberstein: How to do something. So say, how to sew a button. You get a little set of cards that visually show you how to sew a button with a couple of words on each card. So, that's basically gone well, I guess. I really like those. I really like the FAQ feature in particular. I felt that if your site was smart about it, it's a great way to compete with some of the larger powerhouse sites that maybe weren't paying attention to the FAQ feature. You could add markup for your FAQ, get a much bigger result as maybe one of your big competitors who wasn't really paying attention. But I guess, oh well, it's gone. If your site had them, they probably don't have them anymore, and it can really cause an impact on traffic from Google. So, keep an eye on your data to see if anything changed. The FAQ feature will still be there in select cases. Google has said, "Going forward, FAQ from FAQ page structured data, rich results will only be shown for well-known authoritative government and health websites. For all other sites, this rich result will no longer be shown. Regularly, sites may automatically be considered for this treatment depending on rather their eligibility." So this is basically talking your Harvard Health, Mayo Clinics, Web MDs of the world. Again, I thought it was a great feature, I'm sad to see it go. There's speculation that maybe it's because SCOs were kind of abusing it as putting FAQ markup and everything, I don't know. Anyway, last but not least, from search engine land, but not from Barry Schwartz, but rather about Barry Schwartz, this one coming from SEO legend JR Oakes. It's called Tracking 20 Years of Search: Key takeaways and findings from an analysis of SE Roundtable's historical Google Analytics data from 2003 to 2023. So, you all know at this point, Barry Schwartz covers the SEO news. We featured him on basically every show. He has been covering the news, as you can see here for 20 years. He's written over 30,000 articles. Anything and everything that's happened in SEO has been covered on seroundtable.com, which makes it really interesting, a really interesting place to study and see how SEO has evolved over time, which is what JR did. JR had access from Barry to search into Roundtable's Google Analytics data, and he used it to pull and create some really cool insights that will help you get a really nice history, as I mentioned, of SEO. As again, Barry has literally been the one creating the narrative around SEO by covering everything in SEO. So for example, you can read the article, you can see things around the popularity of various search engines based on how often Barry covered them over the years, which Google updates got the industry talking, the relevancy of certain aspects of SEO over time. For example, more recently, you see there's a little bit less about mobile SEO than in the past. I cannot more highly recommend you read this article. I will link to it in the show notes, check it out. It's a great ode to Barry, but it's also a great way for you to get a really nice understanding of how SEO has sort of evolved over time. And I'll just take the opportunity again to say I always try to thank Barry for his 20 years of service, 2003 to 2023, at least from the Google Analytics data here, for covering the SEO industry as well as he does, and as consistently he does. As JR says in the article, Barry is like a robot. He just covers everything all the time. So thank you Barry, and that is this week's snappy news. Always so snappy, always so newsy, and you're welcome for the links. Crystal Carter: You're welcome. There you go. Mordy Oberstein: That's all we're going to say. Now, speaking of that, I have no actual natural connection to this, but a follow up week, you thought there was going to be because I'm always so good at it, but I have nothing. I am out. Nada. No smart pivot. Crystal Carter: No smart pivot, just- Mordy Oberstein: No smart pivot. Crystal Carter: ... Just a straight pivot. Mordy Oberstein: I do have a smart SEO for you. There's a pivot. And I do have a smart SEO for you. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Which you should be following on Twitter, and/or whatever social media platform he's on, such as Threads, is now the new hot one. He's there also. He is local SEO legend Greg Gifford. Crystal Carter: Greg to the Gifford. The Gifford, the amazing Greg Gifford. Mordy Oberstein: The Giffster. Crystal Carter: He is the absolutely... He is absolutely a local SEO legend, and such a nice guy and such a fond of knowledge. Mordy Oberstein: Super nice guy. Crystal Carter: And he's full of energy and full of warmth and so kind, and you see him on lots of things. He's done the Semrush Introduction to SEO course as well. So, he's the guy with the glasses and the beard that you've seen on lots of things. And he seems really warm and friendly, and then you meet him in person and he's really warm and friendly. Mordy Oberstein: He's really warm and friendly, and he's got an amazing knowledge of pop culture. It's like- Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Savant level knowledge of pop culture. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. He's so bubbly and friendly, but if you ask him specifically about SEO stuff, he goes straight into nerd mode. Mordy Oberstein: And it's just like, oh, epic decks. He's always a pop culture thing for all of his decks. He speaks all over the place. By the way, he works for some great people over at SearchLab, that's Mark Belan's Company out of Chicago. Greg puts on some great content local search Tuesdays, where he is giving you tips about local SEO, so we'll link to that in the show notes as well. He's an absolute legend, an absolute great follow. So please, give a follow over to Greg. Learn something about local SEO as you follow @Greg Gifford over on Twitter. And that's it. I don't have another pivots. I'm pivot-less today. Crystal Carter: Pivot near me. Mordy Oberstein: Pivot near me? Oh, I see. Perhaps I should next time scale all of my pivots so that I have a whole series to pick from. Crystal Carter: Yeah, pivot Chicago, pivot New York, pivot Los Angeles, pivot... Mordy Oberstein: Why did I pivot as a Michelin star? Because I didn't have any, that's why. Crystal Carter: Because it it moved to Montana? I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: I would love to move to Montana. Crystal Carter: Have you heard about the TV show Yellowstone? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's over. Crystal Carter: I know, you've been telling me about Yellowstone for months. Mordy Oberstein: Over. Kevin Costner's not coming back. It's over. It's a sore point for me. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Are you looking for Yellowstone? You're not going to find it, but are you looking for the Serves Up podcast? If you're going to miss us, don't worry. We're back next week with new episodes as we dive into the role quality plays, and the people also ask Box. Look forward to wherever you can consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning over at, you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Elizabeth Rule Greg Gifford Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Sterling Sky SEO Agency News: Google warns against content pruning as CNET deletes thousands of pages Google Downgrades Visibility of HowTo and FAQ Rich Results Tracking 20 years of search Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Elizabeth Rule Greg Gifford Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Sterling Sky SEO Agency News: Google warns against content pruning as CNET deletes thousands of pages Google Downgrades Visibility of HowTo and FAQ Rich Results Tracking 20 years of search Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy, overseeing the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, the always on point, always on target, always insightful, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you for that fantastic intro. I'm exactly where I want to be. Mordy Oberstein: For free. Crystal Carter: In the building. She's in the place. There's one announcer, speaking of local things, there's a local announcer in Cleveland, or he was in Cleveland who used to do the Cavaliers commentating, and every time anyone did a slam dunk, he would go, "Throw the hammer down." It was amazing. I feel like they should get him do commentary for Thor. So whenever Thor throws the hammer down, he would go, "And Thor throws the hammer down." Mordy Oberstein: Or if you're a carpenter, you could hire him to watch you as you work. Crystal Carter: Precisely. I feel like you could get a sound on your phone or something, and then just whenever you finish doing your carpentry, you just go- Mordy Oberstein: Every time you're hammering. Crystal Carter: Right, that sort of thing. But that's one of the fantastic things though about local sports announcers, is that each city will have their local announcers and it is unique to that location. So it's something that adds local color and helps you create a bespoke experience for people in that vicinity. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, bespoke. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you cannot only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also grab competitor analysis insights without ever leaving Wix, with our brand new SEO ranking app, a huge pull of competitor insights. Look for it in the Wix app market today. What does that have to do with today's topic? Absolutely nothing-ish. Well, no, no, not true, not true. Let me find the connection on the spot, fresh for you off the cuff. You can use the tool that I just mentioned to advance your local SEO efforts. Because oh, oh, oh, today is local SEO. We're talking how you can make your local SEO scalable. We're talking about leveling up local SEO production, scaling local landing pages like a beast, when to scale local SEO and when not to, and how to maintain consistency when scaling local SEO. To help us scale the ladder of local SEO, Elizabeth Rule over a sterling sky shares her most important tip to know when working with a business that has multiple locations. Plus, we take a look at what Google's People Also Ask teaches us about SMBs and SEO. And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following in social media for more SEO awesomeness. So put on your best Spider-Man costume and join us as we scale the walls of local SEO in episode number 51 of the SERP's Up podcast. Disclaimer; if you wear a Spider-Man costume does not mean you'll be able to scale walls. Crystal Carter: No. You won't. Mordy Oberstein: But do try. Crystal Carter: No, please don't try. Don't try. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry. I mean, don't try. Don't try. Unless the wall is you're not high up and you're just trying to climb a wall, in which case you would look a little bit weird, but no harm would come to you. Crystal Carter: I'm sure Spider-Man jumped over short walls as well sometimes, if he was just in somebody's backyard or something. There's no need to do a full leap and bound, if you can just do a little hop. Mordy Oberstein: No, no. If you're Spider-Man, you jump over with maximum effort. Crystal Carter: Okay, I got you. I got you. Well, we are your friendly neighborhood SEOs, and we are going to be talking today about what it means to scale local SEO, why this is something that even needs to be discussed, and some of the challenges that I've experienced and other folks have experienced along the way. So when we say scaling local SEO, essentially what we mean is when you have multiple location businesses, or you might even have a franchise business model where you need to essentially scale your local SEO tasks. So these are all of the standard local SEO tasks. Things like location landing pages, like your Google business profile, like your citation management, reviews management, local keyword research. All of those things that you would do for a single business for local SEO, you now need to do for multiple businesses across local SEO. And this can get very complex very quickly, even as soon as you have two businesses, you have to start thinking about this. I've worked with clients who have three or four locations and they have similar challenges to clients who have had closer to 400 locations via franchisees. And this is something that can be really, really tricky. And the thing that's tricky about it is maintaining consistency and making sure that you're monitoring the implementation that you've established. So it's one of those things that actually thinking about some of the superhero things that you're talking about, it's a little bit like Batman. If you're trying to scale local SEO, one of the first things you need is tools. Just like Batman. Mordy Oberstein: And a Cape. Crystal Carter: And a Cape. And someone named Alfred as well will generally help. Mordy Oberstein: An acrobatic sidekick. Crystal Carter: Yes, of course. These are all important things when you're scaling. Mordy Oberstein: And a really awesome car. Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Shall I keep going? Crystal Carter: Theme song? Theme song. I think a theme song would be good. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, always need a theme song. Crystal Carter: Yeah, of course, obviously. So, you're going to need some tools. Tools are going to be incredibly important for you and incredibly useful for you. So if you think about something like Bright Local or something like Uberall, these are tools that come to mind when I think about managing citations for instance. And if you're not sure what a citation is, this is essentially a listing in the Yellow Pages or Yelp or in other things like that, you're going to want to make sure that you've got all of the listings for where your business is and your business information consistent across every single place your citation is listed. And this can get very tricky very quickly because if you're not managing this with a tool, with a centralized tool, then sometimes what can happen is you can have duplication, you can have the wrong information, people can leave the business, and then maybe you don't have the information to hand or don't have access to the accounts and things like that, which is why tools like Uberall, like Bright Local exist. So those can be really, really helpful. Mordy Oberstein: Also, there's Uberall app in the Wix marketplace, parenthetically. Crystal Carter: There is an Uberall. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry to interrupt, sorry. Had to, marketer's going to market. Crystal Carter: There is an Uberall app in the Wix marketplace, so you can get a look at that and get a taste of what that can do for you. And I've worked with clients where they don't know who set it up, they don't know where it came from. And so even if you only have one or two businesses at business locations, this is something that's really useful. The other thing that's really useful to think about is a Google business profile. They have some tools set up for helping you to manage multiple location businesses. So you can put all of the business locations for a single business into a folder. So if you have a Dairy Queen for instance, you can have a Dairy Queen folder and then you can have all the different locations for all of the places where you can go and get a lovely frosty treat there as well. Crystal Carter: The other tools you might want to think about is tools for social posting and managing some of the posts on your Google business profile. So one of the things that can again get really, really tricky with multiple business locations is, do you have separate Facebook pages for everything? Do you have a centralized Facebook page thing as well? These are things that can come up a lot, and also it's something that can be tricky to manage because if you don't have them all underneath the same account, then it can be tricky to get the logins and all of those sorts of things. So it's also really important to have your systems in place. So you want to make sure that you've got good systems. And when you're thinking about your location pages, that's something that's important as well. So making sure that you're templatizing how your pages are created. So things like your location, schema, your FAQ, your imagery, even how your heading tags are organized and how the page looks can be really important. So if you look at large scale businesses like McDonald's, they will have a template that is the same for every single location to make sure that it's consistent across every single location, so that everyone who comes to find a McDonald's location will be able to find that information. Mordy Oberstein: That's not to say though that you should have the exact same content across all 4,000 location pages, which is a very common problem, which is a no. Don't do that. Crystal Carter: Right. No, you absolutely shouldn't. You should have unique information, but the format of it should be similar. So for instance, again, you're going to have your schema, your location, your map, what services are available, all of that sort of thing. But they should also be specific to you. And you also touched on a point about content. Content can be very tricky when scaling local SEO, because you get into site architecture. Do you have one blog for everyone? Do you have mini blogs for other people? Do you have one website for everyone and then send out the information there? Do you have micro sites for each location? These are things to think about as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's really complicated, especially on the blog side. For example, let's say you're not McDonald's and you're not trying to rank for french fry, because it doesn't matter, right? Because as long as they get to McDonald's, there's a McDonald's near you no matter what. But if you're, let's say, only in LA, Boston, and Miami, then the blog content will probably have to be locally centric. So let's say you're offering medical services, I don't know, medical testing. So you have medical testing in Miami and medical testing in Boston. Ranking for medical testing as a keyword itself is probably not entirely relevant. Great if you can, but there's a lot of traffic that just could be not qualified because all the other locations people are searching from are not relevant to you. Then how do you do that? Because now you have one blog with multo….. If I'm coming from Boston, I don't care about the blog post about Miami. Crystal Carter: Right. So then you have to plan your content strategy to include touch points where you are doing specific local things. Like let's say you've got your medical testing or something, and let's say the medical test is for diabetes, and let's say there is a diabetes fun run, or something, like a charity fund run that's happening in Boston where your business is. Well, yeah, you should have some content around that if you're involved in that particular thing. But do you put that on the main blog? Do you put that on the thing? How do you spread that around? So you have to think about your site architecture, you have to think about your blog strategy. Crystal Carter: So you have to think about your site architecture. You have to think about your blog strategy and your content strategy so that your content includes those things and that you're surfacing it in places that are important. So for instance, if you have a location page for your Boston business and you have one blog a month that's specifically dedicated to Boston stuff, then you should make sure that on the feed for your Boston location page that you have the Boston specific blogs on that feed. There's no point putting the Miami specific ones on the Boston one. That will make things confusing. But you also want to think about things like your imagery so that you've got local imagery on there, that you've got people for the local team that are visible on that particular page as well. But basically when you're thinking about scaling SEO, you need to be extremely organized. The long and short of it is that you need to be extremely organized. And even if you're just thinking about three businesses, four businesses, or even if you're thinking about 400 business locations that you need to manage, you need to have systems in place so that you don't end up tripping over yourself, duplicating content, sending people to the wrong page, ranking on places where you shouldn't be, having content that's out of date or that is inaccurate in one location and not another, and things like that. So essentially you need to be extremely organized and you're going to need tools. We have a blog on the Wix SEO learning hub that says, do you need SEO tools? Not for everything, not all the time, but for this, you're going to need some tools. You're going to need some tools. Mordy Oberstein: Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with tools. Those are great. By the way, quick thing on the blog, if you're doing this, and let's say you have a location in Miami, Boston, and New York, so you could just make the locations of categories. So you show up at the blog, right? It's just blog or whatever. It describes the blog itself, and then you have the categories, and if you're from Boston, you click through the Boston. If you're from New York, you click through New York. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's one way to do it. You can do them with sub folders. There's a couple of ways to do it, so to have a think about your architecture, but yeah, you do need to think about your architecture. And also if you're planning on expanding further, that's something to think about as well. So how you're going to potentially expand. The other one to think about, I worked with a client who is dealing with franchisees and they were spinning up all kinds of websites and content and things, because another way that sometimes people do content for local things is they'll syndicate essentially. So you have one central blog that creates content and send it out to franchisees, and then franchisees can publish it on their smaller blogs things. The trick with that though is that you end up with a lot of content that's very similar across a lot of different URLs, which can be tricky. Mordy Oberstein: It's a big problem getting it all indexed. It's something you really have to think about, right? You think, okay, fine, I'm smart, right? I've automated all the content, it's all coming from a spreadsheet. It's all being automatically populated, which by the way, separate point, I will read to you from Google's guidelines around the helpful content update, describing something that is not helpful. Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics equals unhelpful. Side point. But yeah, if those pages are too similar outset of it not being helpful or it being unhelpful, Google will be like, this page looks like that page. I index it. Crystal Carter: And even if you think about users, users can't tell. They'll be like, this looks the same as the other page, and I can't tell this is the same page. I can't tell if this is the same page that I just looked at or not. So these are important things to think about, and I think with franchisees it's really useful to give them guidance. And I think for this particular client, it had all gotten very out of hand, and so my team had to just bring it all back in. So we centralized everything, and I'm working on another project right now with a local charity that's doing a similar thing and they've got 50 plus locations and everyone's been kind of doing things as ad hoc, which also can happen with legacy products. So for instance, this is an organization that's been around for a while and they have some content that was on Facebook, for instance, before Facebook centralized more of the multi-location pages. So that means that they have to retrofit how they are distributing their content and scaling their activity. So now that there's more tools available, they're able to centralize it. But again, this is one of the reasons why keeping things organized both within the actual content that you're outputting, but also who is the contact for the information about the location. If you're working with franchises or if you're working with multiple marketing teams, then you're going to need to make sure that you have the details for all of the multiple marketing teams and that you have access to all of the accounts for all the listing pages, for all the other things. Because I think one of the things that people forget about local SEO is there's a lot of off page SEO that happens with local SEO, and you sort of need to be able to do that and need to be able to manage that, and you have to be extremely, extremely organized in order to scale your local SEO. So if you learn nothing else from this, get yourself together, get a spreadsheet, get a checklist, get yourself together, make a plan before you start scaling local SEO. Mordy Oberstein: That's especially because it can be super complicated on the site structure side. For example, let's say you're a business that you have in New York, you have five locations, and in Boston, Massachusetts rather, you only have one location, but now the hierarchy is going to have to be different from New York if you want each page to have... Each location rather than have a specific page. A good one, yeah. Crystal Carter: Precisely. And I think sometimes you get where businesses are pretty much right next to each other, and that can be tricky as well. Mordy Oberstein: It's also very confusing. By the way, real quick one, if you can pull this out one way to differentiate for you, forget SEO for a second, because it is really weird. Sometimes you show up on a website and you're looking at multiple pages, say, I don't know. Let's say I'm looking at, I don't know, Bob's Burger, Bob's got a burger place on one block and like a Starbucks. There's a Starbucks on this street and Starbucks on the next street, and I don't even know which one I'm looking at anymore because they're exactly the same. Show a picture of the branch at the top of the page because it'll usually look different. Crystal Carter: Yeah, photos are really, really important, and I talked about this before, but photos are also particularly important with regards to visual search because if somebody is doing a visual search or Google's looking up what's near them, Google is able to discern location landmarks from images when they're doing their visual search information assessment. So if you're able to add in some landmarks, for instance, if you have a Bob's Burgers that's on Coney Island and you've got the big wheel behind you, Google's going to be able to place you and they can geotarget those things, particularly if there's a specific landmark on it. If you're Bob's Burgers on Liberty Island, is that the island that the Statue of Liberty's on? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Yes. By the way, my immediate association to Liberty Island, when you said that was X-Men. If you're from New York and I've been to Liberty Island like a dozen times. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: My state, that's how we're wired. That's pathetic. Sorry, everybody. Crystal Carter: I was thinking of Liberty City, which I think is the GTA game from years ago. Mordy Oberstein: There is a Liberty Science Center in New Jersey. Crystal Carter: There we go. But yeah, look, I think it's just really important to keep organized. We've got some great resources around local SEO on the Wix SEO hub from some fantastic local SEOs, Claire Carlisle, Crystal Tang, Darren Shaw. They talk about a lot of this stuff, and they're all very well versed in scaling local SEO and also Amanda Jordan also has some great information about local landing pages. If you have a look at those and potentially get in touch with them, they're all super friendly and super, super involved with this kind of thing. So if you are interested in scaling this, and if you're looking at your local SEO situation and you have multiple locations and you are not organized and you are seeing that you do not have the consistent information for your businesses across all of your locations, that you don't quite have a content plan that's working for all of your locations, then have a look, get in touch, and try to get yourself together a little bit. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, I know we mentioned it in the intro, when you have to start thinking about local SEO at scale, and when you have more than one location, like two. Crystal Carter: Literally. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of local SEO at scale, we wanted to know what the most important thing to consider when working with a business that has multiple locations from an SEO point of view. So we asked just that to Elizabeth Rule, an SEO analyst over at Sterling Sky. So here's Elizabeth on what she thinks is the most important thing to remember or to know when working with a business that has multiple locations from an SEO point of view. Elizabeth Rule: Hey there, this is Elizabeth Rule, a local SEO analyst with Sterling Sky. One of the most important things I think business owners should know about managing multiple locations is that more isn't necessarily better when it comes to Google Maps. So Google Maps rankings, most people know the three pack that shows up directly in the search results. What people don't know is that Google really doesn't show the same business twice in that map pack, that three pack ever. So if you have two locations for the same business in one city, you're going to have a really tough time ranking both of those in the same map pack. So if your locations are too close together that they would be eligible to show in the map pack together just because of their proximity, it's probably better to just focus on one and put all your effort into one of those locations to help it do better, rather than having two locations that are too close together. Trying to get both of those to rank is going to be pretty much impossible. What we recommend business owners do is to get locations outside of their main city to expand their service area if they're looking to get more traction on Google Maps. But you of course want to own your backyard first, but if you're looking to expand, you're really going to want to look outside of your current city to do that if you're looking to expand on Google Maps. But there is always the opportunity to expand organically, really anywhere. So business owners that are looking to expand their visibility outside of their current one location, I always tell them instead of looking for another location to get a Google business profile, which is extremely expensive most of the time, try adding more service area pages to your site and optimizing those for the people that are located- Elizabeth Rule: And optimizing those for the people that are located in your service area you're not currently serving because they're not finding you on Google Maps. Organic is still a great way to get a lot of local traffic and it's pretty inexpensive. You can create tons of service area pages and optimize them, add the information people are looking for pretty cheaply compared to getting an entire lease and maintaining a location, a physical location to have a Google Business Profile listing. So this is my biggest tip for people trying to manage multiple locations on Google Maps or local search, invest in service area pages aka city pages. They are going to be one of the biggest in best investments you can do for your local site to improve that local SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much Elizabeth for that. You can definitely follow Elizabeth over on Twitter @ownyourserp. That's O-W-N Y-O-U-R S-E-R-P. Own your SERP, get it? Own your SERP because it's a local business. You got to own your SERP. Elizabeth works over with Sterling Sky, with Jay Hawkins. Sterling Sky does amazing content about local SEO, a bunch of studies and Elizabeth is constantly sharing her knowledge about local SEO on Twitter, and you definitely want to give her a follow, join in the conversation with her. She's a lot of fun. And again, check her out on Twitter @ownyourserp. A link to her profile in the show notes. Now, speaking of local SEO, one of the things that you never actually look at when you're doing local, but you should be, is the PAA box? Crystal Carter: Mm-hmm. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Why? I'm going to show you why, because it's a wealth of information. As we go ahead and have some fun with Google's People Also Ask. So when you search for, are you thinking about rather local SEO and research and tools, as you mentioned before, one of the things you're probably not thinking about are the People Also Ask box. Crystal Carter: Yeah. But you absolutely should. You absolutely completely, completely, completely, absolutely should. I've looked at the ODEON Luxe Leicester Square, for instance in London, and it's a prime example of the kinds of things that you'll get there. The thing about the PAA is that they are actually from the questions that people are asking. And what it will do is it will tell you the kinds of things that people want to know about your business. And this is something that I actually got clued up to from Lily Ray, and she was saying that it's worth looking at these things and seeing which questions you are answering on your website and which questions other people are answering on their website. And looking at the Leicester Square results I found, so for instance, they were asking how many seats does the ODEON Leicester Square have and the answer comes from Wikipedia. What's the biggest cinema in Leicester Square? And it says, oh Leicester Square ODEON and that comes from London Tourist Guide. Which screen is the best screen at the ODEON Leicester Square and that comes from insideci.co.uk. None of those are from Leicester Square ODEON. Y'all, guys. Guys, this is a huge opportunity for you. Mordy Oberstein: Super Hot Chili Pepper song talks about Leicester Square. That's totally random. No, that's totally random. Crystal Carter: My favorite thing is that in England you always get Americans who are like, "I'm going to Leicester Square." Mordy Oberstein: Nice. I had an Uncle Lester when I was a kid. My grandfather's friend, Uncle Lester. Anyway, one of the things that I like to do with this is when you were looking at a local business, if you look at the People Also Ask box, which again, those four questions, it's usually four, that Google shows that are questions that people also ask that you expand them. You get an answer with a URL to where the answer came from. Kind of like a featured snippet in there is you get to profile like what might be some problems with this business and also what are some unique things you could probably create content around. For example, I used to work in the West Village in New York City, and there was a great cafe on MacDougal Street between Bleecker and West Third, West Fourth, West Fourth called Caffe Reggio. And it's famous, it's been in a bunch of movies. I think it's in The Godfather. Yeah. For example, it says, what movie is Caffe Reggio in? What is Caffe Reggio known for? What is a history of Caffe Reggio? No one's asking what time do they serve their breakfast menu until, no one's asking how many flavors of coffee do they have at Caffe Reggio. They want to know about the movie. So you should have content about the movie on the website, which I didn't check. Maybe they do or don't. I don't know. I didn't look. I should have looked. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's absolutely worth doing it. I think it's also interesting you mentioned the problems. I've definitely had it where I've looked up at something and I've looked up the business and then it said something that was a negative that I'd never even thought of. Mordy Oberstein: I saw the same thing for Peter Luger was a famous steakhouse in Brooklyn. So the questions from the People Also Asked box are one, does Peter Luger have a Michelin Star? Two, how much do Peter Luger waiters make? We'll ignore that for a minute. Three, why did Peter Luger lose a Michelin Star? Crystal Carter: Okay, right. Mordy Oberstein: So addressing that Michelin Star fiasco, I'm assuming it's probably something- Crystal Carter: I'm sure Peter's making great food. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Peter Luger is famous. I don't know what the deal... I have no idea. I've never eaten there before, so I don't know. But it's something that you're going to have to, if you're a local SEO, it's something you're going to have to deal with because if that's in the People Also Ask box, it's probably in the reviews also. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it can sometimes be hot gossip. It's like you're going around, you're just searching for whatever it is- Mordy Oberstein: Meet up at Peter Lugers? Crystal Carter: Like you're going around and you're just searching for whatever, and then they're just like, "Why did so-and-so disappear?" And you're like, "What? I didn't even know that was a... that's a thing? I didn't even know that happened." And then suddenly you're looking at this saying for this other type of information from this business, but I think it's again, the business that we talked about, own your SERP. This is entirely a perfect example of how you should own your SERP for good, for bad, whatever. If your people are asking questions about you, you should be answering them. They shouldn't be getting that information from someone else. Mordy Oberstein: How about this one? Speaking of famous New York eatery landmarks, Tavern On The Green in Central Park. One of the questions in there, first one is, why is Tavern On The Green famous? What do people wear to Tavern On The Green? And three, is Tavern On The Green still around? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, that's a scandalous one for a business. Close down at one point and they opened up again. I think it's happened multiple times if I remember correctly. Let's mean you're going as a marketer and as an SEO, you clearly have something to deal with here because people don't even know that you're still around. So your client being SEO, SEO, SEO, SEO, maybe you need to go one step beyond SEO to like local advertising or local community stuff because people don't actually know that you're actually still around. They think you're not still around. So let them know you're still alive. Crystal Carter: Right. And also I think it can again, give you opportunities to sort of see about potential links as well. So for instance, if there's an article that's an older article that's saying that you closed and maybe you closed and reopened, or maybe you closed and you moved and someone posted a blog mistakenly maybe that said, "This business isn't here anymore. It's not there, you can't find it," and you're like, "No, we are here. We're just down the street," then it can give you an idea of maybe which communities you need to reach out to, maybe where you need to do some more link building in order to make sure that people know that you are still indeed around. Mordy Oberstein: And you know what we're going to do right now then, we're going to help the SEO news sites build their links as we get into this week's snappy news. The links to which will be in the show notes to read all the articles there. You're welcome to all the SEO publications that we're going to link to. Here's this week's snappy SEO news. Snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news. Let's start with a good SEO scandal. Who doesn't love a good SEO scandal. From Search Engine Land's Danny Goodwin, Google warns against content pruning as CNET deletes thousands of pages. So CNET said they want to prune their content by deleting old pages of content as they believe Google only awards new content. I've seen many, many sites do this, and it's really the wrong way to go more often than not. In this case, Danny Goodwin writes quoting CNET, that content deprecation "sends a signal to Google that says CNET is fresh, relevant, and worthy of being placed higher than our competitors in search results," that Danny says was according to an internal memo over at CNET. Danny goes on to write "Deleting content does not signal those three things. Publishing relevant, trustworthy, helpful, quality content for your audience on a technically sound website is what makes you worthy of greater organic visibility." Danny, I could not agree more. As I've said, I've seen sites delete content that wasn't getting a lot of traffic as they thought it would help Google see what pages should actually rank. More often than not, in my honest opinion, you are removing pages that help position your site as an authority. Just because a page per se doesn't get traffic or doesn't rank doesn't mean that it's not part of that authority equation that helps the other pages that do rank rank. So read the whole article. There's a lot of little juicy little tidbits in there. It's a great little case study about SEO and I think is for most instances an SEO myth. Okay, a little bit of sad news for you from Roger Montti over at Search Engine Journal, he writes, "Google downgrades visibility of HowTo and FAQ rich results." So the FAQ feature took FAQ structured data markup and produced a set of expandable cards that was essentially your FAQ on your actual webpage on this Google Results page, on the SERP itself. It really made your results take up a lot more space on the results page and the HowTo carousel is very similar in that it was a set of visual cards that appeared on your result or within your result as a carousel that walked you through how to do something. So say how to sew a button, you get a little set of- Mordy Oberstein: How to do something. So say, how to sew a button. You get a little set of cards that visually show you how to sew a button with a couple of words on each card. So, that's basically gone well, I guess. I really like those. I really like the FAQ feature in particular. I felt that if your site was smart about it, it's a great way to compete with some of the larger powerhouse sites that maybe weren't paying attention to the FAQ feature. You could add markup for your FAQ, get a much bigger result as maybe one of your big competitors who wasn't really paying attention. But I guess, oh well, it's gone. If your site had them, they probably don't have them anymore, and it can really cause an impact on traffic from Google. So, keep an eye on your data to see if anything changed. The FAQ feature will still be there in select cases. Google has said, "Going forward, FAQ from FAQ page structured data, rich results will only be shown for well-known authoritative government and health websites. For all other sites, this rich result will no longer be shown. Regularly, sites may automatically be considered for this treatment depending on rather their eligibility." So this is basically talking your Harvard Health, Mayo Clinics, Web MDs of the world. Again, I thought it was a great feature, I'm sad to see it go. There's speculation that maybe it's because SCOs were kind of abusing it as putting FAQ markup and everything, I don't know. Anyway, last but not least, from search engine land, but not from Barry Schwartz, but rather about Barry Schwartz, this one coming from SEO legend JR Oakes. It's called Tracking 20 Years of Search: Key takeaways and findings from an analysis of SE Roundtable's historical Google Analytics data from 2003 to 2023. So, you all know at this point, Barry Schwartz covers the SEO news. We featured him on basically every show. He has been covering the news, as you can see here for 20 years. He's written over 30,000 articles. Anything and everything that's happened in SEO has been covered on seroundtable.com, which makes it really interesting, a really interesting place to study and see how SEO has evolved over time, which is what JR did. JR had access from Barry to search into Roundtable's Google Analytics data, and he used it to pull and create some really cool insights that will help you get a really nice history, as I mentioned, of SEO. As again, Barry has literally been the one creating the narrative around SEO by covering everything in SEO. So for example, you can read the article, you can see things around the popularity of various search engines based on how often Barry covered them over the years, which Google updates got the industry talking, the relevancy of certain aspects of SEO over time. For example, more recently, you see there's a little bit less about mobile SEO than in the past. I cannot more highly recommend you read this article. I will link to it in the show notes, check it out. It's a great ode to Barry, but it's also a great way for you to get a really nice understanding of how SEO has sort of evolved over time. And I'll just take the opportunity again to say I always try to thank Barry for his 20 years of service, 2003 to 2023, at least from the Google Analytics data here, for covering the SEO industry as well as he does, and as consistently he does. As JR says in the article, Barry is like a robot. He just covers everything all the time. So thank you Barry, and that is this week's snappy news. Always so snappy, always so newsy, and you're welcome for the links. Crystal Carter: You're welcome. There you go. Mordy Oberstein: That's all we're going to say. Now, speaking of that, I have no actual natural connection to this, but a follow up week, you thought there was going to be because I'm always so good at it, but I have nothing. I am out. Nada. No smart pivot. Crystal Carter: No smart pivot, just- Mordy Oberstein: No smart pivot. Crystal Carter: ... Just a straight pivot. Mordy Oberstein: I do have a smart SEO for you. There's a pivot. And I do have a smart SEO for you. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Which you should be following on Twitter, and/or whatever social media platform he's on, such as Threads, is now the new hot one. He's there also. He is local SEO legend Greg Gifford. Crystal Carter: Greg to the Gifford. The Gifford, the amazing Greg Gifford. Mordy Oberstein: The Giffster. Crystal Carter: He is the absolutely... He is absolutely a local SEO legend, and such a nice guy and such a fond of knowledge. Mordy Oberstein: Super nice guy. Crystal Carter: And he's full of energy and full of warmth and so kind, and you see him on lots of things. He's done the Semrush Introduction to SEO course as well. So, he's the guy with the glasses and the beard that you've seen on lots of things. And he seems really warm and friendly, and then you meet him in person and he's really warm and friendly. Mordy Oberstein: He's really warm and friendly, and he's got an amazing knowledge of pop culture. It's like- Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Savant level knowledge of pop culture. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. He's so bubbly and friendly, but if you ask him specifically about SEO stuff, he goes straight into nerd mode. Mordy Oberstein: And it's just like, oh, epic decks. He's always a pop culture thing for all of his decks. He speaks all over the place. By the way, he works for some great people over at SearchLab, that's Mark Belan's Company out of Chicago. Greg puts on some great content local search Tuesdays, where he is giving you tips about local SEO, so we'll link to that in the show notes as well. He's an absolute legend, an absolute great follow. So please, give a follow over to Greg. Learn something about local SEO as you follow @Greg Gifford over on Twitter. And that's it. I don't have another pivots. I'm pivot-less today. Crystal Carter: Pivot near me. Mordy Oberstein: Pivot near me? Oh, I see. Perhaps I should next time scale all of my pivots so that I have a whole series to pick from. Crystal Carter: Yeah, pivot Chicago, pivot New York, pivot Los Angeles, pivot... Mordy Oberstein: Why did I pivot as a Michelin star? Because I didn't have any, that's why. Crystal Carter: Because it it moved to Montana? I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: I would love to move to Montana. Crystal Carter: Have you heard about the TV show Yellowstone? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's over. Crystal Carter: I know, you've been telling me about Yellowstone for months. Mordy Oberstein: Over. Kevin Costner's not coming back. It's over. It's a sore point for me. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Are you looking for Yellowstone? You're not going to find it, but are you looking for the Serves Up podcast? If you're going to miss us, don't worry. We're back next week with new episodes as we dive into the role quality plays, and the people also ask Box. Look forward to wherever you can consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning over at, you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. 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Want to build your brand up? Start a podcast. Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back to discuss the art of podcasting and how you can leverage podcasts to showcase expertise and drive market traction. Take a behind-the-scenes look with host of the SEO Video Show, Paul Andre de Vera, to discover what it takes to plan and execute a professional podcast. Plus, we look at how the podcast landscape is changing for creators with a host of Strategy Sessions, Andi Jarvis. Learn how to translate podcasting into marketing growth on this week's episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Everything (mostly) that a marketer could want to know about podcasting Want to build your brand up? Start a podcast. Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back to discuss the art of podcasting and how you can leverage podcasts to showcase expertise and drive market traction. Take a behind-the-scenes look with host of the SEO Video Show, Paul Andre de Vera, to discover what it takes to plan and execute a professional podcast. Plus, we look at how the podcast landscape is changing for creators with a host of Strategy Sessions, Andi Jarvis. Learn how to translate podcasting into marketing growth on this week's episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 99 | August 7, 2024 | 63 MIN 00:00 / 1:03:23 This week’s guests Katy Powell Paul Andre de Vera is a 15+ year B2B digital marketer who creates engaging, educational, and entertaining video content that ranks. His innovative approach has made "Dre" a sought-after speaker, online educator, and organic growth strategist for B2B companies like SAP and Workday. He's a diehard Raiders fan who lives with his two Yorkies, Buddha and Santo. You'll find "Dre" hosting the livestream SEO Video Show during Friday lunch, which has accumulated over 75k watch hours. He always looks for the next great place to devour a delicious rib-eye steak and occasionally sip a glass of whiskey. Today, you'll find him providing SEO consultation to hyper-growth startups Andi Jarvis Andi is the Founder and Strategy Director of Eximo Marketing, a marketing strategy consultancy based in Belfast and Liverpool. Andi also hosts the Strategy Sessions podcast, a show that interviews some of the best marketers in the world. He holds an MSc in Marketing and the Marketing Week Mini MBA in Marketing. He also runs a fundraising project, Eximo & Friends with Barnardo’s, where marketers volunteer to provide consultations to small businesses in return for a donation to support refugees. You should also know that Andi likes to talk, at length, about: being a dad, his BBQ, rugby league, boxing and cricket Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix and I'm joined by the very vocal, the audiable, the shout it out to the world and tell them what you think head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Like Beyonce says, "Tell everybody. Tell everybody." She says it a lot in that song, "Tell everybody." And like her partner says, "I got 99 problems, but a podcast ain't one." That's right. Mordy Oberstein: I thought you'd say, 99 problems, but talking a lot is not one. Crystal Carter: It's not one. It's definitely not one, like when I was at school. No, it was one of those personality tests. They do the Myers-Briggs tests and things, and they're like, "Crystal talks a lot." I'm like, "Like Kelsa Priess said, water is wet. This is not news." Mordy Oberstein: I took one on the computer and the computer started to fume. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: I'm joking. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. But where you can also use Wix Studio and the templates and the advanced design features to give your podcast a home that you can control across the web. As opposed to just using a podcast hosting platform, you should also have a website for your podcast. Anyway, today we're doing a podcast about podcasting for marketing growth with marketers who podcast. As we're pulling back the curtain on this very show by looking at what does and doesn't have to go into production for a podcast, how to manage the ins and outs of a podcast, how to use a podcast to gain market traction, and how to leverage your podcast for your and your client's brands. To show us that it ain't nothing but a podcast thing. Dre is in the house, the host of the SEO Show, Paul Andre De Vera will chat with Crystal in just a few moments. Plus we look at how the podcast landscape is changing with the one only Andi Jarvis. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following for more awesomeness on social media. So the next time someone tells you to "Shh and be quiet," you tell them "The world isn't a library, it's a podcast, and I'll talk about whatever I want to talk about whenever I want to talk about it," as we help you find your inner voice. No, not your inner voice, but your microphone voice on this, the 99th episode of the SERP's Up Podcast. It's our Wayne Gretzky episode, 99 or our Aaron Judge episode if you like baseball. Crystal Carter: Okay, that's fine. Also, I think I mentioned this when we chatted to Andi as well, but also Agent 99 from Get Smart. Mordy Oberstein: 99's a good number. Crystal Carter: It's good. It's good. 99 Red Balloons, the classic song. Mordy Oberstein: That's classic. Crystal Carter: Bump Ba dum bum bum bum, ba dum, bum bum. Mordy Oberstein: It also means we're one away from our 100th episode and we have a surprise for you for that. Crystal Carter: It's true, it's true. 100 is good innings in cricket because we couldn't cover all the sports, all the sports fall. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know, is there anything... I like bowling? Is anything with 99? No. Crystal Carter: No.- Mordy Oberstein: I was thinking like- Crystal Carter: ... Except for that's bad score. Mordy Oberstein: ... the perfect score is a hundred, but it's 300. Crystal Carter: Definitely 300. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: And to be honest, I'm a mediocre bowler. I'm very happy if I get three digits, if I'm completely honest. Mordy Oberstein: I'm a terrible bowler. Crystal Carter: My husband was never on a bowling team. I was in a bowling league with my mom and my sister, and my husband has never been in organized bowling of any kind, and yet he always beats me, which makes me upset because he's a non-bowler. It's not fair. It's not okay. Mordy Oberstein: I have a hard time. I think we talked about this at one point. The ball bothers me, it bothers my wrist. It just feels awkward in my hand for some reason. Crystal Carter: I always start off with a heavier one in the the first game, and then I go lighter for the next game and the game after that. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. You really plan out your bowling strategy. Crystal Carter: I get tie ties, I get tired and stuff. I tell you what though, my dad is an epic bowler. When I was a kid, he was my hero because he had, it was like 14 pounds or whatever, and when he would bowl, he would throw it halfway down the lane and then when it hit the pins, it was like, clack, clack, clack, clack. And I was like, this is awesome- Mordy Oberstein: You know you don't want the ball to spin, you want it to glide. And at the very end it's supposed to spin. I saw a video about this. Anyway, I don't know a lot about bowling, but I know a lot about podcasting. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: I've done a few podcasts in my day. Podcasting, before we get into Dre, I just want to say it is a phenomenal, phenomenal medium for you if you're thinking about doing a variety of different things with your business or your client's businesses, podcasting is fabulous. And I'm not saying that because I'm biased towards podcasting, which I am. First off, it's informal and connected, which I think works in today's ecosystem. Like this podcast in case you haven't figured it out, is not exactly a tuxedo. It's more like a baggy pair of jeans. We have a connection, we talk, we're informal, we're chit-chatting. It's a great way to connect in a real way with your audience and not in a very corporate way with your audience, which I think the world is leaning very much against that whole corporate kind of talk. Podcasting is great. You create actual relationships with your guests. There have been people who are my best friends at SEO that I met by doing podcasts and having them on a podcast. You make real connections. That first five minutes and last five minutes of an interview are connection gold. And it's fabulous for positioning yourself. Don't always, and we'll talk about this with Andi, don't always worry about the numbers. Podcasting is a great way to position yourself for getting more leads and getting more clients and whatnot. And it's also much easier to produce, which we'll get into with Dre than it is, I don't know, the ultimate guide to whatever, whatever, whatever, to try to get more traffic. It's just easier to produce. And here's the greatest part, it's repurposable. Audiograms, YouTube video. You can turn it into a blog post. And last but not least, the barrier to entry is higher than you think, but it's also not as high as you think at the same time. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that it's one of those things that with marketing, once you get going, it can become a lot more sort of second nature. I think Dre's been doing his podcast and his show for a long time. You've been podcasting for a very long time. And Andi talks about, it was tricky to get it going in the first instance, but now he's really, really gotten through it and he really goes through it regularly. And I think that it becomes a sort of part of your routine that you're going to connect with your audience and share whatever you're sharing. And I think that one of the other things that I think is great for audiences, and for people who are marketing and who are considering podcasts is that you can make sure that you are connecting with a particular audience at any time. So podcasting is something that can apply to lots of different audiences, whatever your vertical is. And I think that that's something that can be tricky for lots of different verticals. But if you were somebody who was really into pneumatic drills, you can make a podcast and people who are really into that would be really into it. If you were somebody who was really into epidemiology or something, you could do a podcast and then people would be interested in that as well. The numbers on podcasts are incredible across the board, and I think that, like you said, it's not always about numbers, but it is about showing a depth of knowledge. And one of the things that's really... and an interest in knowledge as well. So even if you're not a super, I don't know why I picked pneumatic drilling, but I think I've been thinking about that PN, that silent P in there. Anyway, but if you were interested in that particular topic, and let's say you were a noob, right? Let's say you were just getting started on your journey of becoming, I don't know, an engineer in that field or something, whatever it may be, you can connect with people who are further along in their journey to help you learn about what you're doing and to help your audience learn with you. So it's something where you can come at it from a source of truth and you can use that to both endear yourself to your audience, but also to demonstrate your expertise, whichever audience you're trying to apply to. And that's something that can be really rare. So if you were to start a TikTok channel on the same topic, you would probably have to test that audience and say, is this audience on TikTok? Et cetera, et cetera. But podcasts are something that cut across almost all aspects and almost all demographics. Mordy Oberstein: And it's super easy. It's a great way, as you're doing that to position yourself or your client the same way. Because if you're putting out a blog post or you're putting out whatever you're putting out on social media, sometimes it could be hard to let your brand personality come through. It's super easy on a podcast because your personality literally comes through and you can, by the way, that doesn't mean you have to be your actual self. You could be your podcast self on a podcast. I'm this way on this podcast. I can be very different on a different podcast. It's super easy and it's super visible and it's super transparent, or that's not even the word I'm looking for. I can't find the right word. But it's super distinct and it's super obvious, a way to position your brand, I'll say personality, just super upfront. You don't have to over time start creating a notion with our visual language. It comes out instantaneously. When you're podcasting. Crystal Carter: It can be really useful to connect with people in a way that is low-key. So one of the things that can happen sometimes is that if you're doing a talk and you say hi, I'm so-and-so, and I also host a podcast. So sometimes if you're presenting to people, if you're talking to people, if you're meeting people, then you might say, oh, I've got this blog, read my blog. And maybe people have time to read your blog, maybe they don't have time to read your blog or watch my videos, maybe they have time to do it, maybe they don't. If you say, download this free guide, think maybe they have time to do that, maybe they don't. However, if you say, oh, I've got a podcast, then maybe at some point when they've got 10 minutes while they're doing their working out or they're going for a walk or they're at the airport or whatever it may be, it's really, really low-key. They can sort of flip through and they can get an idea of who you are before they get involved with some of your other aspects of your business or your persona or whatever it may be. And it's something that can be really accessible for people in lots of different ways. And I think that for brands, that's something that is super important because you want to be able to have some access there. I think also from a technical point of view, particularly from an SEO point of view, podcasts have incredible distribution networks built in. So if you were thinking of from a brand point of view, when you have a podcast and if you were to search for the SERP's Up Podcast for instance on Google, and then you were to look at some of the places where the SERP's Up Podcast is, and if you were to leave a review, then you would be able to see that ours shows up on IMDB, it shows up on Google's things, it shows up on Apple, it shows up on Spotify, it shows up on Amazon, it shows up on lots of different things, and there are very few mediums that have that built in. It has a built-in distribution network that allows you to connect with lots of different folks both on the SERP and in the lots of other platforms as well. Mordy Oberstein: And the last thing that I'll say that it is because that's absolutely true, before we hand it over to you and Dre, it does something that brands should be doing more of by default, and that's putting the people who work at the brands out in front. So you're putting actual people that people can actually connect... I'll tell you a story where... I'm not going to say the company where it was, one company I used to work with, they were like, oh, I'm so glad you're there, because until... I had no idea anyone who worked there and I don't know who to connect to, who to ask questions to, who to chat about, whatever it was. Putting people out in front for your brand, again, especially in today's ecosystem, Lily Ray has put out a tweet about this a couple... By the time this comes out a couple of weeks ago, it's like, brands should do this more often. It's really effective, and she's somebody who does that for her brand. Putting people out there is a way for other people to connect with other people, while at the same time connecting with your brand. And by default, you're going to need somebody like myself and Crystal to host the podcast. So you by default need to put somebody at your company out there upfront for people to connect with. That's insanely powerful. With that, let's dive into how you actually go about podcasting, running it, what works, what doesn't work, what you should do, when you shouldn't do as Crystal talks with Dre. Crystal Carter: Oh, thank you so much for joining us. We are so honored to have you on the show. Mordy and I are both huge fans of everything you do online. Paul Andre De Vera: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Crystal. Thank you for having me on again. I mean, it was awesome having you as guests on my own podcast, right? Both you and Mordy were great guests dropping so many knowledge bombs. Great stuff. Crystal Carter: I'll be completely honest. You were like, "Do you want to do the podcast?" And I was like, "Absolutely. Just for the montage." If people aren't familiar with the SEO show and the podcast that Paul does, he does these amazing montages that make you look like the most amazing person. I'm like, "oh my gosh, I want to meet that person." I'm like, "oh, wait, no, that's me." And yeah, I think you have so much fun with your podcast, and I think it really, really shows. Paul Andre De Vera: That's the number one rule that I follow when it comes to podcasting and having guests, is making sure the guest feels like the hero, the superstar. That's how you get them to open up, feel comfortable, and be able to share knowledge that maybe they maybe scared to share. But one of the things that I love doing is when a lot of podcasters ask, "Hey, introduce yourself." I don't like doing that. You know why? Because that makes the guests kind of feel a little like, they kind of may be shy and scared in sharing some of their awards that they've won, and you as the outsider can do that research for them and make them... Sometimes when I introduce someone myself, one of the guests was like, it was Dixon. Dixon goes, "I didn't even know that I did that stuff. I didn't." You find things about someone that they didn't even know that was out there, right? So going the extra mile and making sure that your guest is the hero of the podcast is something that really, really will make it go really well. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I think that that helps you build on the podcast as well, because I think that one of the things I think that you are really, really good at is elevating the art form, as it were. So if people haven't listened to your show, you add in even before the show starts. You've got the montage that's like the show's happening, it's going to be great, and you add in lots of sound effects and you add in lots of great stuff throughout the show. And I think that that element that you're talking about, that adding in that extra element of research and really hosting the show, really guiding that can really take it to a next level. What other things do you try to bring to really make it feel like a podcast experience? Not just like, oh, you're just listening to a podcast, but this is an experience. Paul Andre De Vera: Yes, definitely. Because right nowadays, we started the podcast, I started this remotely. And a lot of podcasts started by just going on a Zoom and now eventually started in... sometimes... before we were all stuck at home, people actually in person. There was mics in front of each other and you guys that was a podcast and you would actually record in studio. And now that everyone's going back into these elaborate studios and stuff like that, it's time to up level your game if you're going to do some video podcasts. So this is where you come in on upping your production value, whether it's either... obviously Podcast, you need great sound, you need a great mic. You were talking earlier today, let me get closer to my mic because you know the value of how the quality of the sound is, especially in podcasts, that's something can actually even extend out into video because you can watch a pixelated video and have clear sound. You still get value from it. But if you have muffled sound and clear video, you just watch people doing charades or something. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that it's something that can really tell people that you care, that they're taking the time to listen to your podcast. And in terms of the guests and the quality of the experience, it can help you to get better guests. It can help you to get better segments. Have you found that in your experience? Paul Andre De Vera: Oh, yes, yes. When I first started, it was tough getting guests. Getting guests... I got this question all the time, "how do you get your guests on your podcast?" So at first, of course, I connected to my actual network, going out to LinkedIn. People I've actually worked with in the past, SEOs and CEOs of companies that I've actually worked with and being able to tap them first, right? I'll tell you this, I did get rejected when I first started. You'll get rejected. Maybe they took a look at it and we'll pass, we'll pass. But I'll tell you this, a year or two years later, ask them the same again. I didn't mention anything about it from the past. I'm like, Hey, I still would love... I would say something, "I would still love to have you." It's like, "oh, okay. Of course, totally fine. Totally get it." There's that rule where you don't just want, want, want, want. So sometimes you want give back. And now knowing that the production value's the number one thing that actually people will accept my invitations like, wow, you put so much work into it, they want to be a part of it. So that's something... Having that extra touch of production will get you over the top. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's totally true. And I think also that not expecting to set the world on fire in the first couple of episodes I think is really important for expectations. I think there's a lot of people who sort of start a podcast and then it kind of fades away. This first little while can sometimes be tricky to get through. What is the thing that helps you to push through? What would you say to someone who's on the fence as to whether or not this is a good ROI for their investment either as a team or as an individual? Paul Andre De Vera: The best ROI is you're actually investing in yourself by doing this yourself. Obviously there's going to be the whole personal brand aspect and you developing your own personal brand can also uplift a company's brand. But at the same time when you're podcasting, even just for companies, you're really, really having another channel, an avenue where you can actually reach out to. This is something that when they now come on to clients, I'm like, Hey, have you ever thought about podcasting? If it's not something they're doing. Because I'll tell you this, there is some relation when it comes to SEO, right? I mean, you can get your show notes that you can add into that gets ranking. You can distribute your podcast through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, iHeartRadio, and then you get your show notes on there, you get back links back to your site. So there's some SEO value when it comes to podcasting, but at the same time... So that's one value you can prove like, hey, you want to help boost our rankings, let's start on podcasts. But at the same time, you're creating content. Content is currency nowadays. This is something that you want to have. And that's why I also mentioned to you like, Hey, when you're doing recordings like this, I feel like you add the extra layer of video. That video is going to help you repurpose the audio and repurpose the visuals. And again, you can do more cool things in your production, like how I do all the little magic effects on screen, you heard the little chime, but for those who are listening can see on screen, there was a little graphic that went overlay. So adding the extra touch, again, will help you up level your podcast. And then when it comes to ROI, it's like, again, I do see it more as more brand awareness and just being able to get out there. But there's also, when it comes to podcasts and video in particular, you can really, really have a call to action towards the end. And these podcasts where if you're an affiliate marketer, I put affiliate links in these show notes, and I've actually gotten income from that. That's something I actually didn't think, but hey, it's another avenue to include your affiliate links if you're promoting something. And that was another great source of income through podcasting. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think so. And I think that for businesses who are... because there are a lot of branded podcasts, and this is something that you see across, we are a Wix podcast. We are a podcast for Wix, for instance. HubSpot has a whole podcast network. There are lots of brands who are putting a lot of emphasis and a lot of interest in podcasts. And I think that one of the reasons why they're doing that is for the brand visibility. And I think also for the flexibility. What we find certainly is that we are able to talk about topics that are maybe brand new topics that we're sort of exploring. And we find that that's a really interesting way and that people really engage with those new topics. That this is a sort of cutting edge topic. We're still exploring what it is, and we're having a discussion about it. And the expectation is that it's a discussion rather than necessarily, I know every single thing that there is to know about that. And I think that big brands are investing in these things for a lot of reasons. Are you finding that you're seeing more brands interested in getting involved with podcasts in your experience? Paul Andre De Vera: Oh, yes. Definitely seeing more interest. And if not, I'm the one that's going to bring it up to them. So I'm working with a company, I'm like, Hey, hey, I was able to build a brand, a huge brand that gets tons of sponsorships within just a few years. So this is something where you can really, really develop another asset for your company. If that asset's not just building your brand. You have another source of income where depending on the type of business model you have, your podcast can get sponsors and ads from your Google AdSense, whether it's you post on YouTube. And I really, really feel like, I haven't even looked into this, but I know there's podcasting agencies out there that you can actually get into actually more of the audio type of podcast and get advertising in there. And hopefully... And I feel like the ROI in there is pretty good because you know why? I feel the podcasters are authentic. We are two people. We know we are having a conversation. What we're talking about is about our experiences, and it really makes us have that authority within our space of what we're talking about right now. Both of us, we both run... both podcasters. Like you right now, you're running the Wix podcast. I'm here running my own podcast, and we're talking about podcasting… Crystal Carter: Right! Paul Andre De Vera: It's two really experts of what we're doing and we're sharing our experience. There's so much value in that. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. And I think it's a super accessible thing as well, because anyone with ears, or whatever can listen to a podcast. And also there's audio transcripts as well for folks who are hearing impaired as well. So there's lots of ways that you can engage in, and I actually very often read podcast transcripts myself. I don't know that there's many other people like me, but I very often I look at podcasts that way and I find it super valuable. It's also a great place for quotes. So a lot of people talk about EEAT and that sort of thing, and I think that we had an episode about experts, and I think that around brand experts, subject matter experts, for instance, it can sometimes be difficult to get subject matter experts to write all what they're talking about, but podcasts are a much easier ask for those kinds of folks. Have you found that in your travels? Paul Andre De Vera: Yes, yes. I feel the entry into podcasting. Just getting people to talk is so much easier If you're coming on something like this, instead of me having a thought leader write something down, take exactly what I said, make a thought leadership piece out of it. This is something that we also do with... I'm seeing a lot with companies creating customer case studies as a podcast. They're bringing customers in, and I'm working with a company right now where I'm helping edit their podcast by them just having a conversation with one of their customers, and then I'm repurposing it into... well, there's little vertical shorts or an actual clip of the whole podcast, but then again, we're doing video just again, I'm going to keep pushing this. Do video when you're doing podcasting because there's so much more that you can repurpose, right? There's just that extra layer they can add. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. I've not heard this case study example, but I think that's a really great trend. I think people are getting really creative with it as well. And I think interviews are a classic podcast format, but one of the other things I've seen is the people are doing sort of long reads. So for articles that are really, really long for... you start to see the author reading it and then they put it online as a podcast, and it's really engaging actually. It's really, really engaging. It's like a mini audiobook almost, which I find really interesting. Paul Andre De Vera: I love that. I love that. It kind of goes back to something what I'm doing here as well. I do have a podcast, so I do have the video podcast and the SEO Video Show, which I kind of like promoting more as a show, but I do have the Knowledge Bomb Podcast, right? The SEO Knowledge Bomb Podcast. And this is where it's not a complete copy of what I'm doing. I'm pretty much extracting all the knowledge bombs from one of my shows and then reading it out on a podcast with my voice and it becomes a five-minute podcast saying, Hey, SEO Knowledge Bombs of the Week. It's five minute audio clip of me kind of just summing up of what the knowledge bombs were dropped from my past guests from the previous week. So again, you can really create a podcast out of what you're already doing now. Say, if you want to get inventive, look and see what you're doing now. If you are writing blogs like we mentioned, take your blogs, maybe extract that and read it out and just talk to an audience so people just can hear your voice. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think there's a lot of experimentation that people can do, and I think it's a really interesting landscape. What do you think the future holds for podcasts in the next year or so? Paul Andre De Vera: For the next year, again, I want to see more video podcasts. Like I said, I'm going to keep repeating it. I feel like right now you can already see the transition from say something like Spotify now I'm doing some video on there. So these directories are going to... I want to imagine once we see Apple Podcasts, those becoming starting showing videos. And I feel that that's the direction going there as well. But again, podcasting is something, is an easy way to just get into a channel of being able to show off your knowledge and your expertise and be able to reach out to other people. I started my podcast because I was stuck at home and everyone was stuck at home. I was like, I want to network. This is my way of networking and going out to just talk to people, smart people, and learn from them. That's how you were able to just learn by just talking to people, smart people, smart people like you, Crystal. Crystal Carter: No, you are smart. Paul Andre De Vera: You're smart. Crystal Carter: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It is always, always, always a pleasure, and I hope to see you soon at the next SEO conference. Thank you so much for your time today, Paul, and yeah, thanks for joining us. Paul Andre De Vera: Of course. Of course. Thank you Crystal, and thank you Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: That was super, super insightful chat Crystal. He has so much personality. And again, you see it come through and it builds his own brand, his personal brand, without him even having to say more than 10 words. Crystal Carter: It's something that he really, really utilizes really, really well with his channel. So it works really well for his YouTube channel. It works really well for the podcast. Dre's super nice when you meet him in person as well. And also, also, also, Dre is incredibly smart. Dre has a lot of fun with his podcast and stuff, and he has a lot of fun with his show, but I've been on discussions with him where he gets into some of the more technical stuff that he does, and my guy is incredibly astute at Enterprise SEO, and it is an absolute pleasure to hear him speak on that because he's proper nerd levels of really, really right in the weeds in that and so impressive. And I think that people underestimate the ability to be charismatic in certain spaces and assume that just because you're charismatic in one space that you're not necessarily a complete nerd in another space. Dre is absolutely one of those people. He really, really knows his stuff, and it's great to speak to him. Mordy Oberstein: He's one of my favorites. I am looking forward to seeing him again at some SEO conference in the near future. He was at Brighton San Diego last year. I'm like, "oh, I didn't know he was coming. I wish I would've been able to spend more time with him 'cause he's so sweet." Speaking of another sweet person, we're going to have a little chat with Andi Jarvis about- Crystal Carter: I don't know that anyone's ever called Andi sweet. Mordy Oberstein: Well, I'm saying... Well, I'm not saying that because he's actually sweet. I'm saying that purely for the sake of the transition. Crystal Carter: Which is an important thing that you must master as a podcaster. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. It's like the kung fu of podcasting, the transition. Crystal Carter: Wax on, wax off transition. Mordy Oberstein: Paint the fence transition. So Andi, I apologize for calling you sweet, but we're going to talk with Andi now. Okay, so the podcast game isn't what it used to be, which reminds me of baseball. I always do this. I'm always going to give a baseball reference. So back in the day, you didn't need to be super athletic to be a baseball player. Have you ever seen Babe Ruth? They just showed up after eating an all you can eat buffet down the block. Crystal Carter: Smoking cigarettes in the dugout. Mordy Oberstein: Smoking cigar... Literally, there is a picture of Keith Hernandez and the Mets smoking a cigarette in the dugout during a game like- Crystal Carter: Like spitting out tobacco in the kitchen. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I'm an athlete. Okay, that was the eighties, and I don't mean the 1880s, like the 1980s. Andi Jarvis: Listen, it was the same in football or soccer. There was a great Brazilian footballer called Socrates, one of the greatest Brazilians of all time. Goes under the radar 'cause he doesn't have a name, but an absolute genius of a football player. And footage exists of him in the early to mid-eighties, walking out at halftime after the halftime break, flicking a cigarette into the crowd and running onto the pitch. But this guy was just... he just ambled around the... he was amazing, but it just wouldn't happen these days. Mordy Oberstein: It's unbelievable, right? But now you're right. So now you can't. Now even the baseball players, they have weightlifting regimes. They do this and they have that, and they have set nap time now. Crystal Carter: They have GPS trackers to monitor their stress rating and what they were doing on the pitch and all that sort of stuff. Andi Jarvis: Can I bore you with a really quick story about why that happened as well? Mordy Oberstein: Surely. Andi Jarvis: Why it happened as well. It's all down to, you remember what? 20, maybe 25 years ago when baseball went on strike and there was a lockout for like a whole month. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, 1994, the Yankees would've won the World Series that year, by the way. So I'm pissed. Crystal Carter: But I mean, who's counting though? Mordy Oberstein: I am. Andi Jarvis: Yeah. Well, okay, so the lockout happened and baseball lost millions of fans. When it came back, TV ratings were through the floor, everything went to (beep), and it's never been proven. But the belief was that when the players came back, the executives of baseball clubs were like, look, we've got to have something to bring the crowds back. The crowds are through the floor, the TV floor. What happened after that lockout, if you remember, was the guy whose name I forget, suddenly went on a home run hitting streak, started hitting the ball- Mordy Oberstein: Mark McGwire. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Andi Jarvis: McGwire, right. And there was somebody else doing it as well. Mordy Oberstein: Sammy Sosa. Crystal Carter: Sammy Sosa. Andi Jarvis: Yeah, right. Okay. Now, I don't know if you remember looking at pictures of them pre-lockout and post-lockout, they got significantly bigger. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Andi Jarvis: And a number of guys in baseball had started juicing. Now, if you start taking steroids and start juicing, you don't just accidentally do that. And the belief was that it was, if not encouraged, the blind eye was turned by the baseball team- Mordy Oberstein: The blind eye was a million percent- Andi Jarvis: ... to allow the guys to bulk up because all they wanted was you start banging the ball out of the stadium and home runs happen, people start coming. But on the back of that, people started realizing maybe we better do it legally, but if I'm bigger and fitter, I can hit the ball further. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Andi Jarvis: Oh, and I can throw it further. Oh, okay. So it all spun out the back of that where they realized maybe if you are an athlete, it would help. Just don't do drugs. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Yeah. See, by way, I had a Barry Bonds card and a Sammy Sosa before they did steroids, they don't even look like the same person. By the way, in case you haven't noticed, we have a guest here with us. His name is Andi Jarvis, and that's why like baseball, we're going into the great beyond of the nature of podcasting nowadays. Andi, what's going on, man? Welcome to the show. Andi Jarvis: Thank you for having me I hope and thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: I'm just first off flattered that you regaled us with a baseball story and you're not even American. Andi Jarvis: It's my one and only baseball story. I'm sat here in a Canadian, Toronto Raptors T-shirt. I don't even know what sport that is. I've just got family there, so- Crystal Carter: It's basketball. Mordy Oberstein: It used to be basketball. Now it's just crap. But yeah. Crystal Carter: Also in this podcast about podcasting, can I just say that one of the first rules of podcasts is to not stay on topic. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Speaking of not staying on topic, Andi, what are you going to pitch us today? Andi Jarvis: Storytelling and the Strategy Sessions podcast and my marketing services. No, I'm not pitching all of that, but I'm here to talk podcasting coz I have a podcast which is called the Strategy Session. Crystal Carter: And you get some amazing guests on your podcast. I don't know how you convince these people to spend time with you. Mordy Oberstein: I really enjoy that episode that you did with that guest that you had, so-and-so. Crystal Carter: You get some great folks on your podcast. Andi Jarvis: All of them. So weirdly, this is the one thing if you're doing a guest podcast, which you don't have to do, but I find it easy 'cause you talk and you spark off somebody. But people are like, "how'd you get those guests?" I'm like, "genuinely, most of the time I just ask them." "What do you ask them?" I'm like, "will you come on my podcast and we'll talk about these things?" And you'd be amazed how many people go, "okay." Now some people have questions like, who else has done it and what's the commitment and how does it... Not everybody says yes, but I would say 50% of the people I ask say yes. And then once you get some good guests coming on, that can snowball, because the ones who do ask and go, "who else has been on?" You go, "oh, Rory Sutherland, Mark Ritson and Seth Godin." And they're like, "oh, right, okay." Now that's not- Mordy Oberstein: And you're rolling . Andi Jarvis: Yeah, and look, I named celebrities in the marketing industry there, but they're probably 15% of the episodes. And yes, they get bigger listening figures, but I don't want to turn it into kind of a celebrity led podcast, that it's more of an interesting stories about marketing podcast and lessons you can learn. But yeah, those people undoubtedly just help. Definitely. Crystal Carter: But I think that's one of the really interesting things about a podcast is it's a really good opportunity to connect with folks that you might not connect with in another way. So like you said, you've got people like Mark Ritson, you've got people like Seth Godin, Britney Muller, I love Britney. But then you also have people who are up and coming in their careers, people who have a good following, but maybe it's more niche. And so as well as you say, you ask them, how do you find them? Is there a particular criteria that you're looking for that makes you think this person's going to be great for a podcast? Andi Jarvis: Yes. So a lot of the time... I read a lot about marketing, so I sometimes just, I'll read something in Marketing Week, or if I see some awards that look rigorous, 'cause let's be honest, not every awards are rigorous. So if I see some awards that look rigorous, I'll be... sometimes if I've got half an hour, I'm sat at an airport, I'll have a look through who's shortlisted, not necessarily worried about who's won, but who's shortlisted and who's done something that I find really interesting. So sometimes that, look, the big budget thing won, but somebody did this thing that was really interesting and scrappy that nobody else considered. Yeah, that's it. And then just send them a message. LinkedIn's great. Or find their email or just like, Hey, I see you did this thing. Would you be interested in coming on the podcast? Here's a link to the show. Genuinely, we just want to sit and have a chat. And so I do a lot of background research to try and find the right guests. And yeah, that's it really. Mordy Oberstein: Not rocket science, but it's hard work. Andi Jarvis: Yeah, look, it takes time, and I think I pride myself in making things look and seem a little bit off the cuff, and it's all kind of laid back and relaxed, and it's not structured, and that's part of it. But you have to plan to be not structured and you have to put the effort in to find the guest. And some guests are really happy to just go, yeah, look, we're talking about this thing that I know a lot about. Just ask whatever. Other guests are a bit more nervous, and they're like, can you send me the questions? Now, I don't do that because you can always tell a podcast to me when someone's been sent the questions or when... you'll hear them say... you'll ask someone a question, they'll give this amazing answer and the host will go, oh, that's really interesting. Anyway, so next question, but follow up. They've just told you about this huge thing that they did. They won a gold medal for something or other, and you're like, that's really interesting. So tell us about your childhood. No, tell us about the thing they've just said. So I work with the guests. Some guests need a little bit more work than others. Some are just like, yeah, just shoot me a time and we'll do it. Crystal Carter: Can you tell us a little bit about your journey for podcasting? So did you have to learn that skill and is it different now from when you started? Andi Jarvis: It's a bit less chaotic now, I would say. I started in 2020 peak lockdown May 2020, and didn't know what I was doing. What I knew was I knew how to talk to people. I knew how to ask questions I found interesting about marketing. So if you think about this, I work on my own anyway. I was then forced on my own or away from all of the marketers because of COVID lockdown, and it just felt quite isolating. But also, I like to learn and I go to conferences to learn and I talk to people to learn, and I just wasn't getting it from virtual events. But talking to people was really interesting. So I was like, right, a podcast is the way to go. But I was just kind of making it up as I was going along. And there was different segments to the show edited together because one of the things was I had a bit more time, so I wanted to learn how to edit. I was like, right, well, I'm going to learn how to edit different bits into the show. I'm going to have a different guest. I'm going to have different sections, I'm going to do... And what you realize as the world started to reopen again is that that's just a real (beep) ton of work as well. So I streamlined it a little bit and now it's just an interview, minimal editing and get that out. But in terms of the format, and it's still me interviewing someone for 45 minutes to an hour depending on who the guest is, really. Mordy Oberstein: Looking back, it was like three, four years ago already, the pandemic. Do you feel like the ecosystem that you started off in and where you are now, it's a different world for your podcast? The world changed around you kind of thing? Andi Jarvis: Absolutely. And I think the main driver of that is just the changing listening habits. So back in 2020, any idiot with a microphone, I, started a podcast. A lot of those, let's be honest, a lot of people who start a podcast and a lot of you listening go, I'm going to start a podcast about this thing. If you get five episodes in, you've done really, really well and you're miles in front of most people who start a podcast and do one episode. I feel lucky that I started during lockdown because I committed to doing... and I went out publicly and I said on LinkedIn, and I said, on social, 26 episodes, one every two weeks, I'm going to do it for a year. And there's times where it felt like a little bit of a millstone. I'm like, oh God, what have I done? But you get into the rhythm of just making sure you deliver it and you did. And that kind of got me up and running. So what's changed though since then is as radio listening figures have changed and as media habits have changed, the media group certainly in the UK have realized the value of podcasting. So Spotify weren't paying people millions to do podcasts. They were just hosting podcasts. In fact, I don't even think Spotify were hosting podcasts when I started. They bought Anchor, and that's how they do their hosting. If you look at the top charts in the UK now, it's all the same company. So radio stations have podcasts now. So every celebrity, it's an extension of the radio's brand, and all they're interested in is keeping the audience so they can sell advertising or in the BBC's case, just keeping their audience. So it's a different world. And what that means for an amateur bedroom podcaster is that you've got to pay a lot of attention to production values. People would just like, it's a podcast, it's just a guy on his own. If the sound quality went a bit wobbly or your mic starts to kick up, it didn't really matter. But now people are like, every podcast you listen to has professional level audio. So if you are not delivering something similar, people are just like, "this is awful." And just turn off. So you've really got to pay attention to the stuff that you never really bothered with before and get into that side of it a bit more. But look, I still enjoy it and mine's still entirely self-produced 'cause I enjoy that bit of it. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, that point on the radio station, so for example, I listen to a sports podcast every day, it's ESPN's New York Radio Station, one of their shows, they're just repurposing it for podcast form and they lose out to the other New York's radio station in the actual ratings, but they beat them out on the podcast numbers, and the podcast numbers are so significant. They pour a ton of production effort into the podcast, whereas the other radio station completely ignores the podcast. So if you don't think to your point that big players are paying attention to their podcasts, they 100% most definitely are because another channel for them to beat other competitors. Andi Jarvis: Absolutely. And you look at the other thing as well is that celebrities have decided that podcasting now is an extension of their social brand. Now, whether this is what I would call pointless celebrities who are famous for being famous, I'm not a fan of that (beep), or whether it's movie stars or actors or sports people or politicians or whatever, they've realized that declining social audiences and organic reach is a problem. But if you build an audience in a podcast, you have this deeper longer conversation with them. So people are like, "who do you want to hear talking about marketing?" "Andi Jarvis." "Who's that guy? I've never heard of him." Or some idiot who used to do social media because they were on a TV program. Oh, they must know what they're talking about. Not that mine's a social media podcast, but if you want to do a social media podcast, there's probably some idiot who's been on a TV show doing a social media podcast, and you're like, what are you going to learn from them? They literally had 8 million people watching them for 15 nights. That's why they've got a big social media following, not going to help your small business mate. It really isn't. Crystal Carter: When I talk to people who are running smaller podcasts who aren't Joe Rogan, not that I'm chatting to Joe, but people who are running smaller podcasts, they say that their expectations are different. So think the expected outcomes that they plan to get, the ROI that they plan to get from the podcasts are different. Would you agree with that? Would you agree that maybe it's not about getting a million listeners? Andi Jarvis: Yeah, and look, let's be honest, anyone who tells you they don't want a million listeners is lying. Crystal Carter: Right. Okay, I'll take it. Andi Jarvis: But a win is not a million listeners. And I can tell you the top performing, so "performing" in air quotes episodes of my podcast, they're the ones with the celebrity guests on, the Seth Godins, Rory Sutherlands, Mark Ritsons. They are the top three. Yeah, they're the top three. Now, I can also tell you, and that's success apparently, but I podcast because I run a small business. Success to me is my business keeping going and winning more business. I don't think I've ever landed any business because of either any of those episodes. Now, I can point you to many other episodes where people have reached out and got in touch, and went, "I heard you speak to this person. Can we talk about this thing that you talked about?" So the listener figures aren't there, but the money in my bank account tells me they are there. So it's about what is success and being hyper clear on that. But one thing I would say is that there's a real fine line, and there are lots and lots of podcasts in marketing, and I've never bothered to count them, but I was going to say bajillions of podcasts in marketing that are set up by consultants and agencies that are sales podcasts. That are, oh, hi. Who are my ideal clients? Mordy and Crystal, how do I get in front of them? Let's invite them on a podcast. And then they sit on that podcast and sell to them. Let me tell you Crystal about this amazing thing I once did that sort of is right in your sector. And when you're listening to them, you can feel the pitch. And it's like, now, I would say to anyone, I think, I don't how many episodes I've got, I must be nearly 70 episodes now in total, because every season we start the numbering. Must be at 70 episodes now. And if you can hear me sell more than... Sorry, I've sold like I'm going to conferences or I'm doing this event, which unashamedly sell that, but if you listen to me interviewing a guest, point to somewhere you can hear me selling to that person. I don't have people on who I want to sell to. And this to me is top of funnel awareness and getting me out there and having people going, Eximo Marketing, Andi Jarvis, this guy knows his stuff, he understands this thing. That's what this is doing. It's not bottom of the funnel sales. Mordy Oberstein: I always feel that a podcast is really, outside of maybe the Joe Rogans of the world, it's a brand play. Andi Jarvis: Yeah, a hundred percent. Mordy Oberstein: It's a brand positioning play, you're having a constant conversation, you're reinforcing messaging, you're reinforcing that you're an expert, you're reinforcing this and that. It's not necessarily about the numbers, but people do really think it's about the numbers. I was saying before we record, I was at my kid's kindergarten graduation and some neighbor of mine said, "Hey, I heard you do a podcast. I want to get in and do a podcast 'cause I heard it's really easy to get in and do a podcast." I'm like, "yeah, it's pretty easy to do a podcast. You need basically some kind of recorder and you need a voice and you need to talk and you need to record that voice. And then you put it out there, SoundCloud or whatever you want to put it, fine, really easy. But it's not as easy as you think it is to get traction now because it's so saturated. Unless you're talking about some random, random topic, there's so many people doing the same thing that you're doing. You need to find an angle to differentiate yourself." Like this Break the Fourth Wall, this podcast, how do we differentiate this podcast? One is we started doing segments. Most SEO podcasts don't really do segments, and we also pitched it in a way or not pitched it. We positioned it in a way where, hey, if you're really advanced in SEO, you've been doing SEO for a long time, you'll get X value out of it. And if you are looking to break into the SEO world or digital marketing world, you also get y value out of it at the same time. And that's unique. That's a really cool way of positioning a podcast. You need to find some kind of angle because at the end of the day, if it's a branding play, if you don't position it in a unique way, you've lost the value of it. Andi Jarvis: Absolutely. And I think one of the things with that positioning is if I look back early on, it was too broad, but I didn't know what I was doing. I was just making it up. And the next series, series five, which will start in September, will probably be the most narrowly focused of the episodes in the series of them. Not every single episode, because there's a few that I have academics on as well 'cause I think there's a lot you can learn from academics, and so I probably won't be trying to get really niche with them. I actually want to explore the breadth of what they talk about. But one of the key things is maybe narrowing the focus of what we talk about and going a bit deeper on some of the episodes 'cause I think that that's right, is that it goes back to this concept of you needing a hundred fans or whatever it is. I can't remember, is it a thousand fans or a hundred fans, whatever. But if you are niche enough and talking about the right stuff, you don't need a million people listening to it. In fact, you've probably failed if you get a million people listening to it because you are mass market at that point. What you really want is a hundred or 500 or a thousand people who are here to hear what you have to say because they are in that particular sector. That's what you really need to get to. So if you are just talking to the right people, talk to your audience, understand your customers. Marketing basics, who are you talking and why do they care? And make a podcast about that, then you don't need to worry about the listening numbers. You just need to keep delivering that value and delivering that content. Crystal Carter: There's a couple of things that strike me from what you've just said. First of all, you were saying, oh, I'm talking to academics. I find them really interesting. You're like, I read a lot of marketing books, and you've got a lot of authors on your section. You're like, oh, I really want to drill down one of the things that I've read when somebody was like, how should you start a podcast? Or, which topic should you think about? And one of the things, I can't remember where I read it, I wish I could reference it, I'm sorry. But they said that. If it's not a topic that you could talk about a hundred times, like a hundred episodes, then it's probably not a good topic for you. So I know, Andi, that you are a marketing nerd because I know, I've seen your bookshelf, I'm sure behind you is full of all the marketing books. Andi Jarvis: Oh, yeah, I'm a bore. You say nerd, I'm a bore, right? I am. I'm boring in public. Crystal Carter: And I think that that's awesome. I think we get people on the podcast like yourself, other folks where I'm just like, I'm so excited. I cannot believe we got this guest to join us to talk about whatever the topic is. We have people on the podcast to talk about stuff that we wish we knew more about. And it's an incredible opportunity, an incredible privilege to be able to speak to them about that topic. And I think that that is another piece of value that you can add to your listening audience. If they're a niche audience and they're with you and they've been with you for that time, you can also help them to learn about this new thing. You can also help them explore that. You can also go on that journey. And in terms of long tail keywords, it's another great way to explore a long tail topic, like a really niche topic like you were saying, drilling down. It's a really good opportunity for that. Andi Jarvis: When I was 11 years old in school, one of my teachers, Mrs. Colling, what she was called, had a sign on her door, which she used to point to a lot. It said something like, "it's better to remain silent and be thought of a fool than to open your mouth and to remove all doubt." Now to someone who never shut up, she used to point, she'd be like, "Andrew." The reason I bring that up is that, the point you make about can you talk about it for a hundred episodes. If you are not an expert in something, you can probably bluff your way through a blog by reading enough blogs and copying the best bits and rewriting it with a little bit of your tone of voice. Not saying that's how all travel blogs are written, but you've not been to all those places you're writing about. But you can kind of do that. If you have to talk for 30 minutes on a subject and you don't know that subject, you will quite quickly have opened your mouth and be found to be a fool. And if you want to release 10 episodes about that subject, that's 300 minutes. That's five hours of talking about a subject. Can you do that? Now, I would say if someone gave me a microphone and went, listen, we just need to fill this 10 hours of silence. Can you talk about one subject? It would either be boring sports stories or marketing. Either of those two things I could probably talk about at length for about 10 days without stopping. I might even take breath- Mordy Oberstein: And we've covered both of them? Andi Jarvis: ... every now and again. Yeah, listen, I could put both of those two things together. I really could. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great podcast right there, by the way. Crystal Carter: You're speaking Mordy's language here. Could I just say. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Boring sports stories and marketing with Andi Jarvis? Andi Jarvis: Yeah. Like that baseball story I told at the beginning. Now that means the editor has to leave it in on lobby. A boring story I told at the beginning, I love stuff like that. And I could fill time forever, but marketing, people are like, oh, I'm sorry we didn't have time to prepare for this. I was like, I've been preparing my whole life for this. You need me to talk about marketing, pass me that microphone. I am your guy. So have a passion for it and have a knowledge about it. The only caveat to that I would say is if you're going to do something out of passion, so say you, I don't know, you love Crocs or you love, it might be theater, it might be musicals, it might be Taylor Swift, whatever. If you're doing it out of passion, I think the passion carries you, not necessarily the knowledge. But if you're doing it for business, you have to show you're an expert in that field 'cause if you don't show you're an expert in that field, you're going to harm your brand. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of your brand as time ebbs away on us, where can people find your brand and yourself? Andi Jarvis: Yeah, great segue, Mordy. Great segue. So, Andi Jarvis. I spell Andi with an I. so if you just put my name into Google, I appear everywhere. LinkedIn and Instagram and Threads are the places to find me. Unfortunately, I now stay away from Twitter since the Lunatic took over the asylum and don't really use it anymore. But yeah, so you find me. The company's called Eximo Marketing, E-X-I-M-O. So have a look for either of those and you'll find me. I'm also sure there's a link to the Strategy Sessions in the show notes. Is that correct? Mordy Oberstein: Heck yes. Andi Jarvis: Have a listen. I would say, if I can pitch this, so last year for the first time, so season four, I decided to do two mini seasons within the season. I did a Black History Month mini season, which in the UK is October, not February, and I did a Women's History Month, which is built around International Women's Day, so I did that as well. So I did, there was five Tuesdays in October, so I did five episodes with five guests and I did four for Women's History Month. I'm really proud of those miniseries. I'm proud of those nine episodes. They took us into slightly different conversations about different things. Now, I didn't just talk to black marketers about being black. They were just great at what they did and they happened to be black. That's the way the conversations went. But some of those episodes in those two miniseries are my favorites. You can't pick a favorite podcast, right? 'Cause It's like picking your favorite child, but some of those episodes are some of my top three, top five ever that I recorded and just really insightful deep conversations with really, really interesting people. People who I probably wouldn't have met before, some of them you might never have heard of either. If you're just thinking, where do I start listening to this Idiot's podcast? I would go back start of the Black History Month miniseries, started with an episode with a woman called Sherice Anibaba and you could probably see if you watch the video of me just sitting there going and just blown away by every word she says, I'm just hanging on it. Genuinely, she's genuinely amazing, so just start there. If you're going to start somewhere. I know you'll probably start with Seth Gordon, right? But if you're going to start somewhere, I'd got Black History. Mordy Oberstein: I like that by the way, not just a page, but where to start. That's unique. Andi Jarvis: I mean, you can go back to episode one if you like. It might take you, see if you're awake 12 hours a day, I give you ... you a whole week of your entire life doing nothing else other than listening to me on a podcast, which don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: Podcast listening tip, never start with episode one. It's usually those first few episodes. You got to really work out the kinks. I would start at episode 20 or whatever it is. Andi Jarvis: Yeah, definitely. Mordy Oberstein: Well, thanks Andi. Thanks for coming on and Crystal Carter: Thank you so much for joining us. Andi Jarvis: Thank you for having me. It's been a ride as always and lovely to see you both. Mordy Oberstein: Talk to you soon. From one sweet person to another sweet person to Barry, it's time for us to delve into the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Starting off with not news from Barry Schwartz, but from Anu Adegbola over on Search Engine Land, running about, Perplexity launches ad revenue sharing program for publishers. If you might recall, Perplexity got into a little bit of a snafu with various publishers about their content or about the publisher's content being shown in Perplexity without any real attribution and basically saying, "Hey, you took our content you just posted as your own and that's not cool." This seems like it might be atonement for that. There's a new pilot program where if you select publishers like Time, Der Spiegel and Fortune are included, that when their URLs appear within a Perplexity search and there's an ad on that search as well, those publishers will get some of the ad revenue from that ad. Doesn't seem like there's a ton of details about how exactly the program works and what the exact figures are and who exactly is in there. Also, the initial partners. And if this will expand or not expand. But it is really interesting 'cause I guess it's kind of the first real revenue sharing program we've seen, definitely on these AI search engine things, but across the board. There's no revenue sharing program with Google, for example, which I guess is a sore point for publishers, but that's a whole different topic for a whole different podcast. Anyway, on to Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Round Table. This was an interesting one, Barry writes, "Google 'hidden gem stores' search feature." What about it Barry? What Barry is saying is Google's testing a hidden gem store search feature that was spotted by Brody Clark where he was searching for sneakers and there was a little section on the mobile search for Hidden Gem stores, which is not, by the way, part of the Hidden Gems algorithm thing. That's a totally different thing. If you're not familiar with that, you don't need to know about that right now. If you are, just know this is not that. It was basically a little section on the mobile surface that says, Hey, hidden Gem Stores, which seems to imply these might be more niche stores or maybe local stores or whatever where you can buy said sneakers. In this case, it was New Balance, On and Running Warehouse US and Zappos, which are not really hidden gems. I mean, I've heard of New Balance before. And I’ve heard of Zappos before. On, I've heard of them too. Those are nice shoes. It's a really, really cool feature, if Google can refine this and actually get some hidden Gem stores in there. It's just a test, so who knows what it'll be, but if Google can do that or they can get the smaller niche stores in there, that'd be awesome. Okay. Also, from Barry Schwartz, also from Search Engine Roundtable. Google Search ranking volatility bursting at the seams. Barry getting real emotional with the headlines there. There's been an enormous amount of rank volatility being picked up by the various SEO weather tools for a good while now, I don't know, a good over a week, I'm going to say no more than a week, I don't know, 10 days. By the time you listen to this, it might be a full two weeks of high volatility. There's speculation, the speculation coming from me. I'm speculating that this is the storm before the other storm, so Google's Danny Sullivan said relatively recently that there's a core update coming soon, which we don't know what soon means. We covered this in the news a couple of weeks ago. Soon can mean tomorrow, soon can mean three weeks from now, soon can be a month from now. Who knows when soon actually is? But there is a tendency when Google, before Google releases a core algorithm update, two or three weeks before there's generally a period of intense ring volatility. I personally think combining the ring volatility we're seeing here and Danny's statement that maybe this is that ring volatility before the update, which would mean most likely if I'm right, which who knows if I am or not, after this set of ring volatility is completed, figured there's going to be a core algorithm update two or three weeks afterwards on its new our daily new series, which you can find over on the SEO hub and on Barry Schwartz's RustyBrick YouTube channel, Barry, Greg Finn and I have a pool on when Google will launch the next core update. I think I have August 17th, Barry has August 6th and Greg has August 12th. Share your date for when you think Google is going to release a core update 'cause that's fun. I guess one way of dealing with anxiety. Anyway, that's this week's Snappy News. Okay. That's not to say Barry's not sweet 'cause the truth is he's one of the sweetest people you'll ever meet, even though he does not, again, does not want you to know this, but Barry is a very good sweet person. Crystal Carter: Barry's the best. Big shout-out to Barry. Mordy Oberstein: In my category of people who are sweet but don't want to be known as sweet. We've covered two edits that how many on this podcast already? Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. I know a lot of people who are nice and grumpy at the same time, which they're some of my favorite people. I used to know a shopkeeper and I would bother them all the time asking for boxes, asking if I could use their dolly because I needed to move something heavy and things like that, and they would always help me, but they were always grumpy about it. They were like, "yeah, it's in the back. Yeah, you're welcome." Mordy Oberstein: For the audio listener, I was pointing to myself the entire time. You know who is sweet and I don't think she would mind being called sweet would be Kristine Schachinger our follow of the week. Kristine is an SEO OG. Would be one for sure. But she's also a podcaster, she hosts the Webcology podcast. Wow. So much Podcasting and SEO. Barry also by the way, has technically a podcast. I should have mentioned that before. The video recaps that he does are also in podcast form, so technically Barry's also a podcaster. Crystal Carter: Everybody's at it. You got to get in there. Mordy Oberstein: Everyone's at it. But Kristine hosts the Webcology podcast. She's spoken at all the SEO conferences. She puts out a lot of great conversation and a lot of great insights about all things SEO over on X. Might it be on other social media platforms also? Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: But you should definitely give her a follow on X. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely, and she can get really, really technical. She's got some really great insights and she has a really, really actionable approach to dealing with algorithm updates that I find really interesting. I think there's a lot of theoretical discussions around algorithm updates, which are great, and I think it's interesting to hear from somebody from a more sort of, she takes a very tactical approach as well. I followed it, and it's really interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Very tactical. Yeah. I find her conversations really, really interesting and she is an absolute sweet person. Who we're looking forward to seeing at brightonSEO San Diego in November. So she's @-S-C-H-A-C-H-I-N on X. We'll link to it in the show notes. And it's hard to believe this, but I'm all out of words. I got nothing else to say. Crystal Carter: I don't believe that at all. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a lie because I got a million other things, but we eventually have to end the podcast at some point. Crystal Carter: Well, but we're just going to keep- Mordy Oberstein: Or not. Crystal Carter: ... we're just going to make another podcast. Mordy Oberstein: We can have an Infinite loop of podcasts that just goes on and on and on and on and on. Crystal Carter: This is the pod that never ends. It just goes on and on my friend. You know what I'm saying? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. We just started singing it, but everybody- Crystal Carter: Not knowing what it was. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And they'll continue singing it forever just because it's the pod that never... yeah, sorry. Mordy Oberstein: There's no greater possible way to end a podcast other than with us singing. It's like, it's like Sonny and Cher. Crystal Carter: Basically. That's exactly what people are thinking. People were like, oh, was that Sonny and Cher? No, no, it was Mordy Crystal. Oh, really? I'm so surprised. I'm so surprised. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to shave my beard and grow one of those seventies mustaches now. Crystal Carter: Yes, yes, totally. Mordy Oberstein: I should totally do that. Crystal Carter: Definitely worth doing. You could totally do the handlebar thing. Mordy Oberstein: I think I'd freak myself out. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode. No, we're back next week with a very special episode, our 100th episode. Look for it not just wherever you consume your podcasts, but look for in other special places. Check out our social media feeds to see where. Too much or not enough? Not enough. Look up Crystal and I on LinkedIn or X and see about the hundredth episode. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check out all the other great content and webinars on the Wix SEO learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify, please. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Paul Andre De Vera Andi Jarvis Kristine Schachinger Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App The SEO Video Show Paul Andre De Vera SEO Consulting Eximo Marketing The Strategy Sessions Podcast News: Perplexity launches ad revenue sharing program for publishers Google "Hidden Gem Stores" Search Feature Google Search Ranking Volatility Bursting At The Seams Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Paul Andre De Vera Andi Jarvis Kristine Schachinger Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App The SEO Video Show Paul Andre De Vera SEO Consulting Eximo Marketing The Strategy Sessions Podcast News: Perplexity launches ad revenue sharing program for publishers Google "Hidden Gem Stores" Search Feature Google Search Ranking Volatility Bursting At The Seams Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix and I'm joined by the very vocal, the audiable, the shout it out to the world and tell them what you think head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Like Beyonce says, "Tell everybody. Tell everybody." She says it a lot in that song, "Tell everybody." And like her partner says, "I got 99 problems, but a podcast ain't one." That's right. Mordy Oberstein: I thought you'd say, 99 problems, but talking a lot is not one. Crystal Carter: It's not one. It's definitely not one, like when I was at school. No, it was one of those personality tests. They do the Myers-Briggs tests and things, and they're like, "Crystal talks a lot." I'm like, "Like Kelsa Priess said, water is wet. This is not news." Mordy Oberstein: I took one on the computer and the computer started to fume. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: I'm joking. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. But where you can also use Wix Studio and the templates and the advanced design features to give your podcast a home that you can control across the web. As opposed to just using a podcast hosting platform, you should also have a website for your podcast. Anyway, today we're doing a podcast about podcasting for marketing growth with marketers who podcast. As we're pulling back the curtain on this very show by looking at what does and doesn't have to go into production for a podcast, how to manage the ins and outs of a podcast, how to use a podcast to gain market traction, and how to leverage your podcast for your and your client's brands. To show us that it ain't nothing but a podcast thing. Dre is in the house, the host of the SEO Show, Paul Andre De Vera will chat with Crystal in just a few moments. Plus we look at how the podcast landscape is changing with the one only Andi Jarvis. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following for more awesomeness on social media. So the next time someone tells you to "Shh and be quiet," you tell them "The world isn't a library, it's a podcast, and I'll talk about whatever I want to talk about whenever I want to talk about it," as we help you find your inner voice. No, not your inner voice, but your microphone voice on this, the 99th episode of the SERP's Up Podcast. It's our Wayne Gretzky episode, 99 or our Aaron Judge episode if you like baseball. Crystal Carter: Okay, that's fine. Also, I think I mentioned this when we chatted to Andi as well, but also Agent 99 from Get Smart. Mordy Oberstein: 99's a good number. Crystal Carter: It's good. It's good. 99 Red Balloons, the classic song. Mordy Oberstein: That's classic. Crystal Carter: Bump Ba dum bum bum bum, ba dum, bum bum. Mordy Oberstein: It also means we're one away from our 100th episode and we have a surprise for you for that. Crystal Carter: It's true, it's true. 100 is good innings in cricket because we couldn't cover all the sports, all the sports fall. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know, is there anything... I like bowling? Is anything with 99? No. Crystal Carter: No.- Mordy Oberstein: I was thinking like- Crystal Carter: ... Except for that's bad score. Mordy Oberstein: ... the perfect score is a hundred, but it's 300. Crystal Carter: Definitely 300. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: And to be honest, I'm a mediocre bowler. I'm very happy if I get three digits, if I'm completely honest. Mordy Oberstein: I'm a terrible bowler. Crystal Carter: My husband was never on a bowling team. I was in a bowling league with my mom and my sister, and my husband has never been in organized bowling of any kind, and yet he always beats me, which makes me upset because he's a non-bowler. It's not fair. It's not okay. Mordy Oberstein: I have a hard time. I think we talked about this at one point. The ball bothers me, it bothers my wrist. It just feels awkward in my hand for some reason. Crystal Carter: I always start off with a heavier one in the the first game, and then I go lighter for the next game and the game after that. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. You really plan out your bowling strategy. Crystal Carter: I get tie ties, I get tired and stuff. I tell you what though, my dad is an epic bowler. When I was a kid, he was my hero because he had, it was like 14 pounds or whatever, and when he would bowl, he would throw it halfway down the lane and then when it hit the pins, it was like, clack, clack, clack, clack. And I was like, this is awesome- Mordy Oberstein: You know you don't want the ball to spin, you want it to glide. And at the very end it's supposed to spin. I saw a video about this. Anyway, I don't know a lot about bowling, but I know a lot about podcasting. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: I've done a few podcasts in my day. Podcasting, before we get into Dre, I just want to say it is a phenomenal, phenomenal medium for you if you're thinking about doing a variety of different things with your business or your client's businesses, podcasting is fabulous. And I'm not saying that because I'm biased towards podcasting, which I am. First off, it's informal and connected, which I think works in today's ecosystem. Like this podcast in case you haven't figured it out, is not exactly a tuxedo. It's more like a baggy pair of jeans. We have a connection, we talk, we're informal, we're chit-chatting. It's a great way to connect in a real way with your audience and not in a very corporate way with your audience, which I think the world is leaning very much against that whole corporate kind of talk. Podcasting is great. You create actual relationships with your guests. There have been people who are my best friends at SEO that I met by doing podcasts and having them on a podcast. You make real connections. That first five minutes and last five minutes of an interview are connection gold. And it's fabulous for positioning yourself. Don't always, and we'll talk about this with Andi, don't always worry about the numbers. Podcasting is a great way to position yourself for getting more leads and getting more clients and whatnot. And it's also much easier to produce, which we'll get into with Dre than it is, I don't know, the ultimate guide to whatever, whatever, whatever, to try to get more traffic. It's just easier to produce. And here's the greatest part, it's repurposable. Audiograms, YouTube video. You can turn it into a blog post. And last but not least, the barrier to entry is higher than you think, but it's also not as high as you think at the same time. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that it's one of those things that with marketing, once you get going, it can become a lot more sort of second nature. I think Dre's been doing his podcast and his show for a long time. You've been podcasting for a very long time. And Andi talks about, it was tricky to get it going in the first instance, but now he's really, really gotten through it and he really goes through it regularly. And I think that it becomes a sort of part of your routine that you're going to connect with your audience and share whatever you're sharing. And I think that one of the other things that I think is great for audiences, and for people who are marketing and who are considering podcasts is that you can make sure that you are connecting with a particular audience at any time. So podcasting is something that can apply to lots of different audiences, whatever your vertical is. And I think that that's something that can be tricky for lots of different verticals. But if you were somebody who was really into pneumatic drills, you can make a podcast and people who are really into that would be really into it. If you were somebody who was really into epidemiology or something, you could do a podcast and then people would be interested in that as well. The numbers on podcasts are incredible across the board, and I think that, like you said, it's not always about numbers, but it is about showing a depth of knowledge. And one of the things that's really... and an interest in knowledge as well. So even if you're not a super, I don't know why I picked pneumatic drilling, but I think I've been thinking about that PN, that silent P in there. Anyway, but if you were interested in that particular topic, and let's say you were a noob, right? Let's say you were just getting started on your journey of becoming, I don't know, an engineer in that field or something, whatever it may be, you can connect with people who are further along in their journey to help you learn about what you're doing and to help your audience learn with you. So it's something where you can come at it from a source of truth and you can use that to both endear yourself to your audience, but also to demonstrate your expertise, whichever audience you're trying to apply to. And that's something that can be really rare. So if you were to start a TikTok channel on the same topic, you would probably have to test that audience and say, is this audience on TikTok? Et cetera, et cetera. But podcasts are something that cut across almost all aspects and almost all demographics. Mordy Oberstein: And it's super easy. It's a great way, as you're doing that to position yourself or your client the same way. Because if you're putting out a blog post or you're putting out whatever you're putting out on social media, sometimes it could be hard to let your brand personality come through. It's super easy on a podcast because your personality literally comes through and you can, by the way, that doesn't mean you have to be your actual self. You could be your podcast self on a podcast. I'm this way on this podcast. I can be very different on a different podcast. It's super easy and it's super visible and it's super transparent, or that's not even the word I'm looking for. I can't find the right word. But it's super distinct and it's super obvious, a way to position your brand, I'll say personality, just super upfront. You don't have to over time start creating a notion with our visual language. It comes out instantaneously. When you're podcasting. Crystal Carter: It can be really useful to connect with people in a way that is low-key. So one of the things that can happen sometimes is that if you're doing a talk and you say hi, I'm so-and-so, and I also host a podcast. So sometimes if you're presenting to people, if you're talking to people, if you're meeting people, then you might say, oh, I've got this blog, read my blog. And maybe people have time to read your blog, maybe they don't have time to read your blog or watch my videos, maybe they have time to do it, maybe they don't. If you say, download this free guide, think maybe they have time to do that, maybe they don't. However, if you say, oh, I've got a podcast, then maybe at some point when they've got 10 minutes while they're doing their working out or they're going for a walk or they're at the airport or whatever it may be, it's really, really low-key. They can sort of flip through and they can get an idea of who you are before they get involved with some of your other aspects of your business or your persona or whatever it may be. And it's something that can be really accessible for people in lots of different ways. And I think that for brands, that's something that is super important because you want to be able to have some access there. I think also from a technical point of view, particularly from an SEO point of view, podcasts have incredible distribution networks built in. So if you were thinking of from a brand point of view, when you have a podcast and if you were to search for the SERP's Up Podcast for instance on Google, and then you were to look at some of the places where the SERP's Up Podcast is, and if you were to leave a review, then you would be able to see that ours shows up on IMDB, it shows up on Google's things, it shows up on Apple, it shows up on Spotify, it shows up on Amazon, it shows up on lots of different things, and there are very few mediums that have that built in. It has a built-in distribution network that allows you to connect with lots of different folks both on the SERP and in the lots of other platforms as well. Mordy Oberstein: And the last thing that I'll say that it is because that's absolutely true, before we hand it over to you and Dre, it does something that brands should be doing more of by default, and that's putting the people who work at the brands out in front. So you're putting actual people that people can actually connect... I'll tell you a story where... I'm not going to say the company where it was, one company I used to work with, they were like, oh, I'm so glad you're there, because until... I had no idea anyone who worked there and I don't know who to connect to, who to ask questions to, who to chat about, whatever it was. Putting people out in front for your brand, again, especially in today's ecosystem, Lily Ray has put out a tweet about this a couple... By the time this comes out a couple of weeks ago, it's like, brands should do this more often. It's really effective, and she's somebody who does that for her brand. Putting people out there is a way for other people to connect with other people, while at the same time connecting with your brand. And by default, you're going to need somebody like myself and Crystal to host the podcast. So you by default need to put somebody at your company out there upfront for people to connect with. That's insanely powerful. With that, let's dive into how you actually go about podcasting, running it, what works, what doesn't work, what you should do, when you shouldn't do as Crystal talks with Dre. Crystal Carter: Oh, thank you so much for joining us. We are so honored to have you on the show. Mordy and I are both huge fans of everything you do online. Paul Andre De Vera: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Crystal. Thank you for having me on again. I mean, it was awesome having you as guests on my own podcast, right? Both you and Mordy were great guests dropping so many knowledge bombs. Great stuff. Crystal Carter: I'll be completely honest. You were like, "Do you want to do the podcast?" And I was like, "Absolutely. Just for the montage." If people aren't familiar with the SEO show and the podcast that Paul does, he does these amazing montages that make you look like the most amazing person. I'm like, "oh my gosh, I want to meet that person." I'm like, "oh, wait, no, that's me." And yeah, I think you have so much fun with your podcast, and I think it really, really shows. Paul Andre De Vera: That's the number one rule that I follow when it comes to podcasting and having guests, is making sure the guest feels like the hero, the superstar. That's how you get them to open up, feel comfortable, and be able to share knowledge that maybe they maybe scared to share. But one of the things that I love doing is when a lot of podcasters ask, "Hey, introduce yourself." I don't like doing that. You know why? Because that makes the guests kind of feel a little like, they kind of may be shy and scared in sharing some of their awards that they've won, and you as the outsider can do that research for them and make them... Sometimes when I introduce someone myself, one of the guests was like, it was Dixon. Dixon goes, "I didn't even know that I did that stuff. I didn't." You find things about someone that they didn't even know that was out there, right? So going the extra mile and making sure that your guest is the hero of the podcast is something that really, really will make it go really well. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I think that that helps you build on the podcast as well, because I think that one of the things I think that you are really, really good at is elevating the art form, as it were. So if people haven't listened to your show, you add in even before the show starts. You've got the montage that's like the show's happening, it's going to be great, and you add in lots of sound effects and you add in lots of great stuff throughout the show. And I think that that element that you're talking about, that adding in that extra element of research and really hosting the show, really guiding that can really take it to a next level. What other things do you try to bring to really make it feel like a podcast experience? Not just like, oh, you're just listening to a podcast, but this is an experience. Paul Andre De Vera: Yes, definitely. Because right nowadays, we started the podcast, I started this remotely. And a lot of podcasts started by just going on a Zoom and now eventually started in... sometimes... before we were all stuck at home, people actually in person. There was mics in front of each other and you guys that was a podcast and you would actually record in studio. And now that everyone's going back into these elaborate studios and stuff like that, it's time to up level your game if you're going to do some video podcasts. So this is where you come in on upping your production value, whether it's either... obviously Podcast, you need great sound, you need a great mic. You were talking earlier today, let me get closer to my mic because you know the value of how the quality of the sound is, especially in podcasts, that's something can actually even extend out into video because you can watch a pixelated video and have clear sound. You still get value from it. But if you have muffled sound and clear video, you just watch people doing charades or something. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that it's something that can really tell people that you care, that they're taking the time to listen to your podcast. And in terms of the guests and the quality of the experience, it can help you to get better guests. It can help you to get better segments. Have you found that in your experience? Paul Andre De Vera: Oh, yes, yes. When I first started, it was tough getting guests. Getting guests... I got this question all the time, "how do you get your guests on your podcast?" So at first, of course, I connected to my actual network, going out to LinkedIn. People I've actually worked with in the past, SEOs and CEOs of companies that I've actually worked with and being able to tap them first, right? I'll tell you this, I did get rejected when I first started. You'll get rejected. Maybe they took a look at it and we'll pass, we'll pass. But I'll tell you this, a year or two years later, ask them the same again. I didn't mention anything about it from the past. I'm like, Hey, I still would love... I would say something, "I would still love to have you." It's like, "oh, okay. Of course, totally fine. Totally get it." There's that rule where you don't just want, want, want, want. So sometimes you want give back. And now knowing that the production value's the number one thing that actually people will accept my invitations like, wow, you put so much work into it, they want to be a part of it. So that's something... Having that extra touch of production will get you over the top. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's totally true. And I think also that not expecting to set the world on fire in the first couple of episodes I think is really important for expectations. I think there's a lot of people who sort of start a podcast and then it kind of fades away. This first little while can sometimes be tricky to get through. What is the thing that helps you to push through? What would you say to someone who's on the fence as to whether or not this is a good ROI for their investment either as a team or as an individual? Paul Andre De Vera: The best ROI is you're actually investing in yourself by doing this yourself. Obviously there's going to be the whole personal brand aspect and you developing your own personal brand can also uplift a company's brand. But at the same time when you're podcasting, even just for companies, you're really, really having another channel, an avenue where you can actually reach out to. This is something that when they now come on to clients, I'm like, Hey, have you ever thought about podcasting? If it's not something they're doing. Because I'll tell you this, there is some relation when it comes to SEO, right? I mean, you can get your show notes that you can add into that gets ranking. You can distribute your podcast through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, iHeartRadio, and then you get your show notes on there, you get back links back to your site. So there's some SEO value when it comes to podcasting, but at the same time... So that's one value you can prove like, hey, you want to help boost our rankings, let's start on podcasts. But at the same time, you're creating content. Content is currency nowadays. This is something that you want to have. And that's why I also mentioned to you like, Hey, when you're doing recordings like this, I feel like you add the extra layer of video. That video is going to help you repurpose the audio and repurpose the visuals. And again, you can do more cool things in your production, like how I do all the little magic effects on screen, you heard the little chime, but for those who are listening can see on screen, there was a little graphic that went overlay. So adding the extra touch, again, will help you up level your podcast. And then when it comes to ROI, it's like, again, I do see it more as more brand awareness and just being able to get out there. But there's also, when it comes to podcasts and video in particular, you can really, really have a call to action towards the end. And these podcasts where if you're an affiliate marketer, I put affiliate links in these show notes, and I've actually gotten income from that. That's something I actually didn't think, but hey, it's another avenue to include your affiliate links if you're promoting something. And that was another great source of income through podcasting. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think so. And I think that for businesses who are... because there are a lot of branded podcasts, and this is something that you see across, we are a Wix podcast. We are a podcast for Wix, for instance. HubSpot has a whole podcast network. There are lots of brands who are putting a lot of emphasis and a lot of interest in podcasts. And I think that one of the reasons why they're doing that is for the brand visibility. And I think also for the flexibility. What we find certainly is that we are able to talk about topics that are maybe brand new topics that we're sort of exploring. And we find that that's a really interesting way and that people really engage with those new topics. That this is a sort of cutting edge topic. We're still exploring what it is, and we're having a discussion about it. And the expectation is that it's a discussion rather than necessarily, I know every single thing that there is to know about that. And I think that big brands are investing in these things for a lot of reasons. Are you finding that you're seeing more brands interested in getting involved with podcasts in your experience? Paul Andre De Vera: Oh, yes. Definitely seeing more interest. And if not, I'm the one that's going to bring it up to them. So I'm working with a company, I'm like, Hey, hey, I was able to build a brand, a huge brand that gets tons of sponsorships within just a few years. So this is something where you can really, really develop another asset for your company. If that asset's not just building your brand. You have another source of income where depending on the type of business model you have, your podcast can get sponsors and ads from your Google AdSense, whether it's you post on YouTube. And I really, really feel like, I haven't even looked into this, but I know there's podcasting agencies out there that you can actually get into actually more of the audio type of podcast and get advertising in there. And hopefully... And I feel like the ROI in there is pretty good because you know why? I feel the podcasters are authentic. We are two people. We know we are having a conversation. What we're talking about is about our experiences, and it really makes us have that authority within our space of what we're talking about right now. Both of us, we both run... both podcasters. Like you right now, you're running the Wix podcast. I'm here running my own podcast, and we're talking about podcasting… Crystal Carter: Right! Paul Andre De Vera: It's two really experts of what we're doing and we're sharing our experience. There's so much value in that. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. And I think it's a super accessible thing as well, because anyone with ears, or whatever can listen to a podcast. And also there's audio transcripts as well for folks who are hearing impaired as well. So there's lots of ways that you can engage in, and I actually very often read podcast transcripts myself. I don't know that there's many other people like me, but I very often I look at podcasts that way and I find it super valuable. It's also a great place for quotes. So a lot of people talk about EEAT and that sort of thing, and I think that we had an episode about experts, and I think that around brand experts, subject matter experts, for instance, it can sometimes be difficult to get subject matter experts to write all what they're talking about, but podcasts are a much easier ask for those kinds of folks. Have you found that in your travels? Paul Andre De Vera: Yes, yes. I feel the entry into podcasting. Just getting people to talk is so much easier If you're coming on something like this, instead of me having a thought leader write something down, take exactly what I said, make a thought leadership piece out of it. This is something that we also do with... I'm seeing a lot with companies creating customer case studies as a podcast. They're bringing customers in, and I'm working with a company right now where I'm helping edit their podcast by them just having a conversation with one of their customers, and then I'm repurposing it into... well, there's little vertical shorts or an actual clip of the whole podcast, but then again, we're doing video just again, I'm going to keep pushing this. Do video when you're doing podcasting because there's so much more that you can repurpose, right? There's just that extra layer they can add. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. I've not heard this case study example, but I think that's a really great trend. I think people are getting really creative with it as well. And I think interviews are a classic podcast format, but one of the other things I've seen is the people are doing sort of long reads. So for articles that are really, really long for... you start to see the author reading it and then they put it online as a podcast, and it's really engaging actually. It's really, really engaging. It's like a mini audiobook almost, which I find really interesting. Paul Andre De Vera: I love that. I love that. It kind of goes back to something what I'm doing here as well. I do have a podcast, so I do have the video podcast and the SEO Video Show, which I kind of like promoting more as a show, but I do have the Knowledge Bomb Podcast, right? The SEO Knowledge Bomb Podcast. And this is where it's not a complete copy of what I'm doing. I'm pretty much extracting all the knowledge bombs from one of my shows and then reading it out on a podcast with my voice and it becomes a five-minute podcast saying, Hey, SEO Knowledge Bombs of the Week. It's five minute audio clip of me kind of just summing up of what the knowledge bombs were dropped from my past guests from the previous week. So again, you can really create a podcast out of what you're already doing now. Say, if you want to get inventive, look and see what you're doing now. If you are writing blogs like we mentioned, take your blogs, maybe extract that and read it out and just talk to an audience so people just can hear your voice. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think there's a lot of experimentation that people can do, and I think it's a really interesting landscape. What do you think the future holds for podcasts in the next year or so? Paul Andre De Vera: For the next year, again, I want to see more video podcasts. Like I said, I'm going to keep repeating it. I feel like right now you can already see the transition from say something like Spotify now I'm doing some video on there. So these directories are going to... I want to imagine once we see Apple Podcasts, those becoming starting showing videos. And I feel that that's the direction going there as well. But again, podcasting is something, is an easy way to just get into a channel of being able to show off your knowledge and your expertise and be able to reach out to other people. I started my podcast because I was stuck at home and everyone was stuck at home. I was like, I want to network. This is my way of networking and going out to just talk to people, smart people, and learn from them. That's how you were able to just learn by just talking to people, smart people, smart people like you, Crystal. Crystal Carter: No, you are smart. Paul Andre De Vera: You're smart. Crystal Carter: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It is always, always, always a pleasure, and I hope to see you soon at the next SEO conference. Thank you so much for your time today, Paul, and yeah, thanks for joining us. Paul Andre De Vera: Of course. Of course. Thank you Crystal, and thank you Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: That was super, super insightful chat Crystal. He has so much personality. And again, you see it come through and it builds his own brand, his personal brand, without him even having to say more than 10 words. Crystal Carter: It's something that he really, really utilizes really, really well with his channel. So it works really well for his YouTube channel. It works really well for the podcast. Dre's super nice when you meet him in person as well. And also, also, also, Dre is incredibly smart. Dre has a lot of fun with his podcast and stuff, and he has a lot of fun with his show, but I've been on discussions with him where he gets into some of the more technical stuff that he does, and my guy is incredibly astute at Enterprise SEO, and it is an absolute pleasure to hear him speak on that because he's proper nerd levels of really, really right in the weeds in that and so impressive. And I think that people underestimate the ability to be charismatic in certain spaces and assume that just because you're charismatic in one space that you're not necessarily a complete nerd in another space. Dre is absolutely one of those people. He really, really knows his stuff, and it's great to speak to him. Mordy Oberstein: He's one of my favorites. I am looking forward to seeing him again at some SEO conference in the near future. He was at Brighton San Diego last year. I'm like, "oh, I didn't know he was coming. I wish I would've been able to spend more time with him 'cause he's so sweet." Speaking of another sweet person, we're going to have a little chat with Andi Jarvis about- Crystal Carter: I don't know that anyone's ever called Andi sweet. Mordy Oberstein: Well, I'm saying... Well, I'm not saying that because he's actually sweet. I'm saying that purely for the sake of the transition. Crystal Carter: Which is an important thing that you must master as a podcaster. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. It's like the kung fu of podcasting, the transition. Crystal Carter: Wax on, wax off transition. Mordy Oberstein: Paint the fence transition. So Andi, I apologize for calling you sweet, but we're going to talk with Andi now. Okay, so the podcast game isn't what it used to be, which reminds me of baseball. I always do this. I'm always going to give a baseball reference. So back in the day, you didn't need to be super athletic to be a baseball player. Have you ever seen Babe Ruth? They just showed up after eating an all you can eat buffet down the block. Crystal Carter: Smoking cigarettes in the dugout. Mordy Oberstein: Smoking cigar... Literally, there is a picture of Keith Hernandez and the Mets smoking a cigarette in the dugout during a game like- Crystal Carter: Like spitting out tobacco in the kitchen. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I'm an athlete. Okay, that was the eighties, and I don't mean the 1880s, like the 1980s. Andi Jarvis: Listen, it was the same in football or soccer. There was a great Brazilian footballer called Socrates, one of the greatest Brazilians of all time. Goes under the radar 'cause he doesn't have a name, but an absolute genius of a football player. And footage exists of him in the early to mid-eighties, walking out at halftime after the halftime break, flicking a cigarette into the crowd and running onto the pitch. But this guy was just... he just ambled around the... he was amazing, but it just wouldn't happen these days. Mordy Oberstein: It's unbelievable, right? But now you're right. So now you can't. Now even the baseball players, they have weightlifting regimes. They do this and they have that, and they have set nap time now. Crystal Carter: They have GPS trackers to monitor their stress rating and what they were doing on the pitch and all that sort of stuff. Andi Jarvis: Can I bore you with a really quick story about why that happened as well? Mordy Oberstein: Surely. Andi Jarvis: Why it happened as well. It's all down to, you remember what? 20, maybe 25 years ago when baseball went on strike and there was a lockout for like a whole month. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, 1994, the Yankees would've won the World Series that year, by the way. So I'm pissed. Crystal Carter: But I mean, who's counting though? Mordy Oberstein: I am. Andi Jarvis: Yeah. Well, okay, so the lockout happened and baseball lost millions of fans. When it came back, TV ratings were through the floor, everything went to (beep), and it's never been proven. But the belief was that when the players came back, the executives of baseball clubs were like, look, we've got to have something to bring the crowds back. The crowds are through the floor, the TV floor. What happened after that lockout, if you remember, was the guy whose name I forget, suddenly went on a home run hitting streak, started hitting the ball- Mordy Oberstein: Mark McGwire. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Andi Jarvis: McGwire, right. And there was somebody else doing it as well. Mordy Oberstein: Sammy Sosa. Crystal Carter: Sammy Sosa. Andi Jarvis: Yeah, right. Okay. Now, I don't know if you remember looking at pictures of them pre-lockout and post-lockout, they got significantly bigger. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Andi Jarvis: And a number of guys in baseball had started juicing. Now, if you start taking steroids and start juicing, you don't just accidentally do that. And the belief was that it was, if not encouraged, the blind eye was turned by the baseball team- Mordy Oberstein: The blind eye was a million percent- Andi Jarvis: ... to allow the guys to bulk up because all they wanted was you start banging the ball out of the stadium and home runs happen, people start coming. But on the back of that, people started realizing maybe we better do it legally, but if I'm bigger and fitter, I can hit the ball further. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Andi Jarvis: Oh, and I can throw it further. Oh, okay. So it all spun out the back of that where they realized maybe if you are an athlete, it would help. Just don't do drugs. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Yeah. See, by way, I had a Barry Bonds card and a Sammy Sosa before they did steroids, they don't even look like the same person. By the way, in case you haven't noticed, we have a guest here with us. His name is Andi Jarvis, and that's why like baseball, we're going into the great beyond of the nature of podcasting nowadays. Andi, what's going on, man? Welcome to the show. Andi Jarvis: Thank you for having me I hope and thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: I'm just first off flattered that you regaled us with a baseball story and you're not even American. Andi Jarvis: It's my one and only baseball story. I'm sat here in a Canadian, Toronto Raptors T-shirt. I don't even know what sport that is. I've just got family there, so- Crystal Carter: It's basketball. Mordy Oberstein: It used to be basketball. Now it's just crap. But yeah. Crystal Carter: Also in this podcast about podcasting, can I just say that one of the first rules of podcasts is to not stay on topic. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Speaking of not staying on topic, Andi, what are you going to pitch us today? Andi Jarvis: Storytelling and the Strategy Sessions podcast and my marketing services. No, I'm not pitching all of that, but I'm here to talk podcasting coz I have a podcast which is called the Strategy Session. Crystal Carter: And you get some amazing guests on your podcast. I don't know how you convince these people to spend time with you. Mordy Oberstein: I really enjoy that episode that you did with that guest that you had, so-and-so. Crystal Carter: You get some great folks on your podcast. Andi Jarvis: All of them. So weirdly, this is the one thing if you're doing a guest podcast, which you don't have to do, but I find it easy 'cause you talk and you spark off somebody. But people are like, "how'd you get those guests?" I'm like, "genuinely, most of the time I just ask them." "What do you ask them?" I'm like, "will you come on my podcast and we'll talk about these things?" And you'd be amazed how many people go, "okay." Now some people have questions like, who else has done it and what's the commitment and how does it... Not everybody says yes, but I would say 50% of the people I ask say yes. And then once you get some good guests coming on, that can snowball, because the ones who do ask and go, "who else has been on?" You go, "oh, Rory Sutherland, Mark Ritson and Seth Godin." And they're like, "oh, right, okay." Now that's not- Mordy Oberstein: And you're rolling . Andi Jarvis: Yeah, and look, I named celebrities in the marketing industry there, but they're probably 15% of the episodes. And yes, they get bigger listening figures, but I don't want to turn it into kind of a celebrity led podcast, that it's more of an interesting stories about marketing podcast and lessons you can learn. But yeah, those people undoubtedly just help. Definitely. Crystal Carter: But I think that's one of the really interesting things about a podcast is it's a really good opportunity to connect with folks that you might not connect with in another way. So like you said, you've got people like Mark Ritson, you've got people like Seth Godin, Britney Muller, I love Britney. But then you also have people who are up and coming in their careers, people who have a good following, but maybe it's more niche. And so as well as you say, you ask them, how do you find them? Is there a particular criteria that you're looking for that makes you think this person's going to be great for a podcast? Andi Jarvis: Yes. So a lot of the time... I read a lot about marketing, so I sometimes just, I'll read something in Marketing Week, or if I see some awards that look rigorous, 'cause let's be honest, not every awards are rigorous. So if I see some awards that look rigorous, I'll be... sometimes if I've got half an hour, I'm sat at an airport, I'll have a look through who's shortlisted, not necessarily worried about who's won, but who's shortlisted and who's done something that I find really interesting. So sometimes that, look, the big budget thing won, but somebody did this thing that was really interesting and scrappy that nobody else considered. Yeah, that's it. And then just send them a message. LinkedIn's great. Or find their email or just like, Hey, I see you did this thing. Would you be interested in coming on the podcast? Here's a link to the show. Genuinely, we just want to sit and have a chat. And so I do a lot of background research to try and find the right guests. And yeah, that's it really. Mordy Oberstein: Not rocket science, but it's hard work. Andi Jarvis: Yeah, look, it takes time, and I think I pride myself in making things look and seem a little bit off the cuff, and it's all kind of laid back and relaxed, and it's not structured, and that's part of it. But you have to plan to be not structured and you have to put the effort in to find the guest. And some guests are really happy to just go, yeah, look, we're talking about this thing that I know a lot about. Just ask whatever. Other guests are a bit more nervous, and they're like, can you send me the questions? Now, I don't do that because you can always tell a podcast to me when someone's been sent the questions or when... you'll hear them say... you'll ask someone a question, they'll give this amazing answer and the host will go, oh, that's really interesting. Anyway, so next question, but follow up. They've just told you about this huge thing that they did. They won a gold medal for something or other, and you're like, that's really interesting. So tell us about your childhood. No, tell us about the thing they've just said. So I work with the guests. Some guests need a little bit more work than others. Some are just like, yeah, just shoot me a time and we'll do it. Crystal Carter: Can you tell us a little bit about your journey for podcasting? So did you have to learn that skill and is it different now from when you started? Andi Jarvis: It's a bit less chaotic now, I would say. I started in 2020 peak lockdown May 2020, and didn't know what I was doing. What I knew was I knew how to talk to people. I knew how to ask questions I found interesting about marketing. So if you think about this, I work on my own anyway. I was then forced on my own or away from all of the marketers because of COVID lockdown, and it just felt quite isolating. But also, I like to learn and I go to conferences to learn and I talk to people to learn, and I just wasn't getting it from virtual events. But talking to people was really interesting. So I was like, right, a podcast is the way to go. But I was just kind of making it up as I was going along. And there was different segments to the show edited together because one of the things was I had a bit more time, so I wanted to learn how to edit. I was like, right, well, I'm going to learn how to edit different bits into the show. I'm going to have a different guest. I'm going to have different sections, I'm going to do... And what you realize as the world started to reopen again is that that's just a real (beep) ton of work as well. So I streamlined it a little bit and now it's just an interview, minimal editing and get that out. But in terms of the format, and it's still me interviewing someone for 45 minutes to an hour depending on who the guest is, really. Mordy Oberstein: Looking back, it was like three, four years ago already, the pandemic. Do you feel like the ecosystem that you started off in and where you are now, it's a different world for your podcast? The world changed around you kind of thing? Andi Jarvis: Absolutely. And I think the main driver of that is just the changing listening habits. So back in 2020, any idiot with a microphone, I, started a podcast. A lot of those, let's be honest, a lot of people who start a podcast and a lot of you listening go, I'm going to start a podcast about this thing. If you get five episodes in, you've done really, really well and you're miles in front of most people who start a podcast and do one episode. I feel lucky that I started during lockdown because I committed to doing... and I went out publicly and I said on LinkedIn, and I said, on social, 26 episodes, one every two weeks, I'm going to do it for a year. And there's times where it felt like a little bit of a millstone. I'm like, oh God, what have I done? But you get into the rhythm of just making sure you deliver it and you did. And that kind of got me up and running. So what's changed though since then is as radio listening figures have changed and as media habits have changed, the media group certainly in the UK have realized the value of podcasting. So Spotify weren't paying people millions to do podcasts. They were just hosting podcasts. In fact, I don't even think Spotify were hosting podcasts when I started. They bought Anchor, and that's how they do their hosting. If you look at the top charts in the UK now, it's all the same company. So radio stations have podcasts now. So every celebrity, it's an extension of the radio's brand, and all they're interested in is keeping the audience so they can sell advertising or in the BBC's case, just keeping their audience. So it's a different world. And what that means for an amateur bedroom podcaster is that you've got to pay a lot of attention to production values. People would just like, it's a podcast, it's just a guy on his own. If the sound quality went a bit wobbly or your mic starts to kick up, it didn't really matter. But now people are like, every podcast you listen to has professional level audio. So if you are not delivering something similar, people are just like, "this is awful." And just turn off. So you've really got to pay attention to the stuff that you never really bothered with before and get into that side of it a bit more. But look, I still enjoy it and mine's still entirely self-produced 'cause I enjoy that bit of it. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, that point on the radio station, so for example, I listen to a sports podcast every day, it's ESPN's New York Radio Station, one of their shows, they're just repurposing it for podcast form and they lose out to the other New York's radio station in the actual ratings, but they beat them out on the podcast numbers, and the podcast numbers are so significant. They pour a ton of production effort into the podcast, whereas the other radio station completely ignores the podcast. So if you don't think to your point that big players are paying attention to their podcasts, they 100% most definitely are because another channel for them to beat other competitors. Andi Jarvis: Absolutely. And you look at the other thing as well is that celebrities have decided that podcasting now is an extension of their social brand. Now, whether this is what I would call pointless celebrities who are famous for being famous, I'm not a fan of that (beep), or whether it's movie stars or actors or sports people or politicians or whatever, they've realized that declining social audiences and organic reach is a problem. But if you build an audience in a podcast, you have this deeper longer conversation with them. So people are like, "who do you want to hear talking about marketing?" "Andi Jarvis." "Who's that guy? I've never heard of him." Or some idiot who used to do social media because they were on a TV program. Oh, they must know what they're talking about. Not that mine's a social media podcast, but if you want to do a social media podcast, there's probably some idiot who's been on a TV show doing a social media podcast, and you're like, what are you going to learn from them? They literally had 8 million people watching them for 15 nights. That's why they've got a big social media following, not going to help your small business mate. It really isn't. Crystal Carter: When I talk to people who are running smaller podcasts who aren't Joe Rogan, not that I'm chatting to Joe, but people who are running smaller podcasts, they say that their expectations are different. So think the expected outcomes that they plan to get, the ROI that they plan to get from the podcasts are different. Would you agree with that? Would you agree that maybe it's not about getting a million listeners? Andi Jarvis: Yeah, and look, let's be honest, anyone who tells you they don't want a million listeners is lying. Crystal Carter: Right. Okay, I'll take it. Andi Jarvis: But a win is not a million listeners. And I can tell you the top performing, so "performing" in air quotes episodes of my podcast, they're the ones with the celebrity guests on, the Seth Godins, Rory Sutherlands, Mark Ritsons. They are the top three. Yeah, they're the top three. Now, I can also tell you, and that's success apparently, but I podcast because I run a small business. Success to me is my business keeping going and winning more business. I don't think I've ever landed any business because of either any of those episodes. Now, I can point you to many other episodes where people have reached out and got in touch, and went, "I heard you speak to this person. Can we talk about this thing that you talked about?" So the listener figures aren't there, but the money in my bank account tells me they are there. So it's about what is success and being hyper clear on that. But one thing I would say is that there's a real fine line, and there are lots and lots of podcasts in marketing, and I've never bothered to count them, but I was going to say bajillions of podcasts in marketing that are set up by consultants and agencies that are sales podcasts. That are, oh, hi. Who are my ideal clients? Mordy and Crystal, how do I get in front of them? Let's invite them on a podcast. And then they sit on that podcast and sell to them. Let me tell you Crystal about this amazing thing I once did that sort of is right in your sector. And when you're listening to them, you can feel the pitch. And it's like, now, I would say to anyone, I think, I don't how many episodes I've got, I must be nearly 70 episodes now in total, because every season we start the numbering. Must be at 70 episodes now. And if you can hear me sell more than... Sorry, I've sold like I'm going to conferences or I'm doing this event, which unashamedly sell that, but if you listen to me interviewing a guest, point to somewhere you can hear me selling to that person. I don't have people on who I want to sell to. And this to me is top of funnel awareness and getting me out there and having people going, Eximo Marketing, Andi Jarvis, this guy knows his stuff, he understands this thing. That's what this is doing. It's not bottom of the funnel sales. Mordy Oberstein: I always feel that a podcast is really, outside of maybe the Joe Rogans of the world, it's a brand play. Andi Jarvis: Yeah, a hundred percent. Mordy Oberstein: It's a brand positioning play, you're having a constant conversation, you're reinforcing messaging, you're reinforcing that you're an expert, you're reinforcing this and that. It's not necessarily about the numbers, but people do really think it's about the numbers. I was saying before we record, I was at my kid's kindergarten graduation and some neighbor of mine said, "Hey, I heard you do a podcast. I want to get in and do a podcast 'cause I heard it's really easy to get in and do a podcast." I'm like, "yeah, it's pretty easy to do a podcast. You need basically some kind of recorder and you need a voice and you need to talk and you need to record that voice. And then you put it out there, SoundCloud or whatever you want to put it, fine, really easy. But it's not as easy as you think it is to get traction now because it's so saturated. Unless you're talking about some random, random topic, there's so many people doing the same thing that you're doing. You need to find an angle to differentiate yourself." Like this Break the Fourth Wall, this podcast, how do we differentiate this podcast? One is we started doing segments. Most SEO podcasts don't really do segments, and we also pitched it in a way or not pitched it. We positioned it in a way where, hey, if you're really advanced in SEO, you've been doing SEO for a long time, you'll get X value out of it. And if you are looking to break into the SEO world or digital marketing world, you also get y value out of it at the same time. And that's unique. That's a really cool way of positioning a podcast. You need to find some kind of angle because at the end of the day, if it's a branding play, if you don't position it in a unique way, you've lost the value of it. Andi Jarvis: Absolutely. And I think one of the things with that positioning is if I look back early on, it was too broad, but I didn't know what I was doing. I was just making it up. And the next series, series five, which will start in September, will probably be the most narrowly focused of the episodes in the series of them. Not every single episode, because there's a few that I have academics on as well 'cause I think there's a lot you can learn from academics, and so I probably won't be trying to get really niche with them. I actually want to explore the breadth of what they talk about. But one of the key things is maybe narrowing the focus of what we talk about and going a bit deeper on some of the episodes 'cause I think that that's right, is that it goes back to this concept of you needing a hundred fans or whatever it is. I can't remember, is it a thousand fans or a hundred fans, whatever. But if you are niche enough and talking about the right stuff, you don't need a million people listening to it. In fact, you've probably failed if you get a million people listening to it because you are mass market at that point. What you really want is a hundred or 500 or a thousand people who are here to hear what you have to say because they are in that particular sector. That's what you really need to get to. So if you are just talking to the right people, talk to your audience, understand your customers. Marketing basics, who are you talking and why do they care? And make a podcast about that, then you don't need to worry about the listening numbers. You just need to keep delivering that value and delivering that content. Crystal Carter: There's a couple of things that strike me from what you've just said. First of all, you were saying, oh, I'm talking to academics. I find them really interesting. You're like, I read a lot of marketing books, and you've got a lot of authors on your section. You're like, oh, I really want to drill down one of the things that I've read when somebody was like, how should you start a podcast? Or, which topic should you think about? And one of the things, I can't remember where I read it, I wish I could reference it, I'm sorry. But they said that. If it's not a topic that you could talk about a hundred times, like a hundred episodes, then it's probably not a good topic for you. So I know, Andi, that you are a marketing nerd because I know, I've seen your bookshelf, I'm sure behind you is full of all the marketing books. Andi Jarvis: Oh, yeah, I'm a bore. You say nerd, I'm a bore, right? I am. I'm boring in public. Crystal Carter: And I think that that's awesome. I think we get people on the podcast like yourself, other folks where I'm just like, I'm so excited. I cannot believe we got this guest to join us to talk about whatever the topic is. We have people on the podcast to talk about stuff that we wish we knew more about. And it's an incredible opportunity, an incredible privilege to be able to speak to them about that topic. And I think that that is another piece of value that you can add to your listening audience. If they're a niche audience and they're with you and they've been with you for that time, you can also help them to learn about this new thing. You can also help them explore that. You can also go on that journey. And in terms of long tail keywords, it's another great way to explore a long tail topic, like a really niche topic like you were saying, drilling down. It's a really good opportunity for that. Andi Jarvis: When I was 11 years old in school, one of my teachers, Mrs. Colling, what she was called, had a sign on her door, which she used to point to a lot. It said something like, "it's better to remain silent and be thought of a fool than to open your mouth and to remove all doubt." Now to someone who never shut up, she used to point, she'd be like, "Andrew." The reason I bring that up is that, the point you make about can you talk about it for a hundred episodes. If you are not an expert in something, you can probably bluff your way through a blog by reading enough blogs and copying the best bits and rewriting it with a little bit of your tone of voice. Not saying that's how all travel blogs are written, but you've not been to all those places you're writing about. But you can kind of do that. If you have to talk for 30 minutes on a subject and you don't know that subject, you will quite quickly have opened your mouth and be found to be a fool. And if you want to release 10 episodes about that subject, that's 300 minutes. That's five hours of talking about a subject. Can you do that? Now, I would say if someone gave me a microphone and went, listen, we just need to fill this 10 hours of silence. Can you talk about one subject? It would either be boring sports stories or marketing. Either of those two things I could probably talk about at length for about 10 days without stopping. I might even take breath- Mordy Oberstein: And we've covered both of them? Andi Jarvis: ... every now and again. Yeah, listen, I could put both of those two things together. I really could. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great podcast right there, by the way. Crystal Carter: You're speaking Mordy's language here. Could I just say. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Boring sports stories and marketing with Andi Jarvis? Andi Jarvis: Yeah. Like that baseball story I told at the beginning. Now that means the editor has to leave it in on lobby. A boring story I told at the beginning, I love stuff like that. And I could fill time forever, but marketing, people are like, oh, I'm sorry we didn't have time to prepare for this. I was like, I've been preparing my whole life for this. You need me to talk about marketing, pass me that microphone. I am your guy. So have a passion for it and have a knowledge about it. The only caveat to that I would say is if you're going to do something out of passion, so say you, I don't know, you love Crocs or you love, it might be theater, it might be musicals, it might be Taylor Swift, whatever. If you're doing it out of passion, I think the passion carries you, not necessarily the knowledge. But if you're doing it for business, you have to show you're an expert in that field 'cause if you don't show you're an expert in that field, you're going to harm your brand. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of your brand as time ebbs away on us, where can people find your brand and yourself? Andi Jarvis: Yeah, great segue, Mordy. Great segue. So, Andi Jarvis. I spell Andi with an I. so if you just put my name into Google, I appear everywhere. LinkedIn and Instagram and Threads are the places to find me. Unfortunately, I now stay away from Twitter since the Lunatic took over the asylum and don't really use it anymore. But yeah, so you find me. The company's called Eximo Marketing, E-X-I-M-O. So have a look for either of those and you'll find me. I'm also sure there's a link to the Strategy Sessions in the show notes. Is that correct? Mordy Oberstein: Heck yes. Andi Jarvis: Have a listen. I would say, if I can pitch this, so last year for the first time, so season four, I decided to do two mini seasons within the season. I did a Black History Month mini season, which in the UK is October, not February, and I did a Women's History Month, which is built around International Women's Day, so I did that as well. So I did, there was five Tuesdays in October, so I did five episodes with five guests and I did four for Women's History Month. I'm really proud of those miniseries. I'm proud of those nine episodes. They took us into slightly different conversations about different things. Now, I didn't just talk to black marketers about being black. They were just great at what they did and they happened to be black. That's the way the conversations went. But some of those episodes in those two miniseries are my favorites. You can't pick a favorite podcast, right? 'Cause It's like picking your favorite child, but some of those episodes are some of my top three, top five ever that I recorded and just really insightful deep conversations with really, really interesting people. People who I probably wouldn't have met before, some of them you might never have heard of either. If you're just thinking, where do I start listening to this Idiot's podcast? I would go back start of the Black History Month miniseries, started with an episode with a woman called Sherice Anibaba and you could probably see if you watch the video of me just sitting there going and just blown away by every word she says, I'm just hanging on it. Genuinely, she's genuinely amazing, so just start there. If you're going to start somewhere. I know you'll probably start with Seth Gordon, right? But if you're going to start somewhere, I'd got Black History. Mordy Oberstein: I like that by the way, not just a page, but where to start. That's unique. Andi Jarvis: I mean, you can go back to episode one if you like. It might take you, see if you're awake 12 hours a day, I give you ... you a whole week of your entire life doing nothing else other than listening to me on a podcast, which don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: Podcast listening tip, never start with episode one. It's usually those first few episodes. You got to really work out the kinks. I would start at episode 20 or whatever it is. Andi Jarvis: Yeah, definitely. Mordy Oberstein: Well, thanks Andi. Thanks for coming on and Crystal Carter: Thank you so much for joining us. Andi Jarvis: Thank you for having me. It's been a ride as always and lovely to see you both. Mordy Oberstein: Talk to you soon. From one sweet person to another sweet person to Barry, it's time for us to delve into the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Starting off with not news from Barry Schwartz, but from Anu Adegbola over on Search Engine Land, running about, Perplexity launches ad revenue sharing program for publishers. If you might recall, Perplexity got into a little bit of a snafu with various publishers about their content or about the publisher's content being shown in Perplexity without any real attribution and basically saying, "Hey, you took our content you just posted as your own and that's not cool." This seems like it might be atonement for that. There's a new pilot program where if you select publishers like Time, Der Spiegel and Fortune are included, that when their URLs appear within a Perplexity search and there's an ad on that search as well, those publishers will get some of the ad revenue from that ad. Doesn't seem like there's a ton of details about how exactly the program works and what the exact figures are and who exactly is in there. Also, the initial partners. And if this will expand or not expand. But it is really interesting 'cause I guess it's kind of the first real revenue sharing program we've seen, definitely on these AI search engine things, but across the board. There's no revenue sharing program with Google, for example, which I guess is a sore point for publishers, but that's a whole different topic for a whole different podcast. Anyway, on to Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Round Table. This was an interesting one, Barry writes, "Google 'hidden gem stores' search feature." What about it Barry? What Barry is saying is Google's testing a hidden gem store search feature that was spotted by Brody Clark where he was searching for sneakers and there was a little section on the mobile search for Hidden Gem stores, which is not, by the way, part of the Hidden Gems algorithm thing. That's a totally different thing. If you're not familiar with that, you don't need to know about that right now. If you are, just know this is not that. It was basically a little section on the mobile surface that says, Hey, hidden Gem Stores, which seems to imply these might be more niche stores or maybe local stores or whatever where you can buy said sneakers. In this case, it was New Balance, On and Running Warehouse US and Zappos, which are not really hidden gems. I mean, I've heard of New Balance before. And I’ve heard of Zappos before. On, I've heard of them too. Those are nice shoes. It's a really, really cool feature, if Google can refine this and actually get some hidden Gem stores in there. It's just a test, so who knows what it'll be, but if Google can do that or they can get the smaller niche stores in there, that'd be awesome. Okay. Also, from Barry Schwartz, also from Search Engine Roundtable. Google Search ranking volatility bursting at the seams. Barry getting real emotional with the headlines there. There's been an enormous amount of rank volatility being picked up by the various SEO weather tools for a good while now, I don't know, a good over a week, I'm going to say no more than a week, I don't know, 10 days. By the time you listen to this, it might be a full two weeks of high volatility. There's speculation, the speculation coming from me. I'm speculating that this is the storm before the other storm, so Google's Danny Sullivan said relatively recently that there's a core update coming soon, which we don't know what soon means. We covered this in the news a couple of weeks ago. Soon can mean tomorrow, soon can mean three weeks from now, soon can be a month from now. Who knows when soon actually is? But there is a tendency when Google, before Google releases a core algorithm update, two or three weeks before there's generally a period of intense ring volatility. I personally think combining the ring volatility we're seeing here and Danny's statement that maybe this is that ring volatility before the update, which would mean most likely if I'm right, which who knows if I am or not, after this set of ring volatility is completed, figured there's going to be a core algorithm update two or three weeks afterwards on its new our daily new series, which you can find over on the SEO hub and on Barry Schwartz's RustyBrick YouTube channel, Barry, Greg Finn and I have a pool on when Google will launch the next core update. I think I have August 17th, Barry has August 6th and Greg has August 12th. Share your date for when you think Google is going to release a core update 'cause that's fun. I guess one way of dealing with anxiety. Anyway, that's this week's Snappy News. Okay. That's not to say Barry's not sweet 'cause the truth is he's one of the sweetest people you'll ever meet, even though he does not, again, does not want you to know this, but Barry is a very good sweet person. Crystal Carter: Barry's the best. Big shout-out to Barry. Mordy Oberstein: In my category of people who are sweet but don't want to be known as sweet. We've covered two edits that how many on this podcast already? Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. I know a lot of people who are nice and grumpy at the same time, which they're some of my favorite people. I used to know a shopkeeper and I would bother them all the time asking for boxes, asking if I could use their dolly because I needed to move something heavy and things like that, and they would always help me, but they were always grumpy about it. They were like, "yeah, it's in the back. Yeah, you're welcome." Mordy Oberstein: For the audio listener, I was pointing to myself the entire time. You know who is sweet and I don't think she would mind being called sweet would be Kristine Schachinger our follow of the week. Kristine is an SEO OG. Would be one for sure. But she's also a podcaster, she hosts the Webcology podcast. Wow. So much Podcasting and SEO. Barry also by the way, has technically a podcast. I should have mentioned that before. The video recaps that he does are also in podcast form, so technically Barry's also a podcaster. Crystal Carter: Everybody's at it. You got to get in there. Mordy Oberstein: Everyone's at it. But Kristine hosts the Webcology podcast. She's spoken at all the SEO conferences. She puts out a lot of great conversation and a lot of great insights about all things SEO over on X. Might it be on other social media platforms also? Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: But you should definitely give her a follow on X. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely, and she can get really, really technical. She's got some really great insights and she has a really, really actionable approach to dealing with algorithm updates that I find really interesting. I think there's a lot of theoretical discussions around algorithm updates, which are great, and I think it's interesting to hear from somebody from a more sort of, she takes a very tactical approach as well. I followed it, and it's really interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Very tactical. Yeah. I find her conversations really, really interesting and she is an absolute sweet person. Who we're looking forward to seeing at brightonSEO San Diego in November. So she's @-S-C-H-A-C-H-I-N on X. We'll link to it in the show notes. And it's hard to believe this, but I'm all out of words. I got nothing else to say. Crystal Carter: I don't believe that at all. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a lie because I got a million other things, but we eventually have to end the podcast at some point. Crystal Carter: Well, but we're just going to keep- Mordy Oberstein: Or not. Crystal Carter: ... we're just going to make another podcast. Mordy Oberstein: We can have an Infinite loop of podcasts that just goes on and on and on and on and on. Crystal Carter: This is the pod that never ends. It just goes on and on my friend. You know what I'm saying? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. We just started singing it, but everybody- Crystal Carter: Not knowing what it was. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And they'll continue singing it forever just because it's the pod that never... yeah, sorry. Mordy Oberstein: There's no greater possible way to end a podcast other than with us singing. It's like, it's like Sonny and Cher. Crystal Carter: Basically. That's exactly what people are thinking. People were like, oh, was that Sonny and Cher? No, no, it was Mordy Crystal. Oh, really? I'm so surprised. I'm so surprised. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to shave my beard and grow one of those seventies mustaches now. Crystal Carter: Yes, yes, totally. Mordy Oberstein: I should totally do that. Crystal Carter: Definitely worth doing. You could totally do the handlebar thing. Mordy Oberstein: I think I'd freak myself out. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode. No, we're back next week with a very special episode, our 100th episode. Look for it not just wherever you consume your podcasts, but look for in other special places. Check out our social media feeds to see where. Too much or not enough? Not enough. Look up Crystal and I on LinkedIn or X and see about the hundredth episode. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check out all the other great content and webinars on the Wix SEO learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify, please. 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Whether they be clients, C-level executives or marketing managers, there’s a slew of both external and internal stakeholders who rely on your SEO information. Good SEO reporting puts them in the game with you. It’s what gets buy-in and what proves the value of your work. After all, it's a lot easier to get a designer, developer, or another stakeholder to align with your SEO recommendations if they know that organic search drives revenue for the business. Reporting can be labor-intensive and cumbersome if you don’t know what to report on, to whom to report, and which datasets are most important to focus on. That’s why Mordy and Crystal discuss the critical nature of SEO reporting in today’s modern marketing and SEO departments. Joe Hall, SEO Consultant & Principal Analyst at Hall Analysis, shares his 3-pillared framework for choosing which SEO KPIs to report on: communication KPIs, strategic KPIs, and business KPIs. He explains that reporting should educate, inform, and align with key business objectives. We’re talking all things SEO reporting today on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Removing the fluff from SEO reporting Whether they be clients, C-level executives or marketing managers, there’s a slew of both external and internal stakeholders who rely on your SEO information. Good SEO reporting puts them in the game with you. It’s what gets buy-in and what proves the value of your work. After all, it's a lot easier to get a designer, developer, or another stakeholder to align with your SEO recommendations if they know that organic search drives revenue for the business. Reporting can be labor-intensive and cumbersome if you don’t know what to report on, to whom to report, and which datasets are most important to focus on. That’s why Mordy and Crystal discuss the critical nature of SEO reporting in today’s modern marketing and SEO departments. Joe Hall, SEO Consultant & Principal Analyst at Hall Analysis, shares his 3-pillared framework for choosing which SEO KPIs to report on: communication KPIs, strategic KPIs, and business KPIs. He explains that reporting should educate, inform, and align with key business objectives. We’re talking all things SEO reporting today on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 14 | November 23, 2022 | 35 MIN 00:00 / 34:32 This week’s guests Joe Hall Joe Hall is an SEO Consultant and web developer at HallAnalysis.com that drinks too much coffee and has a very complicated relationship with JavaScript. He has been working on the web since the late 90s and has a passion for bringing new opportunities for his clients and users. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's a 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 am Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the one, the only, the greatest, the best ever, the head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. I mean Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello Internet friends and welcome to SERP's Up. I'm very pleased to be here with you. Mordy Oberstein: You were just at a recent event and saw some really cool friends of ours at the- Crystal Carter: Yes, I did. Mordy Oberstein: I don't remember the name of the event that you were doing. Crystal Carter: I've been doing loads. I've been doing loads of events this autumn. It was a local event called Building Brands, which I was really pleased to be doing because they're actually on a Wix website. And they rank really well. There was another I did- Mordy Oberstein: How appropriate. Crystal Carter: I know, I know. I did another event for another team, PPC Live UK. They're also on a Wix website Mordy Oberstein: Also on a Wix website. Amazing. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And both of them are ranking really well and both of them sold out their events. So I'm just saying. Mordy Oberstein: ASMX, MozCon, brightonSEO, Pubcon. Just saying. Crystal Carter: This is the kind of fun you could have. Yeah, just throwing that out there. Mordy Oberstein: Which is perfect placement for the SERP's Up Podcast, is brought to you by Wix, where you can rank and get all of your conference people into your conference. Or if you want to earn click from Google Discover, you don't need to change your max image preview robot's meta tag in order to produce that gloriously large image within Google Discovery, you know the big image that drives the clicks, not the little one that doesn't drive the clicks, because we set it to the max image preview by default. You could change it manually by the page or folder level, but why would you? You don't have to. It's one less thing at Wix. Crystal Carter: One less thing. That's what we're trying to do. Trying to save you time so that you can get out there and make money, get leads, do the things you want to do on the internet. Mordy Oberstein: Or at least brag that you were in Google Discover and got clicks. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's what's up. Mordy Oberstein: Bragging rights are a real thing. Crystal Carter: Bragging rights are definitely valuable. I will work for bragging rights. Mordy Oberstein: Basically. Right? So another great episode for you today, actually, a really important topic, SEO reporting. You know the point in time where you show the value of your work to your boss, client or friends, it's kind of a big deal. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's kind of a big deal. Normally happens once a month. Mordy Oberstein: So we're going to get into some of the challenges come with reporting on your SEO effort as well as a mindset that sets up your reporting for success. And we have SEO OG, Joe Hall will join us to share how he decides on which KPIs he reports on. From there, we'll make a stop over at the top of the SERP to see what works and what doesn't work when trying to rank it, including relevant topical matter. And of course, on from there to the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social for more SEO Awesome. All aboard, episode four 14 of the SERP's Up Podcast. So SEO reporting, everyone's best friend. Crystal Carter: It's really not. I'm pretty sure Aleyda Solis did a Twitter survey on this and they were like, what is the thing that you most dread? And I'm pretty sure that the answer came out being SEO reporting. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why we're doing this episode. SEO reporting is really important. Your SEO efforts don't exist in a vacuum. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: It's all part of the sites and their businesses' overall goals, whatever those may be. And because SEO is part of the site's overall business goals, all sorts of stakeholders are interested in what's happening with the SEO work that you're doing. And then if they're not interested, you need to get the buy-in to make them interested so that they keep the SEO services that you're offering up. You might say they want to know, what's going on. Crystal Carter: I wasn't ready for those delta tones, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I don't have that deep voice to really nail that song, but you know what I'm trying to say. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Kidding aside, folks, whether they be clients, C-level executives and marketing managers, slew of other internal teams who you need help from need good SEO reporting. I'll just say it's a lot easier to get a designer or developer, whoever, to help you out if they know that organic search drives a lot of revenue for the business. So even cross team SEO reporting can be really, really important for getting buy-in. Nothing I'm saying here is novel. It's all pretty intuitive until you get into the weeds and until you start thinking about what to actually report on to whom to report it to and what data sets to use for what data source. Because there are all sorts of pitfalls, all sorts of pitfalls when it comes to SEO reporting, from vanity metrics to overlying on whatever graphs and charts the SEO tools are throwing your way and well beyond, which is why Crystal and I are here to help you with the help of SEO and Joe Hall, to discuss the framework of mindset that you should have behind the reporting that goes into your SEO efforts. And that could be reporting to, again, whatever client, manager or stakeholder, because there's a lot to say about be getting this right. And I've been talking a lot. So Crystal, take it away. What goes into reporting SEO efforts properly? Crystal Carter: I think when you decide what you're going to report on, you need to understand what's most important to the business or the project that you're working on. I've worked on projects before where we were reporting a certain conversion, which was an existing metric on a Google Analytics account. And we got to the end of the month and we were like, "Ugh, we have crushed this. We got way more leads than we've ever seen before. We doubled your leads. They were amazing." And we sat and spoke to the client about this and they're like, "Oh, we didn't notice that." And we were like, "What?" We were like, "Well, it says that all the leads came in and stuff." And they were like, "Oh, well did you get those?" It's like, "No, I didn't because some so and so was on holiday, someone was on vacation, they didn't pick them up, we're not even checking that email anymore."And all of this sort of stuff. So we were reporting on something and thinking we were doing amazing when this was not having any business value because the infrastructure for instance, wasn't set up for that. And so I think that it's very important to understand that whatever you're reporting on actually has some business value to the business. Sometimes people say, "Oh, we increased traffic." But if you increase traffic full stop, that's not necessarily valuable unless it's traffic to the right pages. Sometimes there are websites where they will have lots of tag pages, for instance, or lots of category pages which happen to rank and happen to get lots of traffic and things like that. And cool, awesome. Do you know what I mean? If those don't have actual value to the business, then getting traffic to those pages isn't of any worth. So it's really important that you understand the connection to the business with whatever it is you're reporting on. So I always recommend actually talking to the business owners about what they need to know in order to make actionable decisions across the business and what metrics actually reflect business value to them. With e-commerce, it's fairly straightforward. Sales for instance, is going to be your top metric and then maybe email signups for newsletter or maybe video views or something like that. With lead gen, it can be a little bit trickier. And so you need to understand and make sure that any metrics that you're measuring actually are going somewhere and actually have business value. Talking to the business owners about what they need outside of SEO, outside of the website, is really, really important for them. Mordy Oberstein: And I think for SEO or in SEO, it's really easy to get caught up in vanity metrics because the data is amazing. There's so much data, there's a whole industry of data providers and a lot of it looks pretty linear. Let's say rank. I've always found rank to sometimes lend itself to being a vanity metric. Because as you mentioned, I could rank a website for a million keywords and it's totally irrelevant. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes you're right, it's a little bit harder with rank or things like that because if it's not, let's say an e-commerce, say it's a blog site and they're bringing, they just have ads sense, they're running ads on the blog and that's how they're bringing... So the traffic's super important. But yeah, so I'm bringing all this traffic or we're ranking for all these keywords and it's bringing in all this traffic, but are those going to be users going to click on those ads or those ads are relevant for? So you sort of always have to qualify what the data is you're showing. And I feel that's a point about data in general that goes well beyond just SEO reporting. Data needs to be qualified because data as a concept is fundamentally, you're taking a quantitative thing, numbers or amounts, and you're often trying to explain qualitative things with them. For example, user behavior. And you need to be able to show or to be able to explain how that quantitative metric, and usually it's because there's so much quantity we use to be able to explain the qualitative behavior. But you still sometimes need to bridge that gap and qualify it. And a lot of that is not just in the data that you're presenting, but how you're presenting it and the notes that you're doing it with. And I think it's super valuable. And a lot of the data reporting tools that are out there will do this. They'll give you a point where you can add on notes. And use the heck out of those things to be able to explain, here's what the data is, here's what it says. Because again, not everybody looking at what you're going to have on that report really understands it right off the bat. So you need to explain it and then show them the value. Here's why this data matters for what you're doing, like you said before. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And also, I think you touched on something really important. So with every tool you have, they'll be like, "Oh, you have this chart and that chart and this chart and this one and these scatter points and these averages and this percentage and all of that sort of stuff." And it can be really easy to over report. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: It can be really, really easy. Mordy Oberstein: And it looks really cool, like, "Oh, look at this really cool thing." I had an SEO tool ask me recently, "Can you take a look at this tool?" Blah, blah blah, "What it'd say? Do you know what it does and how you'd use it?" I'm like, "It looks really cool. I'm not really sure how I'd actually use this, actually." Crystal Carter: If you're working with clients or if you're working with stakeholders who are not in the weeds, like you are on the SEO, sometimes if you just give them a wall of stats, they'll just completely turn off, they'll completely switch off. Whereas, if what they need to know is, we got this ROI, we got this ROAS, we got this many clicks, we have this many impressions, just to give them some signals that it's working. If they need to know five metrics, then give them the five metrics, and have the data available if you need to do a deep dive. But just give them the five metrics and they will trust the rest of your data a lot more than if you just give them a wall of data that they don't understand at all. Mordy Oberstein: I think that's a great point. You said that you want to show them whatever you're doing is working. In other words, don't get lost in the numbers per se. Use the numbers to show that it's working. And sometimes, I think we get lost in, especially as SEOs like, "Oh, here are the numbers." First off, no numbers are exact. Whether it be Google's own data, whether it be third party data numbers. These are not the actual number of links that you have. Even the rankings may not be the actual rankings right now. It could have changed, whatever it is. But the numbers indicate a trend of where things are going. And I think that's more important than anything. Are we headed in the right direction? Crystal Carter: Right. Have you moved the needle? Are there some green chutes in this tactic? Because sometimes you'll have a tactic that you're just rolling out and you want to have some kind of sign that it's working in some way and whether or not, as a sort of test. So we're doing this test on a few blogs before we roll it out to hundreds and hundreds of blogs and you want to be able to see some signals that it's beneficial. So yeah, you want to have those metrics. But as you say, yeah, not exact. And I always say don't rely on a single data source. Make sure that you have a few different data sources. Because sometimes it might be that if you're reporting... Because that's another pitfall, you don't want to report on wrong data. So if you're somebody who is a client and you're looking to get SEO support, your SEO will almost certainly go through analytics and make sure that everything is set up properly in the first place. Because if you're getting information that's incorrect, then you will be making incorrect actions based on incorrect data. So you need to make sure that you're getting good data sets, good information, and make sure that you're cross referencing that data from a number of different points. So third party tools will have one set of information about where you're ranking and Google will have another set of information about where you're ranking. For instance, if you go to the SERP, you might see certain something else to show you where you're ranking. So it's important to think about all of those things when you're thinking about data and when you're thinking about reporting. And that's what makes it really interesting because you want to show you're going in a certain direction with things and you use multiple data sources for multiple providers to do that. And it also means, I think reporting is not marketing, reporting is reporting. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And because you're trying to show directionally where things are going, don't worry, "Oh this one data point, or these two data points are showing not the right results, I won't include them." First off, you are ethically obligated to tell the client or manager, whoever it is, the stakeholders, what's happening, even if it's not good. And also, it's going to hit the fan at a certain point. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. Crystal Carter: So you might as well instill the confidence that you know there's a problem, it's not going where we want it to go or this particular aspect is not going where you want it to go. "I've identified the problem, here's the recommended fixes. I got this." Because again, you want to instill confidence and the only way to do this is not to hide the problem because they're going to find out eventually. Oh, and I always say within marketing, if something doesn't go... We're not magicians. Nobody expects you to be a magician. Nobody expects you to be right 100% of the time, every single time about every single idea that you have. However, in marketing, it's not a problem until you run out of ideas. If you don't know what to do next, if you are like, "Oh, this blog's going to be amazing, it's going to be the best thing since sliced bread," and it hits and it's kind of like straightaway doesn't quite do it. If you just go, "Oh, it wasn't good." If your reporting's like, the report says it was bad and that's it, that's not good. Don't do that. If the report's like, "Oh, our numbers are saying that it didn't work, we should do this next." If you say we should do this next or we should try that, or maybe we should try a different topic or maybe we should try a different content medium, that's beneficial. And the reporting can help you prompt new action, new ideas with regards to SEO. And also, if you're able to come out of that, it can build a lot more trust with your stakeholders when you're working. So if you're like, "Okay, I found this problem, it doesn't work, but we can try this based on the data that we have and we'll get a better result." And if you do, then that's great. They'll know that when you hit a bump in the road, you can get out of it. Mordy Oberstein: And that's fundamentally, I think, what reporting... To me, if you want to break it down to what is it fundamentally, it's trust between the stakeholders, between you and your clients or you and the other stakeholders, whoever they may be. And I think if you look at reporting that way, and I think one of the things you can do with reporting to build that trust is to educate whoever it is you're reporting to. Really taking the time to use it as, I think you called this a one point, a teachable moment where you can be able to explain what's happening, what it means, and dragging someone along with you on that journey and bringing them along with you rather on that journey. Crystal Carter: Dragging. Mordy Oberstein: A bad way to put it. You don't want to drag anybody anywhere. You want to bring them along autonomously. Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Creates a deep relationship that's built on trust and mutual work forward to the next goal. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I think that SEO touches on so many different parts of a business that if you're able to do that, then you're more likely to have more conversations about other parts of the business and about analyzing different elements of things that they can do. So yeah, it's really, really valuable. And I think that there are some great tools that help you to do that. So Looker, formally known as Google Data Studio, allows you to make templates, templates which you can add new data sources to. So for instance, if you make an organic performance template, you can plug in different data sources. So you can make one organic performance template and then with using one set of data, like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, whatever, and then you can build on that. So if you're working on multiple projects, you can also make a copy and input new data. And so, as you're building on this, if you get client questions, you can add notes to them, you can add links to them that can help you to educate your stakeholders. So if they don't know what this metric means, if they don't know how to use the document, you can make a link. And I would link to looms. So I'd make looms that said, if you don't know how to use this report, here's a link to a quick walkthrough of how this report works. And that means that when they're sharing it across the business, anybody can understand it. Because that's the other thing about reports, they should be readable by anyone in the business, not just people who are right in it. They should be readable by anyone. Mordy Oberstein: But first off, there's a lot of great templates that are already out there, which I'll link some in the show notes. But let's run a couple Google searches for SEO reporting templates on Looker, or you can use Data Studio because maybe Google doesn't know what Looker is yet. I don't know, it's very confusing at this point. Crystal Carter: There's also templates in Google Data Studio/Looker. Mordy Oberstein: Again, confusing. Name switch is always confusing. But there's also the idea of, okay, now that you have... And I personally think with these sort of things, the framework and the mindset is more important than anything. But there still is a question of what exactly do you report on? Which is why we ask an absolute legend, Joe Hall, who is again an absolute legend in the SEO community. We asked him, "Hey Joe, how do you decide what KPIs to use in your reporting?" Hey, here's what Joe had to say. Joe Hall: When trying to decide which is the right KPI for a client or project, I like to set it up in three different ways. I like to think about KPIs as either communication KPIs, strategic KPIs or business KPIs. Communication KPIs are measurements that communicate an idea and educate the client every time you talk about them. They are used to educate and inform about bigger ideas and things they need to focus on. I usually find these KPIs by talking to the client and asking them specifically what they're interested in. This is because these are the KPIs that they are already used to talking about and they already are familiar with. So it's easier to have a conversation around those KPIs. The second set of KPIs I like to look at are what I call strategic KPIs. These are metrics that are aligned with strategic objectives. So typically, when you are starting out to do SEO, you have some sort of strategy development. And in that strategy development, you have a specific objective. And so to find these strategic KPIs, we can start backwards by looking at the intended objective for the strategy and deciding what types of metrics that can be counted to ascertain the success of that objective, or not, and these are called strategic KPIs. The last type of KPI that I like to look at are called business KPIs. And these are metrics that are aligned with business goals. And I like these because it helps connect the dots between the SEO process and the business objectives, the bigger business objectives. So basically, we could find these KPIs by trying to understand how does the SEO process impact the business model or the bottom line. So for example, if you are a publisher, then the specific KPI that might be good for you would be organic page views because many publishers sell advertising and the amount of page views can make for more expensive advertising. But whatever method you use to pick out your KPIs, whether it's communication, strategic or business, just know that the intention is to educate, inform, and align with key business objectives. And I think if you follow those three areas, you should not have any trouble picking out the perfect KPI for yourself or your client. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Joe. As a really nuance and layered way of looking at KPIs and to the point you are reporting to your clients or internally to whoever should be multi-perspective, multi-layered and tell the entire story. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. Like a fantastic sandwich. It should have many layers and lots of textures and something that- Mordy Oberstein: Something crunchy. Something slightly crunchy. Crystal Carter: Something crunchy, something you can really sink your teeth. Mordy Oberstein: But not lettuce. Lettuce is crunchy but doesn't count. Crystal Carter: Something you can really sink your teeth into. But also something that's really satisfying basically, for everyone. So I think he was talking about lots of different elements of lots of different stakeholders and how he thinks about stakeholders all the way through. So the business KPIs, the strategic KPIs, the SEO KPIs. I think it's a really, really interesting way of thinking about it. And I think it's something that makes sure that everyone feels involved from the beginning because you don't want to have to redo your KPIs further down the line. It's like if you're playing Uno or something and then they start changing the rules. Nobody likes that. You don't want to change- Mordy Oberstein: Wait, there are rules in Uno? Crystal Carter: Yeah, of course there's rules in Uno. Mordy Oberstein: I honestly make those up as you go along. Crystal Carter: No, they got some new ones where you like swap hands or something like that. Mordy Oberstein: You see the double sided UNO cards? Those are awesome. Crystal Carter: I have not. Mordy Oberstein: So we'll talk about that later. Crystal Carter: Other cards are available. But yeah, nobody likes it when you have to change the rules in the middle, it does not build trust at all. So it's really good to think about what he was talking about with regards to the multiple stakeholders and making sure that everyone has a KPI that makes sense to them is super, super valuable. Incredible, great advice. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. And don't forget to give Joe Hall a follow on Twitter, @JoeHall. That's J-O-E H-A-L-L. Joe Hall. It's pretty straightforward, it's Joe Hall. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Joe. So speaking of reporting, I was looking at a little nifty reporting dashboard that I have behind the scenes from folks at Semrush. And I was looking at some data about page or pages that we're ranking for a given keyword and I figured I would share what I found with you because we haven't done this little segment in a while. Personally, it's one of my favorites. And we're going to take a little bit of a thematic look at what kind of works for ranking overall from this particular case of what I saw was ranking at the top of the SERP, which is why we call the name of the segment, From the Top of the SERP. Crystal Carter: All the way from the top. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like these used to be some kind of '80s rock song about being on top, coming right after this segment. Know we got the whole surf thing going on? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Rocky. Crystal Carter: (singing) Mordy Oberstein: I'll arm wrestle you to the top of the SERP. Crystal Carter: There'll be like a montage and some power cords. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, a montage things ranking at the top of the SERP. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So I was looking at ranking after a Google algorithm update and I happened to stumble on something I thought was really interesting. The key word is WHO hand washing. Not like who, as in who are you, but World Health Organization, WHO hand washing. It's confusing. The intent is I think finding what WHO, not the band, but the World Health Organization, recommends as who how to wash your hands. Crystal Carter: What they recommend that you do? Mordy Oberstein: Wash your hands. Who are you? Anyway. Wow, there's a lot of singing in this episode. Crystal Carter: Too much. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to the musical version of the SERP's Up Podcast. Crystal Carter: We should totally do a musical. Mordy Oberstein: It's the SERP's Up Podcast on ice. Crystal Carter: We should absolutely do that. Mordy Oberstein: We should do a musical version of... Anyway, I was looking at this keyword and I saw that Google was ranking a page from, it's from one of the universities, I think, it was the University of Minnesota or something like that, or it was the Minnesota Department of Health. And what I noticed was Google was ranking one page from their website about washing your hands and their hands, everyone's hands, for a really long time. And then all of a sudden, Google stopped ranking that page and swapped it out for a different page. Like, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, why did Google do that? Crystal Carter: On the same domain. So it's a different page on the same domain. Mordy Oberstein: Same domain. Different page for the same website. That's really interesting. So naturally, curiosity got the better of me. I went to the old page and I went to the new page. I'm like, what's the difference between these two pages, that Google would say no more ranking of that page and now let's start ranking this page? And that was really perplexed because the new page I thought wasn't as good. I thought the old page was better. I thought the old page was more... It had better page structure, the information was more digestible, it was a little bit clearer. The UX and the UI of that page was better and the new page was not as good. I'm like, "That's so weird." Okay, what's going on here? But I noticed that topically, the new page included talking about hand sanitizer and washing hands. I'm like, isn't that interesting? And then I dived even deeper, and I noticed that most of the pages ranking on page one all talk about washing their hands with water and with hand sanitizer. And when you go to page two, it gets a little more spotty. Some pages do, some pages don't. I'm like, "Ah, I see what's going on here." Crystal Carter: Right. Google's made a decision that hand sanitizer is something that's important for ranking for this term. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Topically speaking, hand sanitizer and hand washing, if you want to adequately comprehensively cover hand washing, you must also cover hand sanitizing. Crystal Carter: So I'm interested in this one because Google sometimes curates SERP. So for instance, during peak COVID, if you were to look up something like COVID testing, they'd have a very specific set of websites that would rank for that, for instance. And none of them were commercial. All of them were health organizations, for instance. So I'd be interested in knowing where they added that criteria, whether that was criteria that came from, say like the CDC or something. Maybe the CDC changed their criteria because that's the other thing, sometimes with certain SERPs, they will prioritize content that aligns with official information. So I wondered if that decision came from something like the CDC or if that's something that they saw from consensus that they saw that users were looking more for hand sanitizer when they were looking at hand washing. Because that's probably a question, can I wash my hands with hand sanitizer or- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, totally. Crystal Carter: ... Hand sanitizer instead of washing my hands if I don't have option to wash my hands or something to that effect. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. And in fact, when I looked at, not just this query, but I started looking at a whole bunch of other kinds of hand washing queries, and it's the same pattern. The hand sanitizer pages or the pages that talk about hand sanitizing with the hand washing all started to rank. I think that's what's happening. I think that semantically speaking, Google realized at a certain point, topically speaking, these two things now are very much a part of the same corpus of content. And you sort of have to have both. Not as a hard fast rule. But again, to comprehensively cover the topic, google kind of realize this has to be there. Because yeah, all the time when you're out there and you're like, "I'm not near a sink. Can I wash my hands or can I sanitize my hands with sanitizer?" By the way, I think at a certain point you can't. You need to actually wash it off at a certain point. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I only know that because my wife's a nurse and she told me that. Google didn't tell me that. Crystal Carter: This is true. But I wonder if this changes with different relationships between other entities. So for instance, if you think of famous couples or something, I don't know, Jennifer Lopez recently got remarried to Ben Affleck. Mordy Oberstein: What? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: No. Crystal Carter: Last time I checked. You didn't know? Mordy Oberstein: Poor A-Rod. Crystal Carter: It's not new. It's not new. Mordy Oberstein: This is not new? Crystal Carter: Not new. So sometimes when you look up SERPS, for instance, certainly Wikipedia will say the spouse is this person or sometimes when you look up SERPs like that, they'll have an information box that just says who the spouse is, for instance. So I'd be interested to know if Google changes that information, that they'll rank information around content that has the most recent connection, for instance, if it's like a spouse or something. Mordy Oberstein: I know for a fact, because I've tested this out. I've tested it out on sports trades. So a player has traded on one team to the next team. It's so quick. The knowledge panel updates, not the pictures. The pictures obviously don't, takes us a little bit of time or it might not get it all right. But it'll tell you who is this, what team they play for. It'll the new team right within an hour. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: It's super quick. Crystal Carter: Right. So then does that mean that the pages that rank within the sort of core search results, do they adjust the ranking there so that whichever one has the most recent one and ranks better? Mordy Oberstein: That's interesting. That's a really good question. But it also just goes to show you that it's not just what's on your page that it helps you rank, but it's also what's not on your page that helps you not rank. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. This is something that people need to think about. And I think it's again, one of the reasons why we do this segment at all the Top of the SERP, because it's worth looking at what's on the SERP as well in order to make sure that you've got the right content for what you need to do. Mordy Oberstein: So From the Top of the SERP, to the top of what's happening in the SEO news, here's this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, they have arrived. Some of the product updates around Google Shopping and local search now previously at Google's search on event have arrived, or arriving, depending on where you live. Per Search Engine Journal's Matt Southern, Google's new local search features are finally here. So these updates include being able to use serve to find local eateries that serve a certain dish, meaning you could search for General Tso's chicken near me, which I plan on doing immediately following this recording. You could also take a picture of the dish via Google Lens and use that to search for local establishment that serve that particular dish that you a picture of, which is amazing. Also, and this is super cool, in my honest opinion, AR is coming to local search in London, New York, LA, Paris, and Tokyo to start. It's called Search With Live You. And it basically means you can use your phone's camera point in a local shop, and you'll get a layover of visual information as to if the establishment is open, how busy it is and so forth. I was just in Times Square, New York City visiting my father. This would've been super useful. There were a million business around. If I could have simply picked up my phone, pointed it at the various establishments and just kind of did a 360, I could see how busy they were, which ones are open and made a better decision, which one I wanted to frequent instead walking around for a half hour, in and out of various shops, which we actually did. Anyway, can be very, very highly useful, super cool technology and is absolutely amazing, particularly in an area like Times Square, New York where there's a high concentration of businesses. And with that, that is this week's snappiest of Snappy News. Boy, that Snappy News of short tops. Now I'm connecting back the other segment. You see what I'm doing there? Top of the SERP, Top SEO news, so much- Crystal Carter: Flawless- Mordy Oberstein: Flawless. Flawless victory for all you video game folks in the 1990s, not in the 1990s, it's got to be later in the '90s, right? Crystal Carter: Finish him. Mordy Oberstein: Mortal Kombat. And speaking of finishing, let's finish this podcast by ending off with who you should be following for SEO Awesome. And since we're talking about SEO reporting, I think one of the greatest people out there who has done a lot by way of SEO reporting is speaking of Google Data Studio or Google Looker Dashboard, she definitely has one. She is the one, the only, Christina Brodzky LeVasseur. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. She has some fantastic Google Data Studio templates she shares around G4, around other types of reporting. And she's a great person to follow, particularly if you're getting started with SEO. She talks about reporting, she also talks about client relationships, which is why you're reporting it all, is to make sure that you're managing your client relationships. And yeah, she's a great person to follow for lots of different reasons- Mordy Oberstein: And is super helpful. Crystal Carter: Super helpful. Mordy Oberstein: Super accessible. So if you have questions and we'll link to her Google Looker, I'm never going to get this right, template. And if you have questions, just go on Twitter and she'll answer them for you. She's super accessible, so I think she's a great resource for you. So don't just follow Christina, but engage and interact with Christina because she's a wealth of information and super happy to share it. And on Twitter, it's @CBrodzky. That's B-R-O-D-Z-K-Y, over on Twitter. Of course, we'll link to her Twitter profile in the show notes. And that's it. Crystal Carter: That's it, that's all. Is that everything? Mordy Oberstein: I'm here to report that we finished the episode. See what I did there? Crystal Carter: I see. We have a fantastic KPI of having recorded a podcast. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Crystal Carter: How many recordings? One. Mordy Oberstein: One. One recording. That's our data, one. Crystal Carter: That is our data. Our data says one recording. Well done. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like the Count from Sesame Street right now. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry? We're back next week with an all new episode. We dive into the value of Google Reviews. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of 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, we're already on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Joe Hall Christina Levasseur Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Hall Analysis SEO Reporting Dashboard Templates News: Google’s New Local Search Features Are Finally Here Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Joe Hall Christina Levasseur Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Hall Analysis SEO Reporting Dashboard Templates News: Google’s New Local Search Features Are Finally Here Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's a 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 am Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the one, the only, the greatest, the best ever, the head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. I mean Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello Internet friends and welcome to SERP's Up. I'm very pleased to be here with you. Mordy Oberstein: You were just at a recent event and saw some really cool friends of ours at the- Crystal Carter: Yes, I did. Mordy Oberstein: I don't remember the name of the event that you were doing. Crystal Carter: I've been doing loads. I've been doing loads of events this autumn. It was a local event called Building Brands, which I was really pleased to be doing because they're actually on a Wix website. And they rank really well. There was another I did- Mordy Oberstein: How appropriate. Crystal Carter: I know, I know. I did another event for another team, PPC Live UK. They're also on a Wix website Mordy Oberstein: Also on a Wix website. Amazing. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And both of them are ranking really well and both of them sold out their events. So I'm just saying. Mordy Oberstein: ASMX, MozCon, brightonSEO, Pubcon. Just saying. Crystal Carter: This is the kind of fun you could have. Yeah, just throwing that out there. Mordy Oberstein: Which is perfect placement for the SERP's Up Podcast, is brought to you by Wix, where you can rank and get all of your conference people into your conference. Or if you want to earn click from Google Discover, you don't need to change your max image preview robot's meta tag in order to produce that gloriously large image within Google Discovery, you know the big image that drives the clicks, not the little one that doesn't drive the clicks, because we set it to the max image preview by default. You could change it manually by the page or folder level, but why would you? You don't have to. It's one less thing at Wix. Crystal Carter: One less thing. That's what we're trying to do. Trying to save you time so that you can get out there and make money, get leads, do the things you want to do on the internet. Mordy Oberstein: Or at least brag that you were in Google Discover and got clicks. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's what's up. Mordy Oberstein: Bragging rights are a real thing. Crystal Carter: Bragging rights are definitely valuable. I will work for bragging rights. Mordy Oberstein: Basically. Right? So another great episode for you today, actually, a really important topic, SEO reporting. You know the point in time where you show the value of your work to your boss, client or friends, it's kind of a big deal. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's kind of a big deal. Normally happens once a month. Mordy Oberstein: So we're going to get into some of the challenges come with reporting on your SEO effort as well as a mindset that sets up your reporting for success. And we have SEO OG, Joe Hall will join us to share how he decides on which KPIs he reports on. From there, we'll make a stop over at the top of the SERP to see what works and what doesn't work when trying to rank it, including relevant topical matter. And of course, on from there to the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social for more SEO Awesome. All aboard, episode four 14 of the SERP's Up Podcast. So SEO reporting, everyone's best friend. Crystal Carter: It's really not. I'm pretty sure Aleyda Solis did a Twitter survey on this and they were like, what is the thing that you most dread? And I'm pretty sure that the answer came out being SEO reporting. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why we're doing this episode. SEO reporting is really important. Your SEO efforts don't exist in a vacuum. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: It's all part of the sites and their businesses' overall goals, whatever those may be. And because SEO is part of the site's overall business goals, all sorts of stakeholders are interested in what's happening with the SEO work that you're doing. And then if they're not interested, you need to get the buy-in to make them interested so that they keep the SEO services that you're offering up. You might say they want to know, what's going on. Crystal Carter: I wasn't ready for those delta tones, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I don't have that deep voice to really nail that song, but you know what I'm trying to say. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Kidding aside, folks, whether they be clients, C-level executives and marketing managers, slew of other internal teams who you need help from need good SEO reporting. I'll just say it's a lot easier to get a designer or developer, whoever, to help you out if they know that organic search drives a lot of revenue for the business. So even cross team SEO reporting can be really, really important for getting buy-in. Nothing I'm saying here is novel. It's all pretty intuitive until you get into the weeds and until you start thinking about what to actually report on to whom to report it to and what data sets to use for what data source. Because there are all sorts of pitfalls, all sorts of pitfalls when it comes to SEO reporting, from vanity metrics to overlying on whatever graphs and charts the SEO tools are throwing your way and well beyond, which is why Crystal and I are here to help you with the help of SEO and Joe Hall, to discuss the framework of mindset that you should have behind the reporting that goes into your SEO efforts. And that could be reporting to, again, whatever client, manager or stakeholder, because there's a lot to say about be getting this right. And I've been talking a lot. So Crystal, take it away. What goes into reporting SEO efforts properly? Crystal Carter: I think when you decide what you're going to report on, you need to understand what's most important to the business or the project that you're working on. I've worked on projects before where we were reporting a certain conversion, which was an existing metric on a Google Analytics account. And we got to the end of the month and we were like, "Ugh, we have crushed this. We got way more leads than we've ever seen before. We doubled your leads. They were amazing." And we sat and spoke to the client about this and they're like, "Oh, we didn't notice that." And we were like, "What?" We were like, "Well, it says that all the leads came in and stuff." And they were like, "Oh, well did you get those?" It's like, "No, I didn't because some so and so was on holiday, someone was on vacation, they didn't pick them up, we're not even checking that email anymore."And all of this sort of stuff. So we were reporting on something and thinking we were doing amazing when this was not having any business value because the infrastructure for instance, wasn't set up for that. And so I think that it's very important to understand that whatever you're reporting on actually has some business value to the business. Sometimes people say, "Oh, we increased traffic." But if you increase traffic full stop, that's not necessarily valuable unless it's traffic to the right pages. Sometimes there are websites where they will have lots of tag pages, for instance, or lots of category pages which happen to rank and happen to get lots of traffic and things like that. And cool, awesome. Do you know what I mean? If those don't have actual value to the business, then getting traffic to those pages isn't of any worth. So it's really important that you understand the connection to the business with whatever it is you're reporting on. So I always recommend actually talking to the business owners about what they need to know in order to make actionable decisions across the business and what metrics actually reflect business value to them. With e-commerce, it's fairly straightforward. Sales for instance, is going to be your top metric and then maybe email signups for newsletter or maybe video views or something like that. With lead gen, it can be a little bit trickier. And so you need to understand and make sure that any metrics that you're measuring actually are going somewhere and actually have business value. Talking to the business owners about what they need outside of SEO, outside of the website, is really, really important for them. Mordy Oberstein: And I think for SEO or in SEO, it's really easy to get caught up in vanity metrics because the data is amazing. There's so much data, there's a whole industry of data providers and a lot of it looks pretty linear. Let's say rank. I've always found rank to sometimes lend itself to being a vanity metric. Because as you mentioned, I could rank a website for a million keywords and it's totally irrelevant. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes you're right, it's a little bit harder with rank or things like that because if it's not, let's say an e-commerce, say it's a blog site and they're bringing, they just have ads sense, they're running ads on the blog and that's how they're bringing... So the traffic's super important. But yeah, so I'm bringing all this traffic or we're ranking for all these keywords and it's bringing in all this traffic, but are those going to be users going to click on those ads or those ads are relevant for? So you sort of always have to qualify what the data is you're showing. And I feel that's a point about data in general that goes well beyond just SEO reporting. Data needs to be qualified because data as a concept is fundamentally, you're taking a quantitative thing, numbers or amounts, and you're often trying to explain qualitative things with them. For example, user behavior. And you need to be able to show or to be able to explain how that quantitative metric, and usually it's because there's so much quantity we use to be able to explain the qualitative behavior. But you still sometimes need to bridge that gap and qualify it. And a lot of that is not just in the data that you're presenting, but how you're presenting it and the notes that you're doing it with. And I think it's super valuable. And a lot of the data reporting tools that are out there will do this. They'll give you a point where you can add on notes. And use the heck out of those things to be able to explain, here's what the data is, here's what it says. Because again, not everybody looking at what you're going to have on that report really understands it right off the bat. So you need to explain it and then show them the value. Here's why this data matters for what you're doing, like you said before. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And also, I think you touched on something really important. So with every tool you have, they'll be like, "Oh, you have this chart and that chart and this chart and this one and these scatter points and these averages and this percentage and all of that sort of stuff." And it can be really easy to over report. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: It can be really, really easy. Mordy Oberstein: And it looks really cool, like, "Oh, look at this really cool thing." I had an SEO tool ask me recently, "Can you take a look at this tool?" Blah, blah blah, "What it'd say? Do you know what it does and how you'd use it?" I'm like, "It looks really cool. I'm not really sure how I'd actually use this, actually." Crystal Carter: If you're working with clients or if you're working with stakeholders who are not in the weeds, like you are on the SEO, sometimes if you just give them a wall of stats, they'll just completely turn off, they'll completely switch off. Whereas, if what they need to know is, we got this ROI, we got this ROAS, we got this many clicks, we have this many impressions, just to give them some signals that it's working. If they need to know five metrics, then give them the five metrics, and have the data available if you need to do a deep dive. But just give them the five metrics and they will trust the rest of your data a lot more than if you just give them a wall of data that they don't understand at all. Mordy Oberstein: I think that's a great point. You said that you want to show them whatever you're doing is working. In other words, don't get lost in the numbers per se. Use the numbers to show that it's working. And sometimes, I think we get lost in, especially as SEOs like, "Oh, here are the numbers." First off, no numbers are exact. Whether it be Google's own data, whether it be third party data numbers. These are not the actual number of links that you have. Even the rankings may not be the actual rankings right now. It could have changed, whatever it is. But the numbers indicate a trend of where things are going. And I think that's more important than anything. Are we headed in the right direction? Crystal Carter: Right. Have you moved the needle? Are there some green chutes in this tactic? Because sometimes you'll have a tactic that you're just rolling out and you want to have some kind of sign that it's working in some way and whether or not, as a sort of test. So we're doing this test on a few blogs before we roll it out to hundreds and hundreds of blogs and you want to be able to see some signals that it's beneficial. So yeah, you want to have those metrics. But as you say, yeah, not exact. And I always say don't rely on a single data source. Make sure that you have a few different data sources. Because sometimes it might be that if you're reporting... Because that's another pitfall, you don't want to report on wrong data. So if you're somebody who is a client and you're looking to get SEO support, your SEO will almost certainly go through analytics and make sure that everything is set up properly in the first place. Because if you're getting information that's incorrect, then you will be making incorrect actions based on incorrect data. So you need to make sure that you're getting good data sets, good information, and make sure that you're cross referencing that data from a number of different points. So third party tools will have one set of information about where you're ranking and Google will have another set of information about where you're ranking. For instance, if you go to the SERP, you might see certain something else to show you where you're ranking. So it's important to think about all of those things when you're thinking about data and when you're thinking about reporting. And that's what makes it really interesting because you want to show you're going in a certain direction with things and you use multiple data sources for multiple providers to do that. And it also means, I think reporting is not marketing, reporting is reporting. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And because you're trying to show directionally where things are going, don't worry, "Oh this one data point, or these two data points are showing not the right results, I won't include them." First off, you are ethically obligated to tell the client or manager, whoever it is, the stakeholders, what's happening, even if it's not good. And also, it's going to hit the fan at a certain point. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. Crystal Carter: So you might as well instill the confidence that you know there's a problem, it's not going where we want it to go or this particular aspect is not going where you want it to go. "I've identified the problem, here's the recommended fixes. I got this." Because again, you want to instill confidence and the only way to do this is not to hide the problem because they're going to find out eventually. Oh, and I always say within marketing, if something doesn't go... We're not magicians. Nobody expects you to be a magician. Nobody expects you to be right 100% of the time, every single time about every single idea that you have. However, in marketing, it's not a problem until you run out of ideas. If you don't know what to do next, if you are like, "Oh, this blog's going to be amazing, it's going to be the best thing since sliced bread," and it hits and it's kind of like straightaway doesn't quite do it. If you just go, "Oh, it wasn't good." If your reporting's like, the report says it was bad and that's it, that's not good. Don't do that. If the report's like, "Oh, our numbers are saying that it didn't work, we should do this next." If you say we should do this next or we should try that, or maybe we should try a different topic or maybe we should try a different content medium, that's beneficial. And the reporting can help you prompt new action, new ideas with regards to SEO. And also, if you're able to come out of that, it can build a lot more trust with your stakeholders when you're working. So if you're like, "Okay, I found this problem, it doesn't work, but we can try this based on the data that we have and we'll get a better result." And if you do, then that's great. They'll know that when you hit a bump in the road, you can get out of it. Mordy Oberstein: And that's fundamentally, I think, what reporting... To me, if you want to break it down to what is it fundamentally, it's trust between the stakeholders, between you and your clients or you and the other stakeholders, whoever they may be. And I think if you look at reporting that way, and I think one of the things you can do with reporting to build that trust is to educate whoever it is you're reporting to. Really taking the time to use it as, I think you called this a one point, a teachable moment where you can be able to explain what's happening, what it means, and dragging someone along with you on that journey and bringing them along with you rather on that journey. Crystal Carter: Dragging. Mordy Oberstein: A bad way to put it. You don't want to drag anybody anywhere. You want to bring them along autonomously. Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Creates a deep relationship that's built on trust and mutual work forward to the next goal. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I think that SEO touches on so many different parts of a business that if you're able to do that, then you're more likely to have more conversations about other parts of the business and about analyzing different elements of things that they can do. So yeah, it's really, really valuable. And I think that there are some great tools that help you to do that. So Looker, formally known as Google Data Studio, allows you to make templates, templates which you can add new data sources to. So for instance, if you make an organic performance template, you can plug in different data sources. So you can make one organic performance template and then with using one set of data, like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, whatever, and then you can build on that. So if you're working on multiple projects, you can also make a copy and input new data. And so, as you're building on this, if you get client questions, you can add notes to them, you can add links to them that can help you to educate your stakeholders. So if they don't know what this metric means, if they don't know how to use the document, you can make a link. And I would link to looms. So I'd make looms that said, if you don't know how to use this report, here's a link to a quick walkthrough of how this report works. And that means that when they're sharing it across the business, anybody can understand it. Because that's the other thing about reports, they should be readable by anyone in the business, not just people who are right in it. They should be readable by anyone. Mordy Oberstein: But first off, there's a lot of great templates that are already out there, which I'll link some in the show notes. But let's run a couple Google searches for SEO reporting templates on Looker, or you can use Data Studio because maybe Google doesn't know what Looker is yet. I don't know, it's very confusing at this point. Crystal Carter: There's also templates in Google Data Studio/Looker. Mordy Oberstein: Again, confusing. Name switch is always confusing. But there's also the idea of, okay, now that you have... And I personally think with these sort of things, the framework and the mindset is more important than anything. But there still is a question of what exactly do you report on? Which is why we ask an absolute legend, Joe Hall, who is again an absolute legend in the SEO community. We asked him, "Hey Joe, how do you decide what KPIs to use in your reporting?" Hey, here's what Joe had to say. Joe Hall: When trying to decide which is the right KPI for a client or project, I like to set it up in three different ways. I like to think about KPIs as either communication KPIs, strategic KPIs or business KPIs. Communication KPIs are measurements that communicate an idea and educate the client every time you talk about them. They are used to educate and inform about bigger ideas and things they need to focus on. I usually find these KPIs by talking to the client and asking them specifically what they're interested in. This is because these are the KPIs that they are already used to talking about and they already are familiar with. So it's easier to have a conversation around those KPIs. The second set of KPIs I like to look at are what I call strategic KPIs. These are metrics that are aligned with strategic objectives. So typically, when you are starting out to do SEO, you have some sort of strategy development. And in that strategy development, you have a specific objective. And so to find these strategic KPIs, we can start backwards by looking at the intended objective for the strategy and deciding what types of metrics that can be counted to ascertain the success of that objective, or not, and these are called strategic KPIs. The last type of KPI that I like to look at are called business KPIs. And these are metrics that are aligned with business goals. And I like these because it helps connect the dots between the SEO process and the business objectives, the bigger business objectives. So basically, we could find these KPIs by trying to understand how does the SEO process impact the business model or the bottom line. So for example, if you are a publisher, then the specific KPI that might be good for you would be organic page views because many publishers sell advertising and the amount of page views can make for more expensive advertising. But whatever method you use to pick out your KPIs, whether it's communication, strategic or business, just know that the intention is to educate, inform, and align with key business objectives. And I think if you follow those three areas, you should not have any trouble picking out the perfect KPI for yourself or your client. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Joe. As a really nuance and layered way of looking at KPIs and to the point you are reporting to your clients or internally to whoever should be multi-perspective, multi-layered and tell the entire story. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. Like a fantastic sandwich. It should have many layers and lots of textures and something that- Mordy Oberstein: Something crunchy. Something slightly crunchy. Crystal Carter: Something crunchy, something you can really sink your teeth. Mordy Oberstein: But not lettuce. Lettuce is crunchy but doesn't count. Crystal Carter: Something you can really sink your teeth into. But also something that's really satisfying basically, for everyone. So I think he was talking about lots of different elements of lots of different stakeholders and how he thinks about stakeholders all the way through. So the business KPIs, the strategic KPIs, the SEO KPIs. I think it's a really, really interesting way of thinking about it. And I think it's something that makes sure that everyone feels involved from the beginning because you don't want to have to redo your KPIs further down the line. It's like if you're playing Uno or something and then they start changing the rules. Nobody likes that. You don't want to change- Mordy Oberstein: Wait, there are rules in Uno? Crystal Carter: Yeah, of course there's rules in Uno. Mordy Oberstein: I honestly make those up as you go along. Crystal Carter: No, they got some new ones where you like swap hands or something like that. Mordy Oberstein: You see the double sided UNO cards? Those are awesome. Crystal Carter: I have not. Mordy Oberstein: So we'll talk about that later. Crystal Carter: Other cards are available. But yeah, nobody likes it when you have to change the rules in the middle, it does not build trust at all. So it's really good to think about what he was talking about with regards to the multiple stakeholders and making sure that everyone has a KPI that makes sense to them is super, super valuable. Incredible, great advice. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. And don't forget to give Joe Hall a follow on Twitter, @JoeHall. That's J-O-E H-A-L-L. Joe Hall. It's pretty straightforward, it's Joe Hall. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Joe. So speaking of reporting, I was looking at a little nifty reporting dashboard that I have behind the scenes from folks at Semrush. And I was looking at some data about page or pages that we're ranking for a given keyword and I figured I would share what I found with you because we haven't done this little segment in a while. Personally, it's one of my favorites. And we're going to take a little bit of a thematic look at what kind of works for ranking overall from this particular case of what I saw was ranking at the top of the SERP, which is why we call the name of the segment, From the Top of the SERP. Crystal Carter: All the way from the top. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like these used to be some kind of '80s rock song about being on top, coming right after this segment. Know we got the whole surf thing going on? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Rocky. Crystal Carter: (singing) Mordy Oberstein: I'll arm wrestle you to the top of the SERP. Crystal Carter: There'll be like a montage and some power cords. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, a montage things ranking at the top of the SERP. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So I was looking at ranking after a Google algorithm update and I happened to stumble on something I thought was really interesting. The key word is WHO hand washing. Not like who, as in who are you, but World Health Organization, WHO hand washing. It's confusing. The intent is I think finding what WHO, not the band, but the World Health Organization, recommends as who how to wash your hands. Crystal Carter: What they recommend that you do? Mordy Oberstein: Wash your hands. Who are you? Anyway. Wow, there's a lot of singing in this episode. Crystal Carter: Too much. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to the musical version of the SERP's Up Podcast. Crystal Carter: We should totally do a musical. Mordy Oberstein: It's the SERP's Up Podcast on ice. Crystal Carter: We should absolutely do that. Mordy Oberstein: We should do a musical version of... Anyway, I was looking at this keyword and I saw that Google was ranking a page from, it's from one of the universities, I think, it was the University of Minnesota or something like that, or it was the Minnesota Department of Health. And what I noticed was Google was ranking one page from their website about washing your hands and their hands, everyone's hands, for a really long time. And then all of a sudden, Google stopped ranking that page and swapped it out for a different page. Like, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, why did Google do that? Crystal Carter: On the same domain. So it's a different page on the same domain. Mordy Oberstein: Same domain. Different page for the same website. That's really interesting. So naturally, curiosity got the better of me. I went to the old page and I went to the new page. I'm like, what's the difference between these two pages, that Google would say no more ranking of that page and now let's start ranking this page? And that was really perplexed because the new page I thought wasn't as good. I thought the old page was better. I thought the old page was more... It had better page structure, the information was more digestible, it was a little bit clearer. The UX and the UI of that page was better and the new page was not as good. I'm like, "That's so weird." Okay, what's going on here? But I noticed that topically, the new page included talking about hand sanitizer and washing hands. I'm like, isn't that interesting? And then I dived even deeper, and I noticed that most of the pages ranking on page one all talk about washing their hands with water and with hand sanitizer. And when you go to page two, it gets a little more spotty. Some pages do, some pages don't. I'm like, "Ah, I see what's going on here." Crystal Carter: Right. Google's made a decision that hand sanitizer is something that's important for ranking for this term. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Topically speaking, hand sanitizer and hand washing, if you want to adequately comprehensively cover hand washing, you must also cover hand sanitizing. Crystal Carter: So I'm interested in this one because Google sometimes curates SERP. So for instance, during peak COVID, if you were to look up something like COVID testing, they'd have a very specific set of websites that would rank for that, for instance. And none of them were commercial. All of them were health organizations, for instance. So I'd be interested in knowing where they added that criteria, whether that was criteria that came from, say like the CDC or something. Maybe the CDC changed their criteria because that's the other thing, sometimes with certain SERPs, they will prioritize content that aligns with official information. So I wondered if that decision came from something like the CDC or if that's something that they saw from consensus that they saw that users were looking more for hand sanitizer when they were looking at hand washing. Because that's probably a question, can I wash my hands with hand sanitizer or- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, totally. Crystal Carter: ... Hand sanitizer instead of washing my hands if I don't have option to wash my hands or something to that effect. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. And in fact, when I looked at, not just this query, but I started looking at a whole bunch of other kinds of hand washing queries, and it's the same pattern. The hand sanitizer pages or the pages that talk about hand sanitizing with the hand washing all started to rank. I think that's what's happening. I think that semantically speaking, Google realized at a certain point, topically speaking, these two things now are very much a part of the same corpus of content. And you sort of have to have both. Not as a hard fast rule. But again, to comprehensively cover the topic, google kind of realize this has to be there. Because yeah, all the time when you're out there and you're like, "I'm not near a sink. Can I wash my hands or can I sanitize my hands with sanitizer?" By the way, I think at a certain point you can't. You need to actually wash it off at a certain point. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I only know that because my wife's a nurse and she told me that. Google didn't tell me that. Crystal Carter: This is true. But I wonder if this changes with different relationships between other entities. So for instance, if you think of famous couples or something, I don't know, Jennifer Lopez recently got remarried to Ben Affleck. Mordy Oberstein: What? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: No. Crystal Carter: Last time I checked. You didn't know? Mordy Oberstein: Poor A-Rod. Crystal Carter: It's not new. It's not new. Mordy Oberstein: This is not new? Crystal Carter: Not new. So sometimes when you look up SERPS, for instance, certainly Wikipedia will say the spouse is this person or sometimes when you look up SERPs like that, they'll have an information box that just says who the spouse is, for instance. So I'd be interested to know if Google changes that information, that they'll rank information around content that has the most recent connection, for instance, if it's like a spouse or something. Mordy Oberstein: I know for a fact, because I've tested this out. I've tested it out on sports trades. So a player has traded on one team to the next team. It's so quick. The knowledge panel updates, not the pictures. The pictures obviously don't, takes us a little bit of time or it might not get it all right. But it'll tell you who is this, what team they play for. It'll the new team right within an hour. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: It's super quick. Crystal Carter: Right. So then does that mean that the pages that rank within the sort of core search results, do they adjust the ranking there so that whichever one has the most recent one and ranks better? Mordy Oberstein: That's interesting. That's a really good question. But it also just goes to show you that it's not just what's on your page that it helps you rank, but it's also what's not on your page that helps you not rank. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. This is something that people need to think about. And I think it's again, one of the reasons why we do this segment at all the Top of the SERP, because it's worth looking at what's on the SERP as well in order to make sure that you've got the right content for what you need to do. Mordy Oberstein: So From the Top of the SERP, to the top of what's happening in the SEO news, here's this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, they have arrived. Some of the product updates around Google Shopping and local search now previously at Google's search on event have arrived, or arriving, depending on where you live. Per Search Engine Journal's Matt Southern, Google's new local search features are finally here. So these updates include being able to use serve to find local eateries that serve a certain dish, meaning you could search for General Tso's chicken near me, which I plan on doing immediately following this recording. You could also take a picture of the dish via Google Lens and use that to search for local establishment that serve that particular dish that you a picture of, which is amazing. Also, and this is super cool, in my honest opinion, AR is coming to local search in London, New York, LA, Paris, and Tokyo to start. It's called Search With Live You. And it basically means you can use your phone's camera point in a local shop, and you'll get a layover of visual information as to if the establishment is open, how busy it is and so forth. I was just in Times Square, New York City visiting my father. This would've been super useful. There were a million business around. If I could have simply picked up my phone, pointed it at the various establishments and just kind of did a 360, I could see how busy they were, which ones are open and made a better decision, which one I wanted to frequent instead walking around for a half hour, in and out of various shops, which we actually did. Anyway, can be very, very highly useful, super cool technology and is absolutely amazing, particularly in an area like Times Square, New York where there's a high concentration of businesses. And with that, that is this week's snappiest of Snappy News. Boy, that Snappy News of short tops. Now I'm connecting back the other segment. You see what I'm doing there? Top of the SERP, Top SEO news, so much- Crystal Carter: Flawless- Mordy Oberstein: Flawless. Flawless victory for all you video game folks in the 1990s, not in the 1990s, it's got to be later in the '90s, right? Crystal Carter: Finish him. Mordy Oberstein: Mortal Kombat. And speaking of finishing, let's finish this podcast by ending off with who you should be following for SEO Awesome. And since we're talking about SEO reporting, I think one of the greatest people out there who has done a lot by way of SEO reporting is speaking of Google Data Studio or Google Looker Dashboard, she definitely has one. She is the one, the only, Christina Brodzky LeVasseur. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. She has some fantastic Google Data Studio templates she shares around G4, around other types of reporting. And she's a great person to follow, particularly if you're getting started with SEO. She talks about reporting, she also talks about client relationships, which is why you're reporting it all, is to make sure that you're managing your client relationships. And yeah, she's a great person to follow for lots of different reasons- Mordy Oberstein: And is super helpful. Crystal Carter: Super helpful. Mordy Oberstein: Super accessible. So if you have questions and we'll link to her Google Looker, I'm never going to get this right, template. And if you have questions, just go on Twitter and she'll answer them for you. She's super accessible, so I think she's a great resource for you. So don't just follow Christina, but engage and interact with Christina because she's a wealth of information and super happy to share it. And on Twitter, it's @CBrodzky. That's B-R-O-D-Z-K-Y, over on Twitter. Of course, we'll link to her Twitter profile in the show notes. And that's it. Crystal Carter: That's it, that's all. Is that everything? Mordy Oberstein: I'm here to report that we finished the episode. See what I did there? Crystal Carter: I see. We have a fantastic KPI of having recorded a podcast. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Crystal Carter: How many recordings? One. Mordy Oberstein: One. One recording. That's our data, one. Crystal Carter: That is our data. Our data says one recording. Well done. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like the Count from Sesame Street right now. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry? We're back next week with an all new episode. We dive into the value of Google Reviews. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of 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, we're already 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

With so many SEO tasks how do you know where to start first?! Get your (SEO) priorities in order as Wix’s own Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter help you bring order to the chaos with tips on how to prioritize SEO tasks. SEO priorities are not a linear equation and can differ from one SEO to another. Learn how priorities change if you’re an SEO consultant as compared to being at an SEO agency with Nicky LeRoy and Griffen Roer. The team also explores Google's efforts to compete with Amazon in the e-commerce market and the impact of the August 2023 Google Core update, which had a unique rollout and caused significant rank fluctuations. Relax as this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast gives you a healthy look at prioritization of work and goals. Back How to set SEO priorities With so many SEO tasks how do you know where to start first?! Get your (SEO) priorities in order as Wix’s own Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter help you bring order to the chaos with tips on how to prioritize SEO tasks. SEO priorities are not a linear equation and can differ from one SEO to another. Learn how priorities change if you’re an SEO consultant as compared to being at an SEO agency with Nicky LeRoy and Griffen Roer. The team also explores Google's efforts to compete with Amazon in the e-commerce market and the impact of the August 2023 Google Core update, which had a unique rollout and caused significant rank fluctuations. Relax as this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast gives you a healthy look at prioritization of work and goals. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 56 | September 20, 2023 | 45 MIN 00:00 / 45:08 This week’s guests Nick LeRoy Nick LeRoy is a freelance SEO consultant, podcaster, and newsletter author in St. Paul, Minnesota. He specializes in SEO strategy, technical SEO, editorial strategy, and website migrations through his company Nick LeRoy Consulting Nick is the author of the #SEOForLunch newsletter and owner of the boutique job board SEOjobs.com Griffin Roer Griffin Roer is the founder & CEO of Uproer, a search marketing agency that partners with SaaS & Ecommerce companies. He discovered SEO in 2012 during a self-taught web development course and hasn’t looked back. After years of working as an SEO consultant to some of the country’s largest retail and tech brands, Griffin pursued his entrepreneurial calling of starting an agency in 2017. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha! Maholo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who knows how to set priorities right, our Head of SEO Communications, the one of the only, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, Mordy Oberstein, the fantastic, incredible, amazing, stupendous, magnificent Mordy Oberstein. Mordy Oberstein: Your nose is growing. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy, who cannot- Mordy Oberstein: If you know, you know. Crystal Carter: ... take a compliment, but is- Mordy Oberstein: No, I don't do compliments well. I have a hard time. Crystal Carter: It's always fun to give Mordy Oberstein a compliment because you can just see him squirming so much. Mordy Oberstein: People are saying nice things about me? Crystal Carter: "Why are they saying them? I must say something. It's ridiculous to deflect from the appreciation that sat befalling me." I would like to encourage everyone who's listening to this podcast to send Mordy Oberstein a compliment on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah and CC Barry Schwartz while you're at it. Get two birds with one stone. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. That's right. Well, the SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also prioritize your SEO tasks on your blog pages and for your site overall with our SEO Assistant, which literally tells you which tasks are critical, which are high priority, which are medium, and which are low-priority SEO tasks because knowing what to work on and when, it's not always easy. Which is why today, we're helping you understand how to prioritize your SEO tasks. Look how seamless the line about what Wix does and what we're doing today meshed together perfectly. Crystal Carter: It was flawless. Mordy Oberstein: I take compliments on that. I take compliments on my pivots. Crystal Carter: It was very good. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Thank you That's right. Today, we're dealing with the reality that you got to start somewhere. You can't do it all at once. It's not Star Trek. You're not Scotty. You're beyond being a miracle worker. It's not realistic. We're diving into how to set SEO priorities. Are certain SEO tasks actually more important than others? How does limited time and resources factor into SEO prioritization? And how do you know if you are or aren't prioritizing the right SEO task? Also, how does prioritization differ from an SEO agency to an SEO consultancy to an SEO freelancer? We get both sides of the coin as the CEO of Uproer, Griffin Roer, an advocate of all that is SEO freelancing, Nick LeRoy, take SEO prioritization from different corners of the SEO world. Plus, we'll have a look at what different search engines tend to prioritize in their results. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. It's all hands on deck for this code red alert or perhaps merely a yellow alert. Time will tell as episode number 56 of the SERP's Up Podcast helps you set your alerts and your SEO priorities straight. Crystal Carter: There we go. We're just going to get into something and I'm going to start with something a little bit philosophical, a little bit intellectual because we like to go highbrow here on the SERP's Up. Mordy Oberstein: I can't do that. Get it? Crystal Carter: Maybe you could put it on a Play-Doh. I don't know. That's terrible. Anyway, so I'm going to start with something called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If you're not familiar with this, this is something... Yeah, Mordy's very excited about this. This is something that it's essentially a framework on a theory of human motivation. It's created by a guy called Maslow and it talks about psychological stuff and things like that. I would pause it that this also applies to websites and priorities as well. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, a simplified version of it, you'll generally see a pyramid and at the base of the pyramid will be physiological needs. Things like whether or not you have air and whether or not you have a good safe environment, food, shelter, et cetera. Then there'll be safety needs like personal security, employment resources, et cetera. Then there'll be things like love and belonging, whether or not you have friendship and family and a sense of connection. Then there'll be things like esteem, whether or not you feel respected and have strength and freedom. Then there's self actualization, so the desire to become more than you currently are or become the most that you can be. This is the sort of general simplified idea of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If you're not familiar with this, I highly recommend checking out because it's something that's really, really interesting for general personal development. You didn't realize that you were listening to a general growth hacking podcast, but here we are. Anyway, now when we talk about websites, I would posit that this also applies. When we're thinking about the physiological needs, this is essentially your baseline. This is stuff like your technical SEO and whether or not things actually work on the page. This might be as technical as whether or not you have site maps and whether or not things are working in terms of your robots at TXT and things like that. If you don't have this stuff working, if your pages are all blocked from crawling for instance, no amount of fantastic SEO content things is going to do anything if all the pages are blocked from crawling. If you're thinking about priorities, always check out making sure that you have the sort of technical nuts and bolts things covered. One of the things we really pride ourselves on Wix is making sure that a lot of that stuff is covered for anybody who creates a Wix website straight off the bat. You also want to think about the sort of things are covered from a business point of view view, so does the website actually do what you need it to do in the first place? For instance. If you have a bricks and mortar business, does it actually tell people how to get to your business? Does it tell people how to phone you? Does it tell people how to connect with you and things like that? Can people actually complete the sale on your e-commerce website? Is that possible? Are they able to do that? That's something to think about that. From a project point of view, this also means thinking about are you able to complete the task in a set amount of time? Do you know how much time you have and are you able to actually complete that task in that amount of time? Because you could have a fantastic audit and do amazing stuff, but if you don't know how much time or what resources you have, then those fundamental physiological sort of actual nuts and bolts things, if you haven't taken care of those, it's very difficult to do anything else. That should be a top priority, is making sure that those things are understood and are working well. Mordy, you're nodding. I don't know if you want to come in on this one before we get into the next one. Mordy Oberstein: No, no, no. You're on a roll. Crystal Carter: Okay, all right. Mordy Oberstein: You're on a roll. I'm good. Thank you for checking in on me. I'm just sitting back and enjoying. Crystal Carter: Checking to make sure that your needs are met. Okay, so then we go into safety needs. Now in terms of safety needs for a website, first of all, there's things like SSL. That's a standard security thing, but there's also making sure that you have things like EEAT. Within EEAT, which stands for expertise, experience- Mordy Oberstein: Experience, yeah, they added the extra E. Crystal Carter: ... authority and trust from Google. They also talk about things, making sure that you're trustworthy. A lot of these things have to do with your trust score. Your website should also have safety needs that have to do with your trustability and how trustworthy you are. Where you have your SSL on your website, that that works, where you have return policies that helps users to know that it's easier for them to enter their credit card details and that it's a secure website for them to enter their credit card details, that they know that you know what you're doing, that you have certificates and that they know that you are an actual place. You have very clear name, address, phone number on your website. I always get a little bit sketched out if I'm on a website and they're trying to sell me something or trying to tell me something and I'm like, "Where are you? Who are you? Who are these people?" Mordy Oberstein: That's why I always have a sticky point with PPC people on the landing page idea of don't have any menu up there, just leave on the landing page to confirm. I want the context. Crystal Carter: Right. I want to know who you are. Who am I even talking to? So making sure You've got those sorts of trust things is also really useful. I've seen this from an SEO point of view and they tend to be pretty quick to implement. Both are pretty straightforward to implement, shall I say. The technical things, it's either broken or it's fixed. It's fairly straightforward to get those things going. The trust elements, particularly on e-commerce, Google will guide you on a lot of those things. If you're signing up to Google Merchant Center, they'll be like, "Well you don't have a return policy. You haven't done this part. We need to know what currency you're selling in. We need to know all of these sorts of stuff." Google will guide you with a lot of those things. So think about that. And also, I always say with PPC, particularly with sensitive verticals, YMYL verticals, they will also guide you on that. If you're trying to do any PPC, look at what they expect for PPC for your vertical. If you're into medical, for instance they'll say "If you want to advertise for medical, you need to have this and this." Even if you're not advertising, you can look at the PPC requirements for that vertical to see what kinds of trust signals they need for that and it's really useful. Then from the love and belonging sort of place, this has to do with brand positioning. Is it clear that you know what's good about you? What are your USPs? What is unique about you? What is valuable about your brand, your product, your team, your service? Making sure that that's very clear. And also, are you able to show that other people think that as well? Are you able to show your reviews that other people also think you're great? Are you involved in different communities and things like that? When we think about an EEAT points of view, this kind of speaks to sort of authority points. We're part of the Better Business Bureau, we are part of this association of marketers or things like that, and all our reviews are five star reviews. That shows that people appreciate us and we say, "Oh this is the thing that's great about our products." So those things, you need to know what those are and you need to convey those things on your website. Then when we get to esteem, this is where your blog can help you shine and your content can really help you shine. Once you've got your technical things sorted out, once you've got all the safety stuff sorted, the trust signals, then you can get into being like, "Yeah, you know what, not only does everybody think I'm great, but I can share that knowledge with you." So I'm confident in my knowledge. I'm confident to be able to share this in a video, to share it in a blog, to share it in an infographic and to share it on social media, things like that. That can bring people to you. By the time they come to you, they already know that it's a safe place, that you know what your brand USPs are, that everything works technically. Then after that, we think of a sort of self-actualization. So all of those things I think are sort of need to have things, and then you have your nice to have stuff. It's like right, okay, we've got a good blog, we've got a good working website, all the trust signals are there and then you can be like how can we stretch? How can we do some really cool stuff now? You can look around and you go, "Well these guys are doing some other stuff and we are not doing that. Could we do that? I think we could because we have all of these skills and all these great things that we can do." You can look at bigger competitors that maybe aren't even in your vertical but are doing something online that's really cool. You could say "We could do that. I think we could start a channel. I think we could create some more stuff." I think that it might sound a little bit philosophical, but actually a good content audit, a good SEO audit for instance, will break things down in this way. You'll say, "What priority is this? High, low, medium. What is the estimated impact? High, low, medium." For instance, on a technical thing like priority, it might be like "Well this is high priority." Your page isn't getting crawled and then you can bring it down in the time estimation. You can say, "If you know what you're doing, this is going to take you 20 minutes to fix." So it's going to have a high impact and it's high priority, so you should probably do that and it can really, really help you to figure things out. I think that thinking about it in the same way that you would think about how you would go forth in improving yourself, improving your life et cetera is really, really good when you're thinking about how to prioritize for your website. Mordy Oberstein: If we can get some music or a sound please, like clapping in applause. I think that's an appropriate time right now. I'll give you a little behind the scenes of this podcast. Sometimes we really sync up exactly where we're going to go, exactly what we're going to do. We kind of really plan it out. Sometimes "I got this, I'll take care of it. You got this, you got that." Crystal got this, and I had no idea what I was really in for today. I will tell you right now, first off, I'm volunteering you for a blog post on the Wix SEO Hub about the maturation process of a website because I feel like this conversation, I've had this conversation before about setting SEO priorities, and what you usually end up talking about is, "Okay, so if your page is not being discovered, if you can't get an index because you edited a no index tag," or whatever-whatever, then that's a foundational priority because that means that all the other things that you eventually want to do, you can't do now. That's a priority. But what you've done here is basically laid out how a website matures over time. How it should mature over time, and how priority really means doing the things that matter for the website at the current state of maturation that you're at right now. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: And that's amazing, and that's where the clapping comes in, and that's where I figured you should write this up, because that was amazing. Crystal Carter: Thank you for the appreciate. I'm feeling some love and belonging right now. I'm feeling like that's really good, and It's really helping my self-esteem and maybe I will actualize that block. I think It's something that I think about as well. It's just sometimes people over-complicate these things, so sometimes they're like, "Oh, all this technical stuff," and I think a lot of people get lost in the jargon of it, but optimization is about making it better. You can't start from where you're not. You have to start from where you are. If you get better that's, great and then you can get better than that, and then you can get better than that, and then you can get better than that. You need to know where you're starting. I think some people get tripped up on some of the technical stuff for instance, and so they just ignore it. But a lot of times you can't. But the good thing about the technical stuff is it's fairly mathematical. Like I said, it's either broken or it's fixed. You can sort of go in and you can fix it, or if you don't know you can ask for help or you can just follow some... I'm sure there'll be somebody who's done a YouTube video or something that's gone into very extensive detail of how to do it and people will very much help you. But yeah, I think don't skip the steps and don't think that you can skip the steps because you do need to cover the steps or find tools that can help you do that so that you can get better and build on all of your work. Mordy Oberstein: This is how it goes with creating, we'll call it content in general, because your website is a piece of content and that content has technical underpinnings you need to address. It has design underpinnings that you need to address, all these kinds of things. I'll tell you, so LinkedIn carousels, I was avoiding them for a long, long time. It seemed like a lot of work. I didn't really have a lot of time. And now I'm starting to do them once in a while and I've noticed, okay I did X, this is not great. I'm looking at what somebody else did now. I'm like "Oh, that's really good." Really, it's a slow process of maturing. Your website is the same thing. You start with something, you have your pages, you have whatever it is, and you're thinking, you know what something doesn't feel right about this. I could probably take this to another level. Let's try this, let's try that and let's try this. Adding all of these things in let's say EEAT, adding a layer of real expertise and authority into the content on your website, that might not happen at the onset. You might write 10 blog posts because you got to get that content out there. You got to start from somewhere and you know what, that's fine and it won't rank. And you know what? That's also fine, because there's no cutoff date on ranking. "Oh, if I don't rank today that I can't rank tomorrow." Crystal Carter: One of the things that's great about SEO and it's the same thing with life is that you can try again. You can try again and you can keep practicing and you can keep improving. You post it now, you post that piece of content and like you said, maybe it doesn't rank, but maybe six months from now you'll have more data about how it's being seen online, maybe you'll have more feedback from people about what they think about it. You'll be able to see where It's sitting in the SERP and things like that. Then you can say, "Okay, now we can take that information and we can make this content better." Or we can take that information and go, "You know what we didn't need that content in the first place." But you have to start, but you need to take the feedback in order to improve. I think that when you're prioritizing, you should prioritize the thing that will get you to the next step. Mordy Oberstein: To the next step. That's exactly it. It is what gets you to the next step. I think that's a mistake people realize. You'll see people will talk about "I'm going to optimize," again, I'll go back to EEAT, "I'm going to optimize for EEAT," even somewhere like Lily Ray who's been doing this for years. You're looking at a cluster of content. You know what this needs to do to go from zero 100. You know the whole process. You've done it a million times before. You're an expert on that. You've got that. If you are an SEO that doesn't say focus on that, or you're a business owner or whoever you are, looking at it, "I'm going to optimize now for EEAT," it's like a one shot deal. It's not going to work. It's, "Okay, I've done this, the pose," I think we should talk about this podcast before "... and I've added X." Come back in three months from now, "You know what, X really wasn't enough. Now let's add Y." It's an ongoing process. SEO is an ongoing process. Looking at what will get me to the next step helps you do SEO the right way because it helps you say, "I'm going to do what I need to do to get to the next step, but I know that's not the last step." Crystal Carter: Right, because It's all rinse and repeat. I think that again, Maslow is good because if we think about the base of the pyramid, the sort of physiological technical leads in the case of a website, those things can change. As you grow, for instance, if you're a nine year old, you're a certain height, so you might need a step stool to reach the top of the cupboard or whatever. As you get older, you're going to get taller. You don't need the step stool, but you might need- Mordy Oberstein: You might need to climb. Just climb. You could be slither up a wall. Crystal Carter: These things will change. Similarly, I've started to wear glasses or whatever and I need those things. These are different things. Just like with your website. Your website doesn't exist in a vacuum, so there might be new SERP features that happen and then suddenly you have different technical needs for your website. It might be that suddenly your audience is way more mobile first and then you have different technical needs. Maybe there's an app that everybody's really, really into or maybe you've developed an app. That means that your website now has different technical needs and then that has knock on effect. So then you have to go back through all of the steps to make sure that they all align with each other. All of these things change. They're not set it and forget. It's like a person. Your website is grows, evolves and exists in an environment that is growing and evolving all of the time. Your priorities may very well change. It doesn't mean that you can't still have a North Star, say that if we talk about the self-actualization part where you really want to be, that can guide you, but how you get there might change a little bit. That's okay. That's okay. Mordy Oberstein: And it's okay that it's not linear, either. You might say, "You know what, I really need a quick win right now. I am struggling. I need a quick win. This might not get me to the next level. It might not be part of my maturation process. But I know it's a quick way." That's fine too. Crystal Carter: I had a client and they had a website, and they did not have time for content. They did not. They were just like, "We don't have time for content. We don't have loads." They had been doing some Facebook stuff, so I was like, "Look, we have some stuff on Facebook. Let's take these Facebook posts, let's adapt them into blogs." Were they the best quality? I'm going, to be honest, they were not the best quality blogs, but this was a website that had no blog and had not posted any blogs ever or hadn't posted any blogs in sort of a year. We took these sorts of mid-level posts that had some information and we added them to the blog. Why? Because we wanted to be able to show the client that with this level of effort we can get this much. And then you can get a proof of concept and they can say, "Oh okay, so that blog that we all know was kind of okay, whatever got this much. What happens if we actually did a good blog on top of that?" Our goal was to get going. I just needed to get some content on there to get going. The goal was to get going. The goal wasn't to set the world on fire and make amazing, amazing, beautiful... The goal was to just get going. We got going and then they were like, "Okay, yeah, I can see the benefit of this," and helped with their self-esteem, their esteem. That meant that we could get investment and buy-in on doing something really good. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, 100%. It's a little bit messy. It's not like a linear kind of thing. It's a little bit messy. There's also resources to consider. Whether you have the resource, whether you don't have the resources, that's going to factor in. You might have a great projection plan maturation process for your website, but it'd be realistic with what you can and what you can't do. You might have to give up on certain things and that's normal. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's normal. It's normal. I'll tell you right now, there's going to be certain benefits to doing things at whatever stage you're at. The important thing is to be aware of the impact and the important thing is to understand what you expect to come out of it so that it can help you to reach next goal and set your priorities based on that. If you're seeing that actually we did some blog and we saw no benefit of any kind and you go, "Okay, maybe this isn't what we need to do right now. Maybe we should invest in something else." If you see the blog and you see some benefit, for instance you're seeing that actually we're being crawled better. Actually, we have more internal links now. Actually, we're seeing some ranking that's happening out of this. Then yeah, that's good. That's a good sign and maybe they should be moved up the priority list for your overall activity. I think It's just important to think about what works for you and in terms of priorities, what will get you to the next step. Joe Hall, I talk about Joe Hall a lot, but he was talking a lot about MozCon last year about priorities and how he'd done this big audit for some folks. He was like, "Oh, we should do this, this and this." And he thought again about it, he was like "Actually, looking at what they need to do, I'm not sure this is the best course of action for them based on what would work best for them and what would..." Because I think sometimes people will do their go-to moves. You'll be like, "Oh, I always do this for everyone. This always works." And sometimes it does, but sometimes it's not always the best fit for them because of all of their other needs and all of their other priorities. So make sure that it aligns with the full flow of who the website is or what the website is at that time and what will get them to where they need to go. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of resources and how you work, and how you prioritize, where you work or who you work for can also impact how you prioritize SEO tasks. Specifically, if you're on the agency side and you're part of a large organizational, wider SEO team or digital marketing team, then you might prioritize SEO tasks in a certain way. If you're a consultant or a freelancer, well you might look at the same client and prioritize differently because based upon how you work. Because of that, we asked the CEO of Uproer, an SEO agency out of Minnesota, Griffin Roer, and Nick LeRoy, famed SEO consultant and a former member of the Wix SEO Advisory Board, how prioritizing your work as an SEO agency differs for prioritizing your work as a freelancer. So same task, same things, but from a different point of view. Here's Griffin and here's Nick together. Nick LeRoy: I know my skill sets. I know what I consider myself good at. I know where I struggle. And it's kind of more of a litmus test of check, check, check. But I also have that layer of does this make me excited? Do I enjoy it? That will go into again, how I set priorities in accepting a client or working, or even trying to pitch something. I know Griffin, you and I are the same. We're not really big into RFPs or having to truly sell ourselves. We would prefer to take a solid referral with kind of a baseline of trust. I think that kind of goes into my priorities as well. It's like if I have to put a lot of effort into trying to secure somewhere versus already being able to establish some trust on day one, that goes a long way on my end. Griffin Roer: There's definitely a difference there because you can look at a project and be like, "Do I have the time and interest to do this?" You can look at a project that is not super exciting and not super maybe challenging or whatever and just be like, "Well, I got some time and I can bang this one out. I'm not going to necessarily love this project, but it's going to help pay the bills." I can make that decision on behalf of myself. Whereas- Nick LeRoy: And price it at a level that will make it exciting. Griffin Roer: Yeah, exactly. I think one consideration on the agency side is I've got to be considerate of peoples' career development, and that might mean projects that I myself might be willing to take on and do and just gut out and be like, "All right, this is just going to help the bottom line." Or just as a freelancer maybe you're like, "Hey, if I do this project, I can get a new set of wheels for my car or something like that," you're kind of equating it to some reward. For me, if I'm going to put a project on somebody's plate, ideally It's going to align with their career progression and it's going to represent the next challenge, the thing they want to take on. If it's something that's going to be more like a step backwards, that makes it harder for us to accept that project. Even if it'd be a nice payday or even if it'd be just something to pad the business a little bit, I think there are some considerations there around career development because I think if an agency were to just take on kind of just un-challenging uninteresting projects all the time that just brought in cash, but didn't really push people, I don't think that agency is going to be really successful in retaining people. Nick LeRoy: Absolutely. Well Griffin, let me ask you a question here. I think building off of what we were just saying as a freelancer, I have the luxury of knowing this is short term. This is kind of a quick win. I schedule that work intentionally for that. It's like "Yeah, I want a new set of wheels. I want to take the kids on a vacation." But I'm being very intentional knowing that it's kind of like a one day payday. I suspect on the agency front you also have to be really cognizant of what type of short-term work you're taking on so that you don't necessarily lose out or have to turn down something that comes in that could be a multi-year or multi-channel engagement, which would obviously be your preferred client. Griffin Roer: Yeah, and obviously probably like you too, we're going to prioritize recurring business over project business any day of the week. There are those project opportunities that kind of come in and you do have to look at that against the overall pipeline and bandwidth of everybody that works at the agency to understand does this make sense? For myself being a leader at a small agency, I think it can be really tempting too for just myself to take on maybe the less than ideal projects, again just to help bring in some additional revenue and pad things and stuff like that. That can be counterproductive in and of itself because I'm expected to do a lot more than just assisting with client work and stuff like that. We've got sales and operations and hiring and just other things happening where my time is more valuable applied to those things versus- Nick LeRoy: Without a doubt. Griffin Roer: ... spending a couple of days working on a project that I was like, "Well this won't be really interesting for anything else, but It'll help the business from a revenue standpoint." I think That's a challenge probably that smaller agencies face moreso than bigger agencies, but it is a reality of trying to balance those competing interests and making sure that what I'm doing is not just in the best interest of myself but in the best interest of the agency at large, which represents 13 people at this point. Nick LeRoy: Absolutely, and I think you nailed on one of the most critical components when we're comparing small agency to freelancer. As a freelancer, I get to be very selfish. Everything is about me. I get to make the choices. All my choices impact me only. There's less risk in that aspect. Whereas when, and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but as you had said 13 individuals that need to serve 13 meals every night, so you have to be very conscious of the type of work that you're taking, how do you prioritize it and even who works on what? Mordy Oberstein: Well, thank you so much Nick and Griffin. Ironically, I approached them separately and I knew they both knew each other to answer this question like, "Hey, we'll just do a Zoom call together and we'll answer it together." It's an amazing conversation. There's actually a whole 30 minute piece that they did for them. We have to somehow repurpose it for something because it's amazing conversation that only we have listened to. We feel we need to share that somehow. But also, make sure you follow Griffin Roer. He's more on LinkedIn at @CGriffinRoerJr, a link to his LinkedIn account in the show notes. And follow Nick on Twitter @NickLeRoy, that's @ N-I-C-K-L-E-R-O-Y on Twitter. It is interesting, right? You think, okay, SEO is SEO, but You're going to be able to do different things, focus on different things, work in different ways, prioritize different things, all because of the way you work within your organization, at least on the SEO agency side, or the fact that you don't have an organization because you're a freelancer. It's fascinating to me. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that there is a lot of prioritization that has to do with the sort of ins and outs of an agency and working as a team because very often in an agency you are going to work in lots of different ways. So yeah, it's really interesting to hear the way that they discuss that and how you have to manage all of the bits and wheels and nuts and bolts of all of that. Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot that goes into. It's the business side of it all, the billing and the client prioritization and all of that stuff is so different from just being let's say a consultant. Anyway, while we're talking about different situations and different circumstances that help dictate different SEO priorities, there are different things that different search engines prioritize within their results. With that, let's explore what the search engines of the world tend to prioritize differently as we go so many search engines. Mordy Oberstein: Let's take a look at Bing and Google, and let's take a look at how they handle different types of queries differently. Let's take entities to start. I always like looking at entities. I think they're a great way to dive into the mind of a search engine. I Googled, or one case Binged, a search bar is the word I'm looking for. I searched for John Lennon. I typed in John Lennon into Bing and I typed John Lennon into Google, and it's very different. Very, very different. For example, Bing tends for entities, like these kinds of entities and people, tries to push or tends to push the biographical information way harder than Google does. Google will show you, for example, when he was born, it'll give you some YouTube videos, a bunch of images, where you can listen to his music is above the fold. So Spotify and YouTube and Pandora. But Bing is pushing more the early years. It really gives you a great biographical breakdown of the different points of his life. It really tends to focus more on John Lennon as a person versus where Google is looking at it as here's an access or entry points to more various media about John Lennon. I thought that was interesting. Crystal Carter: I think that Google has been doing a lot particularly around the biographical entities here. It's been a very busy space in the last sort of year or so where they started adding- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they reformatted the whole knowledge panel thing. Crystal Carter: Right. They've added more of... It's more magazine sort of style. There's still the knowledge panel information, but for some people like Beyonce for instance, there's a lot more information around. They even have some quick answers. How old is this person? Or how tall is this person? Or things like that included in some of their search for this. I don't think that Bing has quite gone down that route for the biographical entity. Mordy Oberstein: No, not yet at least, or maybe they never will. Crystal Carter: Right. They have for a few other ones. There's a few sort of destination places where they'll pull things out. For instance, they used to have a SERP for a lion. If you look up what is a lion, you get a very interactive channel. It's got- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's very cool. Crystal Carter: ... pictures from Wikipedia and a map and links within the knowledge panel within the knowledge panel content as well. I think that the overall goal for these things seems to be around just making sure that there's lots of content there. Mordy Oberstein: Right. It's very layered. I've seen this across all the entities. I looked at Aaron Judge, who's a baseball player. By the way, both Bing and Google, when you search for somebody who's in the news, will prioritize news content right away. Search for Aaron Judge. He's a baseball player. It's during baseball season. There's always news about him, and both Google and Bing prioritized news results right at the top. But again, Google kind of gives, like you're saying, kind of like a T-L-D-R. You want to get a real quick overview of who Aaron Judge is? Here. And go explore more. Here's access points to more. Whereas Bing again gives you a timeline of Aaron Judge. He was a rookie here in 2016. He did that in 2021. He did that. It's really trying to give you that layered approach of we want you to walk away really understanding who this person is. Which is ironic in my mind because a lot of SEOs give Google flack about, "Oh, you're taking away clicks to all its information," but Bing really gives you all of that information there. Whereas with Google, I really do have to click somewhere to explore more. Crystal Carter: Right, and I think that Bing will very often add the information from other folks and they will reference it all together at the bottom. They'll reference all of it together. If you look up for instance, the Eiffel Tower, it has lots of facts about the Eiffel Tower and lots of information there. And It's clickable. It comes from somewhere, but it doesn't say it right next to it where it’s from. There's a bit of a balance of giving people lots of information but also making it more streamlined. I think that the entities around sort of multilayered entities are very interesting. So, something like the Eiffel Tower where you can buy tickets to the Eiffel Tower, where there's a Wikipedia page of the Eiffel Tower, and then there's also lots of historical things about the Eiffel Tower. There's a map and things like that. The entity management of that, then managing the knowledge panel I think for that is really interesting because there's so much in the knowledge panel for that. There's so much in the knowledge graph around something like the Eiffel Tower or even someone like Beyonce for instance. It's such a top level query to just enter something like Beyonce or Eiffel Tower or Aaron Judd that we need to have more there. So, it's kind of filtering as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it's interesting because they don't always stick to that same paradigm. For example, if you were to search something about like, what did I search for? It's something to do with tires, like how to change a tire on the side of the road. Google just gives you the steps. Here's how you change a tire on the side of the road. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, right? And Bing gives you more context about tires, while it does give you those steps. Bing likes to give you that context. If I search for something like a song, best songs of the 1990s, Bing just gives me the bunch of videos. But Google has a whole carousel of little thumbnails of all the songs from the nineties, like Say My name or Torn. And if you click on the thumbnail, you get a carousel of results that give you more context about that song. They don't always follow the same paradigm. It's interesting to see just from a marketing perspective how Google and Bing both think about their audiences. In some cases Google thinks you know what you do want context and some cases they don't and sometimes those are the opposite cases of where Bing says you want context and Google says, no, you don't. Crystal Carter: I think It's also interesting that they're happy to get some of that context from people that are searching. We think about entities as being very much things and stuff like the Eiffel Tower, or Natalie Umbruglia song, or whatever it may be. But they also cover abstract things. If you look up something like courage, for instance, courage on Bing, there's a poll. There's a pole underneath that to get more context specifically from people. For instance, they're saying, "Which of the following do you think is the most important trait of a courageous person? A, fearlessness B, perseverance, C, self-discipline or decomp compassion." Very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: What about E? Crystal Carter: What is E? What is E? Mordy Oberstein: I haven't thought about it yet. I have no pithy line. Crystal Carter: E is questioning the questions. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. What about skepticism? Crystal Carter: Right. What about that? Mordy Oberstein: What about that? Crystal Carter: It's interesting. For instance, you see the same thing with films and stuff. It'll be like, you've just looked up the Barbie movie, what was your review of the Barbie movie. Barbie movie is also an interesting one because of branded entities, there's a potential option to sort of monetize that space or to change around that space. For instance, the Barbie movie, they changed the SERP, similarly with Wordle. So Wordle has a SERP that is dedicated to specifically to it. I don't know if the Barbie movie thing was paid for thing or if Google's just really into the Barbie movie. It's very interesting, that- Mordy Oberstein: It's interesting. They do that for the World Cup. They do that for the Olympics. They've done things like that for the Super Bowl. The day after the Super Bowl, you search who won the Super Bowl, the fireworks go off. Yeah, Google likes doing that stuff. I think that's Google's branding, "Hey, come here, we're fun." Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Exactly. So they know where those queries are going to be and they know where they can leverage that entity and leverage that sort of brand experience with that entity when It's related to a specific brand. Mordy Oberstein: Now another entity that We're quite fond of over here on the SERP's Up podcast is the entity of SEO News. I love news. I love SEO News. Here's this week's Snappy News. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Do you like shopping? Do you like Google? Do you like data? Do you like Barry Schwartz? Don't answer the last one. Then you'll like this per Barry Schwartz over at SE Round Table, new Google Search Console shows Merchant Center visibility issues and changes. It's new. Google is now showing way more Merchant Center data and it is awesome and it is right inside of Google Search Console. Essentially, there are reports to help you see products that may have become ineligible for appearing in Google shopping. There's also a second part of the report that helps you get your listings more clicks and improve rankings so Google will actually tell you, "Hey, you should add return costs to the listing because that will get you more clicks." This is super important to Google and a super good move for them. Google needs to compete, wants to compete with Amazon. Obviously Amazon is the go-to place for e-commerce, shopping and listings and all that stuff. But by Google providing you with data such as this, it improves the chances that you'll be successful with Google shopping. The more success you have with Google shopping, the more Google can facilitate that success with Google shopping, the more you and people listing products on the internet will be invested in using Google Shopping and the more they can compete with Amazon. Very smart on Google's part. Have a look at the article in the show notes and you'll see a link in the article about how to activate the data. Also from Barry Schwartz, with a little help from a guy named Mordy, this time from Search Engine Land. How the August 2023 Google core update compared to March '23 core updates. The August 2023 core update finished after 16 days, which is a little bit longer than usual, on September 7th. And Barry, with the help of various tool providers dived into the impact of the update on rankings. I had the privilege of working with the Semrush data set to have a look at what the update provided in terms of rankings and it was unique. Usually, there's, a very, very demarcated spike increase in rank fluctuations meaning URLs moving up and down, changing positions all around the Google results pages. This time there wasn't that kind of spike. There was a prolonged period of really high and stably high, consistent that's the word I'm looking for, consistent rank fluctuations for a very long time. The initial spike actually occurred days before the update was officially announced. What to make of that is a great question for another time, but it was a definitely unique sort of rollout. Was the August 2023 core update more powerful and the March 2023 core update? Depends on how you slice it. Looking at peak rank volatility signals, it looks like the August 2023 update was more powerful. But you can't really look at that because rank volatility was already high coming into the update. If you look at what rank or how much rank volatility increased before the update versus during the update, it looks like the March update was perhaps more impactful. If you look at the average change in position, meaning how dramatic were the ranking changes, then the data shows that the August 2023 update was a little bit more impactful than the March 2023 core update. The point is slicing and dicing a core update and determining which one is more powerful is really complex. I have a whole post coming out on the SEMRush blog, so take a look for that when it comes out. I walk you through why analyzing these things are more complicated than it actually is using the August 2023 core update as an example. And that is this week's Snappy News. Always hard to prioritize which stories to cover in the SEO news each week on this podcast because It's snappy, so I can't cover them all. Crystal Carter: You have to prioritize which ones meet your needs. Mordy Oberstein: I try to prioritize which would meet our audience needs. Crystal Carter: Oh, see that's because you're so nice, Mordy. You're so nice and everyone appreciates you. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Thank you. The face I'm making now does not say thank you, but I'm saying thank you. You know who I do want to thank though, our Follower of the Week. She's a great friend and a great person, and I feel that we should shout her out loud and clear for everyone to follow over on social media. It is Shelley Walsh. She's the SEO Content Strategist over at Search Engine Journal, and you should follow her on Twitter. She's also on threads, I believe, @TheShelleyWalsh, that's T-H-E-S-H-E-L-L-E-Y-W-A-L-S-H. Link to her profile on the show notes. She's a fantastic person, does a ton for the industry and she has a lot of SEO knowledge. She's an SEO OG. She actually has a series called SEO Pioneers, where you can watch the OGs of SEO talk about how SEO has changed over the last 100 years kind of thing. It does help you kind of prioritize based on what they're saying, what does work, what doesn't work, because what used to work doesn't work anymore kind of thing. I’ve heard that many, many times on this podcast. Shelley Walsh for SEO prioritization and it's a priority for you to follow her on Twitter. Crystal Carter: I cannot recommend it enough. She's a great follow. I followed her recently as well, and my life has been much, much better since. So yes, I highly recommend. Mordy Oberstein: She's super sweet. She was at our Brighton SEO dinner back in the UK, when was that, April? April, right? Crystal Carter: Yes, yes, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. That seems so long ago. Always nice to see her at Brighton SEO. If you do go to Brighton SEO, look for Shelley. She's usually there, I think. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. It's great. It's great. Absolutely great follow. Shout out to Shelley, and shout out to everyone in the SEO Pioneers Group, Mordy Oberstein: John Mueller. Barry Schwartz. I think. If she hasn't had Barry, she should have Barry. We'll. Make that happen, Shelley. All right, well, 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 why even SEO pros need a refresher about SEO. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, at you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Nick LeRoy Griffin Roer Shelly Walsh Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO For Lunch Newsletter SEO Jobs Uproer SEO Agency SEO Pioneers News: New: Google Search Console Shows Merchant Center Visibility Issues & Changes How does the August 2023 Google core update compared to March 2023 core updates Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Nick LeRoy Griffin Roer Shelly Walsh Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO For Lunch Newsletter SEO Jobs Uproer SEO Agency SEO Pioneers News: New: Google Search Console Shows Merchant Center Visibility Issues & Changes How does the August 2023 Google core update compared to March 2023 core updates Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha! Maholo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who knows how to set priorities right, our Head of SEO Communications, the one of the only, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, Mordy Oberstein, the fantastic, incredible, amazing, stupendous, magnificent Mordy Oberstein. Mordy Oberstein: Your nose is growing. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy, who cannot- Mordy Oberstein: If you know, you know. Crystal Carter: ... take a compliment, but is- Mordy Oberstein: No, I don't do compliments well. I have a hard time. Crystal Carter: It's always fun to give Mordy Oberstein a compliment because you can just see him squirming so much. Mordy Oberstein: People are saying nice things about me? Crystal Carter: "Why are they saying them? I must say something. It's ridiculous to deflect from the appreciation that sat befalling me." I would like to encourage everyone who's listening to this podcast to send Mordy Oberstein a compliment on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah and CC Barry Schwartz while you're at it. Get two birds with one stone. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. That's right. Well, the SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also prioritize your SEO tasks on your blog pages and for your site overall with our SEO Assistant, which literally tells you which tasks are critical, which are high priority, which are medium, and which are low-priority SEO tasks because knowing what to work on and when, it's not always easy. Which is why today, we're helping you understand how to prioritize your SEO tasks. Look how seamless the line about what Wix does and what we're doing today meshed together perfectly. Crystal Carter: It was flawless. Mordy Oberstein: I take compliments on that. I take compliments on my pivots. Crystal Carter: It was very good. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Thank you That's right. Today, we're dealing with the reality that you got to start somewhere. You can't do it all at once. It's not Star Trek. You're not Scotty. You're beyond being a miracle worker. It's not realistic. We're diving into how to set SEO priorities. Are certain SEO tasks actually more important than others? How does limited time and resources factor into SEO prioritization? And how do you know if you are or aren't prioritizing the right SEO task? Also, how does prioritization differ from an SEO agency to an SEO consultancy to an SEO freelancer? We get both sides of the coin as the CEO of Uproer, Griffin Roer, an advocate of all that is SEO freelancing, Nick LeRoy, take SEO prioritization from different corners of the SEO world. Plus, we'll have a look at what different search engines tend to prioritize in their results. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. It's all hands on deck for this code red alert or perhaps merely a yellow alert. Time will tell as episode number 56 of the SERP's Up Podcast helps you set your alerts and your SEO priorities straight. Crystal Carter: There we go. We're just going to get into something and I'm going to start with something a little bit philosophical, a little bit intellectual because we like to go highbrow here on the SERP's Up. Mordy Oberstein: I can't do that. Get it? Crystal Carter: Maybe you could put it on a Play-Doh. I don't know. That's terrible. Anyway, so I'm going to start with something called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If you're not familiar with this, this is something... Yeah, Mordy's very excited about this. This is something that it's essentially a framework on a theory of human motivation. It's created by a guy called Maslow and it talks about psychological stuff and things like that. I would pause it that this also applies to websites and priorities as well. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, a simplified version of it, you'll generally see a pyramid and at the base of the pyramid will be physiological needs. Things like whether or not you have air and whether or not you have a good safe environment, food, shelter, et cetera. Then there'll be safety needs like personal security, employment resources, et cetera. Then there'll be things like love and belonging, whether or not you have friendship and family and a sense of connection. Then there'll be things like esteem, whether or not you feel respected and have strength and freedom. Then there's self actualization, so the desire to become more than you currently are or become the most that you can be. This is the sort of general simplified idea of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If you're not familiar with this, I highly recommend checking out because it's something that's really, really interesting for general personal development. You didn't realize that you were listening to a general growth hacking podcast, but here we are. Anyway, now when we talk about websites, I would posit that this also applies. When we're thinking about the physiological needs, this is essentially your baseline. This is stuff like your technical SEO and whether or not things actually work on the page. This might be as technical as whether or not you have site maps and whether or not things are working in terms of your robots at TXT and things like that. If you don't have this stuff working, if your pages are all blocked from crawling for instance, no amount of fantastic SEO content things is going to do anything if all the pages are blocked from crawling. If you're thinking about priorities, always check out making sure that you have the sort of technical nuts and bolts things covered. One of the things we really pride ourselves on Wix is making sure that a lot of that stuff is covered for anybody who creates a Wix website straight off the bat. You also want to think about the sort of things are covered from a business point of view view, so does the website actually do what you need it to do in the first place? For instance. If you have a bricks and mortar business, does it actually tell people how to get to your business? Does it tell people how to phone you? Does it tell people how to connect with you and things like that? Can people actually complete the sale on your e-commerce website? Is that possible? Are they able to do that? That's something to think about that. From a project point of view, this also means thinking about are you able to complete the task in a set amount of time? Do you know how much time you have and are you able to actually complete that task in that amount of time? Because you could have a fantastic audit and do amazing stuff, but if you don't know how much time or what resources you have, then those fundamental physiological sort of actual nuts and bolts things, if you haven't taken care of those, it's very difficult to do anything else. That should be a top priority, is making sure that those things are understood and are working well. Mordy, you're nodding. I don't know if you want to come in on this one before we get into the next one. Mordy Oberstein: No, no, no. You're on a roll. Crystal Carter: Okay, all right. Mordy Oberstein: You're on a roll. I'm good. Thank you for checking in on me. I'm just sitting back and enjoying. Crystal Carter: Checking to make sure that your needs are met. Okay, so then we go into safety needs. Now in terms of safety needs for a website, first of all, there's things like SSL. That's a standard security thing, but there's also making sure that you have things like EEAT. Within EEAT, which stands for expertise, experience- Mordy Oberstein: Experience, yeah, they added the extra E. Crystal Carter: ... authority and trust from Google. They also talk about things, making sure that you're trustworthy. A lot of these things have to do with your trust score. Your website should also have safety needs that have to do with your trustability and how trustworthy you are. Where you have your SSL on your website, that that works, where you have return policies that helps users to know that it's easier for them to enter their credit card details and that it's a secure website for them to enter their credit card details, that they know that you know what you're doing, that you have certificates and that they know that you are an actual place. You have very clear name, address, phone number on your website. I always get a little bit sketched out if I'm on a website and they're trying to sell me something or trying to tell me something and I'm like, "Where are you? Who are you? Who are these people?" Mordy Oberstein: That's why I always have a sticky point with PPC people on the landing page idea of don't have any menu up there, just leave on the landing page to confirm. I want the context. Crystal Carter: Right. I want to know who you are. Who am I even talking to? So making sure You've got those sorts of trust things is also really useful. I've seen this from an SEO point of view and they tend to be pretty quick to implement. Both are pretty straightforward to implement, shall I say. The technical things, it's either broken or it's fixed. It's fairly straightforward to get those things going. The trust elements, particularly on e-commerce, Google will guide you on a lot of those things. If you're signing up to Google Merchant Center, they'll be like, "Well you don't have a return policy. You haven't done this part. We need to know what currency you're selling in. We need to know all of these sorts of stuff." Google will guide you with a lot of those things. So think about that. And also, I always say with PPC, particularly with sensitive verticals, YMYL verticals, they will also guide you on that. If you're trying to do any PPC, look at what they expect for PPC for your vertical. If you're into medical, for instance they'll say "If you want to advertise for medical, you need to have this and this." Even if you're not advertising, you can look at the PPC requirements for that vertical to see what kinds of trust signals they need for that and it's really useful. Then from the love and belonging sort of place, this has to do with brand positioning. Is it clear that you know what's good about you? What are your USPs? What is unique about you? What is valuable about your brand, your product, your team, your service? Making sure that that's very clear. And also, are you able to show that other people think that as well? Are you able to show your reviews that other people also think you're great? Are you involved in different communities and things like that? When we think about an EEAT points of view, this kind of speaks to sort of authority points. We're part of the Better Business Bureau, we are part of this association of marketers or things like that, and all our reviews are five star reviews. That shows that people appreciate us and we say, "Oh this is the thing that's great about our products." So those things, you need to know what those are and you need to convey those things on your website. Then when we get to esteem, this is where your blog can help you shine and your content can really help you shine. Once you've got your technical things sorted out, once you've got all the safety stuff sorted, the trust signals, then you can get into being like, "Yeah, you know what, not only does everybody think I'm great, but I can share that knowledge with you." So I'm confident in my knowledge. I'm confident to be able to share this in a video, to share it in a blog, to share it in an infographic and to share it on social media, things like that. That can bring people to you. By the time they come to you, they already know that it's a safe place, that you know what your brand USPs are, that everything works technically. Then after that, we think of a sort of self-actualization. So all of those things I think are sort of need to have things, and then you have your nice to have stuff. It's like right, okay, we've got a good blog, we've got a good working website, all the trust signals are there and then you can be like how can we stretch? How can we do some really cool stuff now? You can look around and you go, "Well these guys are doing some other stuff and we are not doing that. Could we do that? I think we could because we have all of these skills and all these great things that we can do." You can look at bigger competitors that maybe aren't even in your vertical but are doing something online that's really cool. You could say "We could do that. I think we could start a channel. I think we could create some more stuff." I think that it might sound a little bit philosophical, but actually a good content audit, a good SEO audit for instance, will break things down in this way. You'll say, "What priority is this? High, low, medium. What is the estimated impact? High, low, medium." For instance, on a technical thing like priority, it might be like "Well this is high priority." Your page isn't getting crawled and then you can bring it down in the time estimation. You can say, "If you know what you're doing, this is going to take you 20 minutes to fix." So it's going to have a high impact and it's high priority, so you should probably do that and it can really, really help you to figure things out. I think that thinking about it in the same way that you would think about how you would go forth in improving yourself, improving your life et cetera is really, really good when you're thinking about how to prioritize for your website. Mordy Oberstein: If we can get some music or a sound please, like clapping in applause. I think that's an appropriate time right now. I'll give you a little behind the scenes of this podcast. Sometimes we really sync up exactly where we're going to go, exactly what we're going to do. We kind of really plan it out. Sometimes "I got this, I'll take care of it. You got this, you got that." Crystal got this, and I had no idea what I was really in for today. I will tell you right now, first off, I'm volunteering you for a blog post on the Wix SEO Hub about the maturation process of a website because I feel like this conversation, I've had this conversation before about setting SEO priorities, and what you usually end up talking about is, "Okay, so if your page is not being discovered, if you can't get an index because you edited a no index tag," or whatever-whatever, then that's a foundational priority because that means that all the other things that you eventually want to do, you can't do now. That's a priority. But what you've done here is basically laid out how a website matures over time. How it should mature over time, and how priority really means doing the things that matter for the website at the current state of maturation that you're at right now. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: And that's amazing, and that's where the clapping comes in, and that's where I figured you should write this up, because that was amazing. Crystal Carter: Thank you for the appreciate. I'm feeling some love and belonging right now. I'm feeling like that's really good, and It's really helping my self-esteem and maybe I will actualize that block. I think It's something that I think about as well. It's just sometimes people over-complicate these things, so sometimes they're like, "Oh, all this technical stuff," and I think a lot of people get lost in the jargon of it, but optimization is about making it better. You can't start from where you're not. You have to start from where you are. If you get better that's, great and then you can get better than that, and then you can get better than that, and then you can get better than that. You need to know where you're starting. I think some people get tripped up on some of the technical stuff for instance, and so they just ignore it. But a lot of times you can't. But the good thing about the technical stuff is it's fairly mathematical. Like I said, it's either broken or it's fixed. You can sort of go in and you can fix it, or if you don't know you can ask for help or you can just follow some... I'm sure there'll be somebody who's done a YouTube video or something that's gone into very extensive detail of how to do it and people will very much help you. But yeah, I think don't skip the steps and don't think that you can skip the steps because you do need to cover the steps or find tools that can help you do that so that you can get better and build on all of your work. Mordy Oberstein: This is how it goes with creating, we'll call it content in general, because your website is a piece of content and that content has technical underpinnings you need to address. It has design underpinnings that you need to address, all these kinds of things. I'll tell you, so LinkedIn carousels, I was avoiding them for a long, long time. It seemed like a lot of work. I didn't really have a lot of time. And now I'm starting to do them once in a while and I've noticed, okay I did X, this is not great. I'm looking at what somebody else did now. I'm like "Oh, that's really good." Really, it's a slow process of maturing. Your website is the same thing. You start with something, you have your pages, you have whatever it is, and you're thinking, you know what something doesn't feel right about this. I could probably take this to another level. Let's try this, let's try that and let's try this. Adding all of these things in let's say EEAT, adding a layer of real expertise and authority into the content on your website, that might not happen at the onset. You might write 10 blog posts because you got to get that content out there. You got to start from somewhere and you know what, that's fine and it won't rank. And you know what? That's also fine, because there's no cutoff date on ranking. "Oh, if I don't rank today that I can't rank tomorrow." Crystal Carter: One of the things that's great about SEO and it's the same thing with life is that you can try again. You can try again and you can keep practicing and you can keep improving. You post it now, you post that piece of content and like you said, maybe it doesn't rank, but maybe six months from now you'll have more data about how it's being seen online, maybe you'll have more feedback from people about what they think about it. You'll be able to see where It's sitting in the SERP and things like that. Then you can say, "Okay, now we can take that information and we can make this content better." Or we can take that information and go, "You know what we didn't need that content in the first place." But you have to start, but you need to take the feedback in order to improve. I think that when you're prioritizing, you should prioritize the thing that will get you to the next step. Mordy Oberstein: To the next step. That's exactly it. It is what gets you to the next step. I think that's a mistake people realize. You'll see people will talk about "I'm going to optimize," again, I'll go back to EEAT, "I'm going to optimize for EEAT," even somewhere like Lily Ray who's been doing this for years. You're looking at a cluster of content. You know what this needs to do to go from zero 100. You know the whole process. You've done it a million times before. You're an expert on that. You've got that. If you are an SEO that doesn't say focus on that, or you're a business owner or whoever you are, looking at it, "I'm going to optimize now for EEAT," it's like a one shot deal. It's not going to work. It's, "Okay, I've done this, the pose," I think we should talk about this podcast before "... and I've added X." Come back in three months from now, "You know what, X really wasn't enough. Now let's add Y." It's an ongoing process. SEO is an ongoing process. Looking at what will get me to the next step helps you do SEO the right way because it helps you say, "I'm going to do what I need to do to get to the next step, but I know that's not the last step." Crystal Carter: Right, because It's all rinse and repeat. I think that again, Maslow is good because if we think about the base of the pyramid, the sort of physiological technical leads in the case of a website, those things can change. As you grow, for instance, if you're a nine year old, you're a certain height, so you might need a step stool to reach the top of the cupboard or whatever. As you get older, you're going to get taller. You don't need the step stool, but you might need- Mordy Oberstein: You might need to climb. Just climb. You could be slither up a wall. Crystal Carter: These things will change. Similarly, I've started to wear glasses or whatever and I need those things. These are different things. Just like with your website. Your website doesn't exist in a vacuum, so there might be new SERP features that happen and then suddenly you have different technical needs for your website. It might be that suddenly your audience is way more mobile first and then you have different technical needs. Maybe there's an app that everybody's really, really into or maybe you've developed an app. That means that your website now has different technical needs and then that has knock on effect. So then you have to go back through all of the steps to make sure that they all align with each other. All of these things change. They're not set it and forget. It's like a person. Your website is grows, evolves and exists in an environment that is growing and evolving all of the time. Your priorities may very well change. It doesn't mean that you can't still have a North Star, say that if we talk about the self-actualization part where you really want to be, that can guide you, but how you get there might change a little bit. That's okay. That's okay. Mordy Oberstein: And it's okay that it's not linear, either. You might say, "You know what, I really need a quick win right now. I am struggling. I need a quick win. This might not get me to the next level. It might not be part of my maturation process. But I know it's a quick way." That's fine too. Crystal Carter: I had a client and they had a website, and they did not have time for content. They did not. They were just like, "We don't have time for content. We don't have loads." They had been doing some Facebook stuff, so I was like, "Look, we have some stuff on Facebook. Let's take these Facebook posts, let's adapt them into blogs." Were they the best quality? I'm going, to be honest, they were not the best quality blogs, but this was a website that had no blog and had not posted any blogs ever or hadn't posted any blogs in sort of a year. We took these sorts of mid-level posts that had some information and we added them to the blog. Why? Because we wanted to be able to show the client that with this level of effort we can get this much. And then you can get a proof of concept and they can say, "Oh okay, so that blog that we all know was kind of okay, whatever got this much. What happens if we actually did a good blog on top of that?" Our goal was to get going. I just needed to get some content on there to get going. The goal was to get going. The goal wasn't to set the world on fire and make amazing, amazing, beautiful... The goal was to just get going. We got going and then they were like, "Okay, yeah, I can see the benefit of this," and helped with their self-esteem, their esteem. That meant that we could get investment and buy-in on doing something really good. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, 100%. It's a little bit messy. It's not like a linear kind of thing. It's a little bit messy. There's also resources to consider. Whether you have the resource, whether you don't have the resources, that's going to factor in. You might have a great projection plan maturation process for your website, but it'd be realistic with what you can and what you can't do. You might have to give up on certain things and that's normal. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's normal. It's normal. I'll tell you right now, there's going to be certain benefits to doing things at whatever stage you're at. The important thing is to be aware of the impact and the important thing is to understand what you expect to come out of it so that it can help you to reach next goal and set your priorities based on that. If you're seeing that actually we did some blog and we saw no benefit of any kind and you go, "Okay, maybe this isn't what we need to do right now. Maybe we should invest in something else." If you see the blog and you see some benefit, for instance you're seeing that actually we're being crawled better. Actually, we have more internal links now. Actually, we're seeing some ranking that's happening out of this. Then yeah, that's good. That's a good sign and maybe they should be moved up the priority list for your overall activity. I think It's just important to think about what works for you and in terms of priorities, what will get you to the next step. Joe Hall, I talk about Joe Hall a lot, but he was talking a lot about MozCon last year about priorities and how he'd done this big audit for some folks. He was like, "Oh, we should do this, this and this." And he thought again about it, he was like "Actually, looking at what they need to do, I'm not sure this is the best course of action for them based on what would work best for them and what would..." Because I think sometimes people will do their go-to moves. You'll be like, "Oh, I always do this for everyone. This always works." And sometimes it does, but sometimes it's not always the best fit for them because of all of their other needs and all of their other priorities. So make sure that it aligns with the full flow of who the website is or what the website is at that time and what will get them to where they need to go. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of resources and how you work, and how you prioritize, where you work or who you work for can also impact how you prioritize SEO tasks. Specifically, if you're on the agency side and you're part of a large organizational, wider SEO team or digital marketing team, then you might prioritize SEO tasks in a certain way. If you're a consultant or a freelancer, well you might look at the same client and prioritize differently because based upon how you work. Because of that, we asked the CEO of Uproer, an SEO agency out of Minnesota, Griffin Roer, and Nick LeRoy, famed SEO consultant and a former member of the Wix SEO Advisory Board, how prioritizing your work as an SEO agency differs for prioritizing your work as a freelancer. So same task, same things, but from a different point of view. Here's Griffin and here's Nick together. Nick LeRoy: I know my skill sets. I know what I consider myself good at. I know where I struggle. And it's kind of more of a litmus test of check, check, check. But I also have that layer of does this make me excited? Do I enjoy it? That will go into again, how I set priorities in accepting a client or working, or even trying to pitch something. I know Griffin, you and I are the same. We're not really big into RFPs or having to truly sell ourselves. We would prefer to take a solid referral with kind of a baseline of trust. I think that kind of goes into my priorities as well. It's like if I have to put a lot of effort into trying to secure somewhere versus already being able to establish some trust on day one, that goes a long way on my end. Griffin Roer: There's definitely a difference there because you can look at a project and be like, "Do I have the time and interest to do this?" You can look at a project that is not super exciting and not super maybe challenging or whatever and just be like, "Well, I got some time and I can bang this one out. I'm not going to necessarily love this project, but it's going to help pay the bills." I can make that decision on behalf of myself. Whereas- Nick LeRoy: And price it at a level that will make it exciting. Griffin Roer: Yeah, exactly. I think one consideration on the agency side is I've got to be considerate of peoples' career development, and that might mean projects that I myself might be willing to take on and do and just gut out and be like, "All right, this is just going to help the bottom line." Or just as a freelancer maybe you're like, "Hey, if I do this project, I can get a new set of wheels for my car or something like that," you're kind of equating it to some reward. For me, if I'm going to put a project on somebody's plate, ideally It's going to align with their career progression and it's going to represent the next challenge, the thing they want to take on. If it's something that's going to be more like a step backwards, that makes it harder for us to accept that project. Even if it'd be a nice payday or even if it'd be just something to pad the business a little bit, I think there are some considerations there around career development because I think if an agency were to just take on kind of just un-challenging uninteresting projects all the time that just brought in cash, but didn't really push people, I don't think that agency is going to be really successful in retaining people. Nick LeRoy: Absolutely. Well Griffin, let me ask you a question here. I think building off of what we were just saying as a freelancer, I have the luxury of knowing this is short term. This is kind of a quick win. I schedule that work intentionally for that. It's like "Yeah, I want a new set of wheels. I want to take the kids on a vacation." But I'm being very intentional knowing that it's kind of like a one day payday. I suspect on the agency front you also have to be really cognizant of what type of short-term work you're taking on so that you don't necessarily lose out or have to turn down something that comes in that could be a multi-year or multi-channel engagement, which would obviously be your preferred client. Griffin Roer: Yeah, and obviously probably like you too, we're going to prioritize recurring business over project business any day of the week. There are those project opportunities that kind of come in and you do have to look at that against the overall pipeline and bandwidth of everybody that works at the agency to understand does this make sense? For myself being a leader at a small agency, I think it can be really tempting too for just myself to take on maybe the less than ideal projects, again just to help bring in some additional revenue and pad things and stuff like that. That can be counterproductive in and of itself because I'm expected to do a lot more than just assisting with client work and stuff like that. We've got sales and operations and hiring and just other things happening where my time is more valuable applied to those things versus- Nick LeRoy: Without a doubt. Griffin Roer: ... spending a couple of days working on a project that I was like, "Well this won't be really interesting for anything else, but It'll help the business from a revenue standpoint." I think That's a challenge probably that smaller agencies face moreso than bigger agencies, but it is a reality of trying to balance those competing interests and making sure that what I'm doing is not just in the best interest of myself but in the best interest of the agency at large, which represents 13 people at this point. Nick LeRoy: Absolutely, and I think you nailed on one of the most critical components when we're comparing small agency to freelancer. As a freelancer, I get to be very selfish. Everything is about me. I get to make the choices. All my choices impact me only. There's less risk in that aspect. Whereas when, and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but as you had said 13 individuals that need to serve 13 meals every night, so you have to be very conscious of the type of work that you're taking, how do you prioritize it and even who works on what? Mordy Oberstein: Well, thank you so much Nick and Griffin. Ironically, I approached them separately and I knew they both knew each other to answer this question like, "Hey, we'll just do a Zoom call together and we'll answer it together." It's an amazing conversation. There's actually a whole 30 minute piece that they did for them. We have to somehow repurpose it for something because it's amazing conversation that only we have listened to. We feel we need to share that somehow. But also, make sure you follow Griffin Roer. He's more on LinkedIn at @CGriffinRoerJr, a link to his LinkedIn account in the show notes. And follow Nick on Twitter @NickLeRoy, that's @ N-I-C-K-L-E-R-O-Y on Twitter. It is interesting, right? You think, okay, SEO is SEO, but You're going to be able to do different things, focus on different things, work in different ways, prioritize different things, all because of the way you work within your organization, at least on the SEO agency side, or the fact that you don't have an organization because you're a freelancer. It's fascinating to me. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that there is a lot of prioritization that has to do with the sort of ins and outs of an agency and working as a team because very often in an agency you are going to work in lots of different ways. So yeah, it's really interesting to hear the way that they discuss that and how you have to manage all of the bits and wheels and nuts and bolts of all of that. Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot that goes into. It's the business side of it all, the billing and the client prioritization and all of that stuff is so different from just being let's say a consultant. Anyway, while we're talking about different situations and different circumstances that help dictate different SEO priorities, there are different things that different search engines prioritize within their results. With that, let's explore what the search engines of the world tend to prioritize differently as we go so many search engines. Mordy Oberstein: Let's take a look at Bing and Google, and let's take a look at how they handle different types of queries differently. Let's take entities to start. I always like looking at entities. I think they're a great way to dive into the mind of a search engine. I Googled, or one case Binged, a search bar is the word I'm looking for. I searched for John Lennon. I typed in John Lennon into Bing and I typed John Lennon into Google, and it's very different. Very, very different. For example, Bing tends for entities, like these kinds of entities and people, tries to push or tends to push the biographical information way harder than Google does. Google will show you, for example, when he was born, it'll give you some YouTube videos, a bunch of images, where you can listen to his music is above the fold. So Spotify and YouTube and Pandora. But Bing is pushing more the early years. It really gives you a great biographical breakdown of the different points of his life. It really tends to focus more on John Lennon as a person versus where Google is looking at it as here's an access or entry points to more various media about John Lennon. I thought that was interesting. Crystal Carter: I think that Google has been doing a lot particularly around the biographical entities here. It's been a very busy space in the last sort of year or so where they started adding- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they reformatted the whole knowledge panel thing. Crystal Carter: Right. They've added more of... It's more magazine sort of style. There's still the knowledge panel information, but for some people like Beyonce for instance, there's a lot more information around. They even have some quick answers. How old is this person? Or how tall is this person? Or things like that included in some of their search for this. I don't think that Bing has quite gone down that route for the biographical entity. Mordy Oberstein: No, not yet at least, or maybe they never will. Crystal Carter: Right. They have for a few other ones. There's a few sort of destination places where they'll pull things out. For instance, they used to have a SERP for a lion. If you look up what is a lion, you get a very interactive channel. It's got- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's very cool. Crystal Carter: ... pictures from Wikipedia and a map and links within the knowledge panel within the knowledge panel content as well. I think that the overall goal for these things seems to be around just making sure that there's lots of content there. Mordy Oberstein: Right. It's very layered. I've seen this across all the entities. I looked at Aaron Judge, who's a baseball player. By the way, both Bing and Google, when you search for somebody who's in the news, will prioritize news content right away. Search for Aaron Judge. He's a baseball player. It's during baseball season. There's always news about him, and both Google and Bing prioritized news results right at the top. But again, Google kind of gives, like you're saying, kind of like a T-L-D-R. You want to get a real quick overview of who Aaron Judge is? Here. And go explore more. Here's access points to more. Whereas Bing again gives you a timeline of Aaron Judge. He was a rookie here in 2016. He did that in 2021. He did that. It's really trying to give you that layered approach of we want you to walk away really understanding who this person is. Which is ironic in my mind because a lot of SEOs give Google flack about, "Oh, you're taking away clicks to all its information," but Bing really gives you all of that information there. Whereas with Google, I really do have to click somewhere to explore more. Crystal Carter: Right, and I think that Bing will very often add the information from other folks and they will reference it all together at the bottom. They'll reference all of it together. If you look up for instance, the Eiffel Tower, it has lots of facts about the Eiffel Tower and lots of information there. And It's clickable. It comes from somewhere, but it doesn't say it right next to it where it’s from. There's a bit of a balance of giving people lots of information but also making it more streamlined. I think that the entities around sort of multilayered entities are very interesting. So, something like the Eiffel Tower where you can buy tickets to the Eiffel Tower, where there's a Wikipedia page of the Eiffel Tower, and then there's also lots of historical things about the Eiffel Tower. There's a map and things like that. The entity management of that, then managing the knowledge panel I think for that is really interesting because there's so much in the knowledge panel for that. There's so much in the knowledge graph around something like the Eiffel Tower or even someone like Beyonce for instance. It's such a top level query to just enter something like Beyonce or Eiffel Tower or Aaron Judd that we need to have more there. So, it's kind of filtering as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it's interesting because they don't always stick to that same paradigm. For example, if you were to search something about like, what did I search for? It's something to do with tires, like how to change a tire on the side of the road. Google just gives you the steps. Here's how you change a tire on the side of the road. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, right? And Bing gives you more context about tires, while it does give you those steps. Bing likes to give you that context. If I search for something like a song, best songs of the 1990s, Bing just gives me the bunch of videos. But Google has a whole carousel of little thumbnails of all the songs from the nineties, like Say My name or Torn. And if you click on the thumbnail, you get a carousel of results that give you more context about that song. They don't always follow the same paradigm. It's interesting to see just from a marketing perspective how Google and Bing both think about their audiences. In some cases Google thinks you know what you do want context and some cases they don't and sometimes those are the opposite cases of where Bing says you want context and Google says, no, you don't. Crystal Carter: I think It's also interesting that they're happy to get some of that context from people that are searching. We think about entities as being very much things and stuff like the Eiffel Tower, or Natalie Umbruglia song, or whatever it may be. But they also cover abstract things. If you look up something like courage, for instance, courage on Bing, there's a poll. There's a pole underneath that to get more context specifically from people. For instance, they're saying, "Which of the following do you think is the most important trait of a courageous person? A, fearlessness B, perseverance, C, self-discipline or decomp compassion." Very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: What about E? Crystal Carter: What is E? What is E? Mordy Oberstein: I haven't thought about it yet. I have no pithy line. Crystal Carter: E is questioning the questions. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. What about skepticism? Crystal Carter: Right. What about that? Mordy Oberstein: What about that? Crystal Carter: It's interesting. For instance, you see the same thing with films and stuff. It'll be like, you've just looked up the Barbie movie, what was your review of the Barbie movie. Barbie movie is also an interesting one because of branded entities, there's a potential option to sort of monetize that space or to change around that space. For instance, the Barbie movie, they changed the SERP, similarly with Wordle. So Wordle has a SERP that is dedicated to specifically to it. I don't know if the Barbie movie thing was paid for thing or if Google's just really into the Barbie movie. It's very interesting, that- Mordy Oberstein: It's interesting. They do that for the World Cup. They do that for the Olympics. They've done things like that for the Super Bowl. The day after the Super Bowl, you search who won the Super Bowl, the fireworks go off. Yeah, Google likes doing that stuff. I think that's Google's branding, "Hey, come here, we're fun." Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Exactly. So they know where those queries are going to be and they know where they can leverage that entity and leverage that sort of brand experience with that entity when It's related to a specific brand. Mordy Oberstein: Now another entity that We're quite fond of over here on the SERP's Up podcast is the entity of SEO News. I love news. I love SEO News. Here's this week's Snappy News. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Do you like shopping? Do you like Google? Do you like data? Do you like Barry Schwartz? Don't answer the last one. Then you'll like this per Barry Schwartz over at SE Round Table, new Google Search Console shows Merchant Center visibility issues and changes. It's new. Google is now showing way more Merchant Center data and it is awesome and it is right inside of Google Search Console. Essentially, there are reports to help you see products that may have become ineligible for appearing in Google shopping. There's also a second part of the report that helps you get your listings more clicks and improve rankings so Google will actually tell you, "Hey, you should add return costs to the listing because that will get you more clicks." This is super important to Google and a super good move for them. Google needs to compete, wants to compete with Amazon. Obviously Amazon is the go-to place for e-commerce, shopping and listings and all that stuff. But by Google providing you with data such as this, it improves the chances that you'll be successful with Google shopping. The more success you have with Google shopping, the more Google can facilitate that success with Google shopping, the more you and people listing products on the internet will be invested in using Google Shopping and the more they can compete with Amazon. Very smart on Google's part. Have a look at the article in the show notes and you'll see a link in the article about how to activate the data. Also from Barry Schwartz, with a little help from a guy named Mordy, this time from Search Engine Land. How the August 2023 Google core update compared to March '23 core updates. The August 2023 core update finished after 16 days, which is a little bit longer than usual, on September 7th. And Barry, with the help of various tool providers dived into the impact of the update on rankings. I had the privilege of working with the Semrush data set to have a look at what the update provided in terms of rankings and it was unique. Usually, there's, a very, very demarcated spike increase in rank fluctuations meaning URLs moving up and down, changing positions all around the Google results pages. This time there wasn't that kind of spike. There was a prolonged period of really high and stably high, consistent that's the word I'm looking for, consistent rank fluctuations for a very long time. The initial spike actually occurred days before the update was officially announced. What to make of that is a great question for another time, but it was a definitely unique sort of rollout. Was the August 2023 core update more powerful and the March 2023 core update? Depends on how you slice it. Looking at peak rank volatility signals, it looks like the August 2023 update was more powerful. But you can't really look at that because rank volatility was already high coming into the update. If you look at what rank or how much rank volatility increased before the update versus during the update, it looks like the March update was perhaps more impactful. If you look at the average change in position, meaning how dramatic were the ranking changes, then the data shows that the August 2023 update was a little bit more impactful than the March 2023 core update. The point is slicing and dicing a core update and determining which one is more powerful is really complex. I have a whole post coming out on the SEMRush blog, so take a look for that when it comes out. I walk you through why analyzing these things are more complicated than it actually is using the August 2023 core update as an example. And that is this week's Snappy News. Always hard to prioritize which stories to cover in the SEO news each week on this podcast because It's snappy, so I can't cover them all. Crystal Carter: You have to prioritize which ones meet your needs. Mordy Oberstein: I try to prioritize which would meet our audience needs. Crystal Carter: Oh, see that's because you're so nice, Mordy. You're so nice and everyone appreciates you. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Thank you. The face I'm making now does not say thank you, but I'm saying thank you. You know who I do want to thank though, our Follower of the Week. She's a great friend and a great person, and I feel that we should shout her out loud and clear for everyone to follow over on social media. It is Shelley Walsh. She's the SEO Content Strategist over at Search Engine Journal, and you should follow her on Twitter. She's also on threads, I believe, @TheShelleyWalsh, that's T-H-E-S-H-E-L-L-E-Y-W-A-L-S-H. Link to her profile on the show notes. She's a fantastic person, does a ton for the industry and she has a lot of SEO knowledge. She's an SEO OG. She actually has a series called SEO Pioneers, where you can watch the OGs of SEO talk about how SEO has changed over the last 100 years kind of thing. It does help you kind of prioritize based on what they're saying, what does work, what doesn't work, because what used to work doesn't work anymore kind of thing. I’ve heard that many, many times on this podcast. Shelley Walsh for SEO prioritization and it's a priority for you to follow her on Twitter. Crystal Carter: I cannot recommend it enough. She's a great follow. I followed her recently as well, and my life has been much, much better since. So yes, I highly recommend. Mordy Oberstein: She's super sweet. She was at our Brighton SEO dinner back in the UK, when was that, April? April, right? Crystal Carter: Yes, yes, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. That seems so long ago. Always nice to see her at Brighton SEO. If you do go to Brighton SEO, look for Shelley. She's usually there, I think. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. It's great. It's great. Absolutely great follow. Shout out to Shelley, and shout out to everyone in the SEO Pioneers Group, Mordy Oberstein: John Mueller. Barry Schwartz. I think. If she hasn't had Barry, she should have Barry. We'll. Make that happen, Shelley. All right, well, 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 why even SEO pros need a refresher about SEO. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, at you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. 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