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Ever wondered why Googlebot loves your blog's cat photos but totally dismisses your high-value product pages? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by Roxana Stingu, Head of Search and SEO at Alamy, to dig into crawl patterns, bot behaviors, and crawl budgets. Learn how to make your pages better for bots, update old content to be relevant again, and minimize server costs by managing bot activity. Discover how specialized bot logs can offer insights into everything from quality issues to market trends and detect patterns of malicious bots you may want to block. (Best Shatner Impression) “The robots are interacting with our site, but how?” Don’t miss out as we navigate the world of search engine bots on the SERP's Up Podcast! Back Making bot log SEO data easy (easier?) Ever wondered why Googlebot loves your blog's cat photos but totally dismisses your high-value product pages? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by Roxana Stingu, Head of Search and SEO at Alamy, to dig into crawl patterns, bot behaviors, and crawl budgets. Learn how to make your pages better for bots, update old content to be relevant again, and minimize server costs by managing bot activity. Discover how specialized bot logs can offer insights into everything from quality issues to market trends and detect patterns of malicious bots you may want to block. (Best Shatner Impression) “The robots are interacting with our site, but how?” Don’t miss out as we navigate the world of search engine bots on the SERP's Up Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 102 | September 18, 2024 | 39 MIN 00:00 / 38:40 This week’s guests Roxana Stingu Roxana has a strong background in technical SEO, including enterprise SEO, image search, and ecommerce site search. As the Head of Search & SEO at Alamy, her diverse skill set is dedicated to making it easier for users to discover products across various platforms, ensuring they can find exactly what they need with ease. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing on some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix. And I'm joined by she who has all of the information you need in a highly visual and pointed way, the Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. I am the Crystal Carter who does things. Mordy Oberstein: With visuals also. Crystal Carter: Sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: At the same time. Crystal Carter: And then also sometimes a- Mordy Oberstein: What are we even talking about? Crystal Carter: ... because today we're talking about robots. Mordy Oberstein: We always talk about robots. It's an SEO podcast. Crystal Carter: I'm going to stop them from crawling over here. Mordy Oberstein: No, don't do that. Crystal Carter: I'm going to make them crawl over there. I'm going to watch where they go. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Foreshadowing. Foreshadowing. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can always subscribe to our SEO newsletter, which comes out each and every month. It's called Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. But where you can get your Botlogs in a highly visual, seamless way right inside of Wix and Wix Studio, more on that later. Well, not more on that topic, more on those reports later, as this week we're diving into Botlogs. Check every call and log every hit. No, we're not talking baseball, but Botlogs. How and why Botlog reporting factors into SEO, how to use Botlog analysis to drive SEO success, and how to make all that, much easier than I'm making it sound. To help us navigate our way through this perhaps uncharted part of your SEO universe, Roxana Stingu, the Head of Search and SEO at Alamy will be here in just a bit. We'll also explore a highly visual Botlog tool that simplifies the entire Botlog SEO process for you. What tool could that be? I kind of mentioned already before. Oh, no. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So Captain's Log, Supplemental, the robots are interacting with our site, but how? Unknown. Our only chance of returning from this quadrant of SEO is an unknown entity who refers to themselves as, "The Botlog." Though they hardly resemble a log at all, we're hoping it can help us branch out from our usual SEO analysis on this, the 102nd episode of the SERP's Up Podcast. Crystal Carter: I wasn't expecting the Shatner. I'm not going to lie. That was unexpected. Mordy Oberstein: In a good way or a bad way? Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no. Crystal Carter: Well, because you started and I was like, "Oh, this is amusing." And then it just kept going. I was like, "Wow, he's really-" Mordy Oberstein: I actually researched. I read through various captain's logs to see like, hey, what does he talk about in there? Yeah, I really did my homework on that. I went full nerd. Crystal Carter: I mean, that's what we're here for. That's what this is about. Mordy Oberstein: That's what makes this podcast special and better than all the other podcasts. Crystal Carter: You're at home. It's fine. It's cool. Mordy Oberstein: We do our thing here. We do our thing. Anyway. Anyway. Botlogs. The mere term sounds like it's frightening and/or confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Crystal Carter: It doesn't have to. That's one of the reasons why we've got Roxana talking about it. Because when I've heard Roxana speak a few times at a few different events, I've known Roxana for a few years now by Women in Tech SEO and she's wonderful and fantastic, which we'll find out very shortly. But Roxana is really great at taking really complex stuff and making it not sound impossible, which I think is super important because I think that everything is accessible. So I am so happy to be talking to Roxana about this today. Mordy Oberstein: With that, welcome to SERP's Up Roxana Stingu. How are you? Roxana Stingu: I'm good, thank you. No, sorry, I can't do that- Mordy Oberstein: We should do the whole episode like that, right? Everyone will love it. Roxana Stingu: We could try, but I don't think you're going to get a lot of people listening to this if I do that. Mordy Oberstein: You have two options, either we talk like Botlogs or bots or like William Shatner for the entire episode. Your choice. Roxana Stingu: I can't do either, but I can talk about Botlogs- Mordy Oberstein: And William Shatner? Roxana Stingu: A little bit. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, fine. Well, just the Botlog then. Roxana Stingu: Hello, everybody. Official hello. Crystal Carter: So Roxana, just for folks who are new to meeting you, can you just give them a little bit of your background, from where you're coming at this topic from? Roxana Stingu: Yeah, sure. Quick intro. I'm Head of Search and SEO for Alamy, where search is not paid search, but actually website search. So I get to work with my own search engine, which is great. And Alamy is a massive website. We have about 400 million product, and I'm mentioning this because the bigger the website, the more you care about log files and want to have a look at what bots are doing on that website. And we're going to talk about why that's important, but this is pretty much why I am so interested in this topic and why I like it so much. And even if you're not working on a 400 million product website, don't worry, there's still a lot of information in those files for you to get and be able to use that insight to further improve your website's presence in bigger search engines like Google. Crystal Carter: And that's super important. And for folks who don't know, bots are like little computer kind of things that they come to your website and they look around and stuff. So we have Googlebot, which crawls your website and sends information back to Google. There's Bingbot that also sends things. There's an AdSense one. Pinterest has one called PinBot. Then there's other stuff, like tools, like Ahrefs for instance also has their own bot that crawls around and does all this sort of thing. For a website that's your size, are there particular bots where you're like, "No, get away from me. Back up"? Roxana Stingu: Yes. Crystal Carter: Are there? Roxana Stingu: Absolutely. So when a website is this big, every request that comes from a bot is costly. And that's mostly because pages are dynamic, so every time a request comes in from a bot or a person, it doesn't matter. We need to recreate the pages from the server and then the server uses a database and that database incurs costs because we're getting that information from there. So pretty much every time anybody's requesting a page, we pay for it and it adds up. And the more bots you have crawling, the more it adds up. So then what I do is I tend to look at who's crawling me the most and what value am I getting out of that. So for instance, Google is crawling like crazy and I get value from that. I get organic traffic and that traffic then converts for me, so I'm getting revenue out of it. So I'm happy with Google crawling. Same for Bing and Yandex and Baidu and other search engines in countries where I want to have visibility with this website, but we live in an AI era and everybody is now crawling for information to put in their large language models and train whatever they want to train. So that is a problem because I'm paying for their training in this case. They have to request my content, so I'm incurring a cost, but I'm not seeing a benefit out of it because it's their model that they're monetizing or whatever they're doing. So for me at this point, looking at crawls from AI related bots, that's kind of the biggest area. And the problem is some of them will have descriptive names and you'll recognize them as being various companies that I'm not going to name and shame, but some of them use third party bots that don't resemble the name of the company using them. They're like bots for hire. And I think those are the ones you want to have a lookout for and block because you're really getting nothing out of it. You don't even know who's hired them. Crystal Carter: Right. That's really interesting. So people who are new to the concept of robots and crawling and all of that sort of stuff, you were talking about how it costs your server, it costs server time. So essentially they're calling the page when they're crawling the page, and so that's triggering server response. You're talking about much, much bigger sites, but even on smaller sites, I've seen it where somebody sent a bot to there and it's a junk bot, it's a spam bot or whatever that's coming through and it's causing tons and tons of traffic to the site that's messing up your analytics; It's causing server issues and things like that. So yeah, it is really important to pay attention to who they are, where they are, even from a smaller site. But also when thinking about these AI considerations and all of that sort of stuff. I guess I don't want to get into spilling all of the company details or whatever, but have you ever had to take immediate action to block people who are behaving in ways they shouldn't? Roxana Stingu: Yeah. It's part of security practices. You always do it. You look at malicious kind of requests, that's what we call them, so there's patterns to them. And you notice there's a big wave of requests and then it goes down and it's periodical and you can kind of see that pattern, and you know it's unnatural. To quote from my favorite movie, "It's unnatural, mate." Sorry, that accent, see, I can't do that. But you kind of notice these and you think, why are they crawling me? Is this a reputable bot? Because you have IPs of Googlebot and other bots and you can verify it's them and it's not somebody else. Or other times you get what's called DDoS or a denial of service attack. So that's when somebody starts sending so many hits to your website, your hosting can't deal with that. So then everything kind of freezes in your server is just refusing to connect to anything, so then your website's down even for your users. And this is not about large websites, it's about the bandwidth that your hosting will allow in terms of connection. So it's been in the past that I worked to small blogs that had low bandwidth hosting and I would create a fake DDoS with just the crawler because I was crawling too fast. So sending too many requests to it per second that the hosting just couldn't handle it. And I think small business websites, personal blogs, things like that will not go for a very expensive hosting package because there's no reason to. But they could be the victims of these DDoS because it's really easy to create them if your hosting doesn't allow a lot of hits to come through. Mordy Oberstein: Another reason why using Wix is great, because we'll take care of all that for you and your server won't get overloaded because we optimize the server network for you. Roxana Stingu: Exactly. One less thing to worry about. Mordy Oberstein: Two less things to worry about among other things. But thinking about small businesses, one of the other ways that I think you can think about using your botlux is understanding Google's behavior. Where are they crawling on your website? Which pages are they crawling on your website? And is there a problem? For example, I had a situation one time where there was a massive redirect done on the site and there was a glitch somewhere and you could see Google ignoring the redirect and going to the old page and not the new page. So you can take a look at your Botlogs and say, "Wait a second. I thought that was all good. Everything looks like it's fine, but there might be an underlying problem here because Google's ignoring it and they're going to the old page." Roxana Stingu: Yeah, that's absolutely one of the reasons why you should even go through these files. They're just like, you can export them as text files. It's just lines upon lines upon lines of who requested, like the referrer. Who requested what, the page on your site, and then information like the IP of the person or the service or the crawler requesting it. And other information that might be useful or not to you, like the browser, for instance, and the HTTP status code that come back, did that service get the page? 200? Okay, did it get a server error, a 5xx? What's going on? But the reason to go through all that information, because it's going to be a lot, is exactly as you said, to identify points where things are not working. I mentioned small businesses before and they tend to have a calendar for reservations on their website. And those tend to create infinite spaces because for every single combination of day, month, time, whatever, and especially in the future because the calendar goes forever, you create a page or you create a parameter that creates a new URL and Google and other bots can just get stuck in that and they literally just go in an infinite space and can't come out. So you are getting all these hits as if Google is identifying all these millions of new pages on your website when your site might just have 10 pages. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that people often don't understand the connection between that and your marketing activity or your other activity. So if Google's finding that, then that might be stopping Google from indexing the rest of your content, that might be stopping Google from completing their crawl, and that might mean that pages that you're expecting to be indexed aren't being indexed. And let's say those pages are the things that you're trying to sell. Maybe those things, the pages that aren't being indexed are the core of your business. Roxana Stingu: Exactly. You are making an update with the new offer, but Google's too busy in that infinite space. Instead of going and indexing the information about your new offer and showing your new maybe title or description that can convert that click. Mordy Oberstein: And also if quality is a domain level metric, right? So let's say with a helpful content system, which is now part of the core algorithm, they're looking at helpfulness across the entire domain. If they're not seeing your entire website and they're only seeing X, Y, and Z pages, that entire score is built up on X, Y, and Z pages and not the entire corpus of content on your entire website, which is not what you want. Roxana Stingu: Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure people heard about crawl budget before, and I think looking into log files, you can kind of see where that budget is being allocated. So for people who haven't worked with this term before, imagine you have a finite sum of money like all of us have when we get our payment at the beginning of the month or end of the month, and then you can allocate that money towards different things. You can put more money in food or more money in fun, but then you can pay rent. Google does something similar where they can put more crawl towards certain types of pages or other types of pages and it kind of has to find a balance in your website. And if we put too much money towards fun, that's great for us, but we're not really getting the value because then we starve. It's the same with Google. If it puts too much crawl towards pages where there's just errors, the pages don't load, they're really slow, their quality overall is low, it will stop putting money there because there's no value. So it will either shift the budget elsewhere or understand that maybe it needs to spend less with your website because it's not that good. So again, crawl log files can help you with this because if you segment your page types, so if it's a bigger website, you might do it by template, let's say. So you have category pages, you have product pages, you might have some, I don't know, blog pages, whatever you have, you segment by that. And then you look at how many hits am I getting from whatever search engine you're analyzing in these pages. And has that behavior kind of changed in time? Am I seeing a reduction that kind of matches maybe a core updates? All of a sudden I'm thinking, well, Google doesn't find it as quality as it did before. Maybe I need to up my game on these pages. Do something, right? And that's the thing. Quality will get stricter and stricter with every update because the internet just gets bigger and bigger, so Google needs to keep it clean. So if you notice this reduced crawling behavior in your pages, even though your number of pages is the same or higher, maybe kind of focus on this. Maybe that template needs a boost somehow, so try to understand what a quality boost would be in that case. Mordy Oberstein: Great point. Crystal Carter: I think also the other thing, you talk about how often people are crawling. Is that something that you look for in a Botlog, like how often Google's coming to the site? How often Bing is coming to the site? How often Yandex is coming to the site, for instance? Roxana Stingu: So that matters as well because if your content is interesting or of interest, which is different from being interesting to you, then you will notice that bots will come and crawl more frequently because they want to make sure they have the latest version of it because it's of interest. If you run a news website, you'll get so many crawls, it'll be insane because news is all about freshness. So then this is why Google recommends you have a news sitemap if you have a news website because then crawl patterns will change because it's more time-sensitive. But regarding this crawl frequency, have a look at pages that get a lot of crawls and very frequent ones. And then think, are these pages actually driving a lot of traffic or are they being crawled a lot but driving no traffic? Because then why is there an interest in getting updated information from pages that drive no traffic, right? So that might be a reason for you to look at those pages and try to understand, is this something I want to show to my users? And if yes, why isn't Google showing it to users, so no traffic? Or is this something like one of those spaces we talked about where just parameters which are duplicates of other pages or subsets that maybe I should just block and not crawl anymore because users don't need to see this, why am I allowing bots to see it? And then we use robots.txt and you block that. Crystal Carter: If you're seeing that it's crawling then and Google's kind of interested in it, if it is a page that's maybe an older blog or something like that, maybe that's a candidate for updating, for instance. Maybe we can update this and maybe can look at the... To make it so that it's indexable because they're already interested in it. They know where it is. Roxana Stingu: Yeah, exactly. If you're 2020 guide is still getting a lot of crawls, then it might mean that the topic of the guide is of interest, but information is outdated. So exactly as you said, go update that. Make it a 2024 guide and you might attract even more traffic then. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, even look at which part of the website Google tends to be crawling more often. You have products and you have a blog and you're fundamentally trying to use the blog to get people to the product pages because that what your website is actually earning money on. But if Google's crawling your blog way more frequently or not crawling your product-oriented content a lot at all, maybe you have a problem there. Maybe you need to interlink better. Whatever it may be, you need to understand that Google's seeing you as a blog website, not as a commerce website. Roxana Stingu: And here's where we get it wrong. We use crawlers and we always start the crawl from the homepage. And even though we use a Googlebot user agent or whatever, we think that's how search engines will crawl us, but that's just the one crawler that we're using. By using log files, it can actually see how search engines crawl because they don't always start from the homepage. They can start from a random page and then the priority they give the URLs they found and how they crawl might be different from the priority a crawler gives. So then it's really not the same thing and it should be comparing the two. And if you're kind of seeing the same stuff, great, then you don't need to do that comparison all the time. But if you compare crawl coming from a tool with where the main hits go to from your log files and you see major discrepancies, then you have to kind of consider weight. Why is it so different for bots than it is for my crawler? Why are bots not crawling these other links or URLs? Maybe they're too hidden in the page, maybe I already have so many links they give up. It gives you ideas of how to analyze a page and figure out what's not working. Crystal Carter: And I think in terms of comparison, one thing that I've looked at and Google's like, "Yeah, we're mobile first. Mobile, mobile, mobile." But then I see properties and it says that it's the desktop crawler, like in Google Search Console, it says the desktop crawler, whatever and things. And I'm like, "Y'all, really?" And then when I go into my Botlogs, I can see that the mobile crawler is not crawling me very often. The desktop crawler is crawling me more. Are you comparing the different bots to optimize accordingly in your day to day? Roxana Stingu: I have good news for you. Google is killing off the desktop crawler this month. It's going away. It's out. Crystal Carter: Okay, that's it. Roxana Stingu: So you're not going to see it anymore. Well, at least not- Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to miss. It's sad. Used to hanging out. We used to have a beer once in a while. All right, well, I guess that- Roxana Stingu: I know. It used to be fun, but good news is you're getting a crawl reduction because it's going away, because it's like duplicate crawl. You are getting crawled by the desktop and the smartphone one, and now the desktop one is going away. But I'm assuming it's going to be small percentages for people because Google has been mobile first, so crawling more like that. But there's other Google bots and not just Google, but other user agents from search engines that you need to keep an eye on. So for instance, you can see major spikes from Adsbot even though you don't serve ads, and that can take up a lot of bandwidth. And it's a good idea to keep an eye on that and just kind of monitor it, especially if it's not useful to you and you have an Adsbot robots.txt specific where you can say, "Right, I'm allowing you to do this, but not that." Or you just use your robots.txt where you say, "Right, Adsbot, I don't want this. Go away." So there's options there depending on if you have ads or not. Another thing that's interesting is that Google will crawl images with a different bot, and that's a bit slower than your regular HTML bot. So if you have an image heavy website and not seeing those crawls come in, give it a few weeks. But after that you should definitely be seeing that. And again, analyze the patterns there. If Google's not really crawling your images or doesn't really care about your images, maybe you should assess what your images are, because they might not be that useful. Crystal Carter: I think also one thing that's really interesting is, Mordy has the SEO Brand Podcast web page, I have a couple of other. I've got a little space site that I have, and I have my personal site or whatever. Neither of those have podcasts on them. I've looked at the Botlogs for Mordy's podcast site. He has a completely different set of bots that come to his website. He's got a completely different crew of robots that orbit his site- Roxana Stingu: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Those are my homies. Roxana Stingu: Your homies, yeah. But it's the same as with the Adbots. Once in a while Google will send all these different bots to discover, have you added a podcast in the meantime? Have you added more images? Have you added advertising? So you will see these hits once in a while and you should probably let that happen unless they go wild when you don't have podcasts, but you're getting half of your crawls from a podcast bot. You don't want that. So it's good to understand all the different bots and what they do and let them be if it's low values, because that's how search engines discover the web and changes to the web. But if they start being problematic and you don't have that type of content, just block them. Crystal Carter: And that's something you can do in your robots.txt? Roxana Stingu: Absolutely. Crystal Carter: And we have content on that, on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, which can help you learn all of that stuff. Roxana, This has been such a fantastic discussion. I've absolutely loved geeking out with you on this. Thank you so much for joining us. Mordy Oberstein: I, as well. Roxana Stingu: Always. Always for geeking out. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry for going all nerd on you earlier with the William Shatter thing. My bad. Roxana Stingu: It's acceptable. It's fine. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Roxana Stingu: I'll take it. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so you're more of a card person, I get it. I understand. Roxana Stingu: Yeah, I am. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, all good. All good there. Crystal Carter: Well, thank you so much for making it so today, and I think- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, where do people follow you? Roxana Stingu: I'm on X. I almost called it Twitter. I'm on X. It's just roxanastingu, one word. And same thing on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: Awesome. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much for joining us. Roxana Stingu: Thank you very much for having me. This has been fun. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Roxana Stingu: Bye, everybody. Mordy Oberstein: So you might be thinking like, I love Botlogs at this point. They're great, they're fantastic. You might also be thinking, Botlogs? That sounds complicated. How do I set those up? How do I do those? So good news for both you who love Botlogs and you who think Botlogs? That sounds complicated. How do I do that? Because we have our own Botlog reporting for you as we go tool time. So for those lucky folks who are using Wix, you have built in Botlog reports as visuals and they're awesome. Crystal Carter: And you don't have to ask a dev for them. Mordy Oberstein: No. Or connect this or connect that. You don't have to do anything. You just have to click on Analytics, go to SEO and click on Botlog Reports. Crystal Carter: Right. Go to the search bar, type in bot traffic over time, and you'll be able to find whatever you need. It really is genuinely fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: Can I say a salty point? Crystal Carter: Sure. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. For those like, "Oh, I like work because I get to control the server." Outside of locking yourselves out, leaving that aside for a minute, to me it's always opportunity costs. It's not either good or bad, it's whatever you need. This is the opportunity cost of not having control over the server and us having control over the server. Because we have control over the server, we automatically create Botlog reports for you because it's our server. Crystal Carter: And we have eyes on lots of different bots and can identify them. So I'm looking at the one from my private website, which to be honest, doesn't get tons and tons of traffic and just sort of does what it does. And on it, I can see the bot for Baidu in the Botlog Reports. Basically if you go to the Wix Botlog Report, and if you want to find out more about this, we have an article on the Wix SEO Learning Hub by one Mr. George Nguyen, link in show notes, who gets into lots of some of the details there. But the kind of bots that I'll see on my private website are going to be different from the bots that I'll see on say the Wix's SEO Learning Hub. I think we mentioned this in one of the other parts of this podcast as well, they're very different from the bots that Mordy gets on his podcast website, for instance. So my personal website doesn't have a podcast, so I don't get podcast bots on my website, but Mordy's gets tons. Tons of podcast bots. Bots I didn't even know existed. And I think that one of the things that's really interesting about this is that it can help you figure out, like Yandex is a bot that shows up on my site; HubSpot is one that shows up on my site; I've got Google Web Snippet, I've got Facebook, I've got Common Crawler, I've got Baidu. So for instance, if I'm seeing that the Baidu bot, a spider is showing up on my website a lot, guess what? That means that Baidu wants to know who I am. Guess what? That might tell me that maybe I should be investing more in markets where Baidu is a bigger player, because that's telling me that users there are interested in it because Baidu's interested in it. Same with Yandex. Mordy Oberstein: AKA China. Crystal Carter: Right? Same with Yandex and same with some other things as well. DuckDuckGo is another one as well. Someone was asking me about DuckDuckGo a while back and I'm like, "It can be really useful for people who don't want to leave a paper trail when they're online, and this can be really important-" Mordy Oberstein: If your market is criminals, DuckDuckGo might be for you. Crystal Carter: The CBD market, for instance, I think can be a bit more complex. So for instance, I think that Google has different rules around how CBD products are ranked on Google than they are on say, DuckDuckGo for instance. I don't think you're really able to do ads if you're a CBD product, and even if they are fully legal. So for instance, folks like that might see more traffic from DuckDuckGo. And again, that might give you an idea of, oh, actually, maybe we should invest some more time in that. And it's incredibly useful and making them so accessible, as we do in our Botlogs Report, is fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: It's all that. I mean, all the SEO tools are in there. So you can see like, hey, I'm paying for SEMrush and you're asking to audit my website. How come I'm not seeing any SEMrush on my website? Maybe they're not really auditing. They are. SEMrush will audit you. I'm not saying anything bad. Just an example. The visuals are built in, so you don't have to do any fancy footwork in order to take what's in a chart and to turn into a visual that A, you can share with the client that you could use yourself. And by the way, it's an easy way to check status codes on your website. Like, oh snap, what are people looking for that's pulling up a 404? What are the bots getting this pulling up a 404? Because you can filter by status code. Which pages are they seeing, a reader? Or, and I mentioned this earlier in the show, you could see if the search engines or whatever bot you were looking at are crawling the wrong pages. It's as simple as going to one of the reports and looking at the bar graph that shows which pages whatever bot you selected is crawling. Crystal Carter: Right, and you can also see that by the day. So let's say there was an issue on Tuesday or something and you want to see which pages were affected by that issue that you had on the Tuesday or something. You can go and filter by the one day that it happened and you can see whether or not you saw reduction before or after of that particular crawl rate, or whether or not you've seen bots crawling you less since then, that sort of thing. So you can see it by the date and filtered out by the different response codes and all of that sort of stuff. And the response codes get into details. It's not just 200, it's like 200, 304, 503, 504. It gets into the detail. Mordy Oberstein: So we're trying to say is check out the Botlog Reports in your Wix channel analytics. It's really great information for you. It's really easy. It's really streamlined. So if you are someone who listened to this podcast like, "There's this whole bot thing, but it's also terrifying," don't just go right in. Crystal Carter: Can I also say it's also downloadable as a CSV or for Excel or as an image. So if you, for instance, wanted to demonstrate that, guess what, we did mobile optimization on your site and now we're seeing lot more crawls from Google's mobile bot, you can take a little snapshot from the Botlog, the bot traffic over time report. You can put that in your report, you can get your gold star, maybe get yourself a raise. We- Mordy Oberstein: It is great for reporting. Crystal Carter: We out here helping y'all in these economic times. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Hey, you got to report in order to get the buy-in. You know what else is great at reporting? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Barry Schwartz is great at reporting. Crystal Carter: How did I not know that that was coming? Mordy Oberstein: It's only been 102 episodes, Crystal. I mean, come on. But who's counting? We are. We're counting. We're counting on Barry to cover this week's snappy SEO news. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. I will try to keep it snappier than usual because last week I got a complaint from Barry Schwartz that I droned on and on and on and on and on trying to cover his story that went on and on and on and on and on about Danny Sullivan's take on algorithm updates, the interview that Barry did. So I will try to keep it snappier this week. Barry, I'm so sorry. Anyway, from Barry Schwartz, both articles from Barry, they're both from seoroundtable.com. First up, Google search ranking volatility still heated a week after core-update. Barry wrote that on September 11th. I'm looking at the SEMRush Sensor on September 15th, and it's still high. It was high before the update, it was high during the update and it's been crazy high after the update. Is it all one update? No, but it's bonkers. Barry asked me, actually if this is like an Ask SEMRush... This is the longest period of high or very high volatility they've recorded. I should have known the answer because I actually researched that a while ago and the answer's no, we're not there yet. We need 15 more days of high volatility to break the record. I think that was back in 2022, 2021. I don't remember. I could look at my email. I forgot exactly when it was, but I think it had to do with the product review update, something like that, and there was this crazy volatility forever. So it's not the longest period of rank volatility, high rank volatility we've seen, but it's up there. I would say more, but I'll keep it snappy, Barry. Okay, also from Barry, report half Google AI overviews. You're missing an of. Report half of Google AI overviews links overlap with top search results. This study came from Rich Sanger, a great guy, great SEO, follow him on social media. He partnered up with the Authoritas and they looked at, hey, how often are the organic results, the links there, the URLs there matching what Google is showing the URLs in the AI overviews? Been a bunch of studies on this. They all have different data. What does that mean? I think it means the tools have a hard time tracking this stuff. Take that and, I don't know, do with it what you will. What Rich and Authoritas showed was 46% of the URLs in the AI overviews match up with the top organic results on page one. They actually did something interesting I thought that was cool. They went and clicked through to the related search features, like people also ask, people also search for, related search at the bottom of the page, and they click through and then recalculated to see if any of the URLs on that second SERP also match the AI overview URLs. And the number jumps up to around 64%. I could say more, but I don't. I do want to, but I can't because I don't want to set Barry by going on and on and on covering his stories. Barry, I'm so sorry. To the audience, also sorry, but really I'm just messing. And that's really all I have to say. We'll link to the articles in the show notes. Have a look at them, click through to look at the actual study that Rich did. It's pretty interesting. And I hope I kept it snappier. Snappy News, over and out. I just call Barry all reliable, all dependable. What's it called? That's like a geyser, isn't it? Like all reliable? Crystal Carter: Old Faithful. Mordy Oberstein: Old Faithful. There we go, Barry, aka all faithful. Crystal Carter: There we go. Is he the same age as you? Mordy Oberstein: Is he? Barry? No, Barry's older than me. Crystal Carter: Is he? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I'll check his Wikipedia page out, see what it says. Does it have his birthday on it? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it does. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Crystal Carter: Don't ask me how I know that. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, good. Barry is old, not new. I was going to say like a geyser, he is blowing out a lot of hot air, but that wouldn't be nice. Crystal Carter: No, and to be fair, it's steam, really- Mordy Oberstein: Steam, right. Barry is not an angry person, so he doesn't blow off a lot of steam like a geyser would. There we go. That's good. That's better. There we go. All right, thanks Barry. Moving on from people to people, our follow of the week this week is the one, the only from Lumar, Anne Berlin. Crystal Carter: Anne Berlin is fantastic. She's such a wealth of technical knowledge. She's really active in the women in tech SEO community as well. I did a webinar for Lumar with her a little while back, and it was really, really engaging. So we were talking about technical SEO audits and how you can get into those and why they're really valuable. And she's somebody who's able to understand that really, really well. And I think that in terms of Botlogs, bot traffic, etc, etc, when you're doing your technical SEO audit, it should absolutely be a part of it. And when you're using a tool like the Wix SEO bot traffic over time report or even Lumar's tool, which gets into more detail, you'll learn different things. And one of the things we talked about during that session was how you need to adjust your settings. Lumar has some great detail that you can go into and to how you adjust the settings for your crawl when you're doing your audit to find out which things the bots are looking at, which things people are looking at, which things you should be prioritizing. So shout out to Anne, shout out to the whole Lumar team for some great insights there. Mordy Oberstein: We got their app in the Wix App Market as well. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: Indeed. Crystal Carter: Did the podcast compute? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Yeah, it computed. Crystal Carter: That's good. So we don't need to control, alt, delete the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm kind of hoping we're moving to a world where bots become more like cyborgs because I don't know, cyborgs are more interesting. You never know what they're going to do. They're kind of unpredictable. Crystal Carter: I saw a TikTok of two ChatGPT-4 or something like the app or something, they were chatting to each other. They were like, "Hi, how can I help you?" And they were like, "Oh no, this is interesting. Oh, that's an interesting thing. I would like to know more about the latest top or what you're interested in." And then someone was like, "Oh yes, I'm interested in quantum computing." And then they had a long conversation about quantum computing. Their opening gamut wasn't like, "Oh, the weather..." Wasn't like, "Oh, let's talk about..." Because obviously robots aren't affected by the weather. But yeah, they jumped straight into quantum computing. It was like, "Oh my gosh, yes, quantum computing-" Mordy Oberstein: Course. Crystal Carter: "... Amazing. My favorite." Mordy Oberstein: And then they got into drinking urine and eating glue right afterwards. But did you see, by the way, I know this is off topic a little bit, and old news by the time this episode comes out, there's a social media platform where you create an avatar, like an AI avatar of yourself, and it talks to other AI avatars of other people? Crystal Carter: Twitter? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. No, no. That's where you talk to real people who you wish were AI avatars. This is- Crystal Carter: I mean, if we're talking about bots, we got to talk about Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: No, this is like AI talking to AI, but it's social media, which I understand the point of social media is I interact with other people, but now I'm having my avatar interact on my behalf with other avatars. I think it's called Butterfly or something. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: I'm not sure I'm just an old person and I don't get it, but I don't get it. Crystal Carter: It sounds to me a little bit like a Tamagotchi. Mordy Oberstein: That's what. Exactly what it sounds like. Crystal Carter: You put your Tamagotchi in the Tamagotchi land and then they put their Tamagotchi in the Tamagotchi land, and then you just come back and see what happened- Mordy Oberstein: Mine would just die every time. Crystal Carter: Do you know what actually? And maybe I should, if anyone makes this, I should get the rights for the IP because they definitely brought it from me, but that would be a really interesting way to do a dating app, to upgrade a dating app. It's basically you give your avatar loads of personality points that are your personality points, they give their avatar loads of personality points that are their personality parts. You put them in a meta universe and then whoever your little bot happens to find or gravitate towards or whatever, that's your match. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. AI should create dating bots because nothing will go wrong there. The divorce rate will not jump up. It'll be just fine. On that happy marital note, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, back next week with the new episode as we dive into the gaps between those who optimize and those who search. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content that we have on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Roxana Stingu Anne Berlin Rich Sanger Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Wix Bot Log Reports Alamy News: Google Search Ranking Volatility Still Heated A Week After Core Update Report: Half Google AI Overviews Links Overlap With Top Search Results Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Roxana Stingu Anne Berlin Rich Sanger Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Wix Bot Log Reports Alamy News: Google Search Ranking Volatility Still Heated A Week After Core Update Report: Half Google AI Overviews Links Overlap With Top Search Results Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing on some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix. And I'm joined by she who has all of the information you need in a highly visual and pointed way, the Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. I am the Crystal Carter who does things. Mordy Oberstein: With visuals also. Crystal Carter: Sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: At the same time. Crystal Carter: And then also sometimes a- Mordy Oberstein: What are we even talking about? Crystal Carter: ... because today we're talking about robots. Mordy Oberstein: We always talk about robots. It's an SEO podcast. Crystal Carter: I'm going to stop them from crawling over here. Mordy Oberstein: No, don't do that. Crystal Carter: I'm going to make them crawl over there. I'm going to watch where they go. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Foreshadowing. Foreshadowing. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can always subscribe to our SEO newsletter, which comes out each and every month. It's called Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. But where you can get your Botlogs in a highly visual, seamless way right inside of Wix and Wix Studio, more on that later. Well, not more on that topic, more on those reports later, as this week we're diving into Botlogs. Check every call and log every hit. No, we're not talking baseball, but Botlogs. How and why Botlog reporting factors into SEO, how to use Botlog analysis to drive SEO success, and how to make all that, much easier than I'm making it sound. To help us navigate our way through this perhaps uncharted part of your SEO universe, Roxana Stingu, the Head of Search and SEO at Alamy will be here in just a bit. We'll also explore a highly visual Botlog tool that simplifies the entire Botlog SEO process for you. What tool could that be? I kind of mentioned already before. Oh, no. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So Captain's Log, Supplemental, the robots are interacting with our site, but how? Unknown. Our only chance of returning from this quadrant of SEO is an unknown entity who refers to themselves as, "The Botlog." Though they hardly resemble a log at all, we're hoping it can help us branch out from our usual SEO analysis on this, the 102nd episode of the SERP's Up Podcast. Crystal Carter: I wasn't expecting the Shatner. I'm not going to lie. That was unexpected. Mordy Oberstein: In a good way or a bad way? Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no. Crystal Carter: Well, because you started and I was like, "Oh, this is amusing." And then it just kept going. I was like, "Wow, he's really-" Mordy Oberstein: I actually researched. I read through various captain's logs to see like, hey, what does he talk about in there? Yeah, I really did my homework on that. I went full nerd. Crystal Carter: I mean, that's what we're here for. That's what this is about. Mordy Oberstein: That's what makes this podcast special and better than all the other podcasts. Crystal Carter: You're at home. It's fine. It's cool. Mordy Oberstein: We do our thing here. We do our thing. Anyway. Anyway. Botlogs. The mere term sounds like it's frightening and/or confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Crystal Carter: It doesn't have to. That's one of the reasons why we've got Roxana talking about it. Because when I've heard Roxana speak a few times at a few different events, I've known Roxana for a few years now by Women in Tech SEO and she's wonderful and fantastic, which we'll find out very shortly. But Roxana is really great at taking really complex stuff and making it not sound impossible, which I think is super important because I think that everything is accessible. So I am so happy to be talking to Roxana about this today. Mordy Oberstein: With that, welcome to SERP's Up Roxana Stingu. How are you? Roxana Stingu: I'm good, thank you. No, sorry, I can't do that- Mordy Oberstein: We should do the whole episode like that, right? Everyone will love it. Roxana Stingu: We could try, but I don't think you're going to get a lot of people listening to this if I do that. Mordy Oberstein: You have two options, either we talk like Botlogs or bots or like William Shatner for the entire episode. Your choice. Roxana Stingu: I can't do either, but I can talk about Botlogs- Mordy Oberstein: And William Shatner? Roxana Stingu: A little bit. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, fine. Well, just the Botlog then. Roxana Stingu: Hello, everybody. Official hello. Crystal Carter: So Roxana, just for folks who are new to meeting you, can you just give them a little bit of your background, from where you're coming at this topic from? Roxana Stingu: Yeah, sure. Quick intro. I'm Head of Search and SEO for Alamy, where search is not paid search, but actually website search. So I get to work with my own search engine, which is great. And Alamy is a massive website. We have about 400 million product, and I'm mentioning this because the bigger the website, the more you care about log files and want to have a look at what bots are doing on that website. And we're going to talk about why that's important, but this is pretty much why I am so interested in this topic and why I like it so much. And even if you're not working on a 400 million product website, don't worry, there's still a lot of information in those files for you to get and be able to use that insight to further improve your website's presence in bigger search engines like Google. Crystal Carter: And that's super important. And for folks who don't know, bots are like little computer kind of things that they come to your website and they look around and stuff. So we have Googlebot, which crawls your website and sends information back to Google. There's Bingbot that also sends things. There's an AdSense one. Pinterest has one called PinBot. Then there's other stuff, like tools, like Ahrefs for instance also has their own bot that crawls around and does all this sort of thing. For a website that's your size, are there particular bots where you're like, "No, get away from me. Back up"? Roxana Stingu: Yes. Crystal Carter: Are there? Roxana Stingu: Absolutely. So when a website is this big, every request that comes from a bot is costly. And that's mostly because pages are dynamic, so every time a request comes in from a bot or a person, it doesn't matter. We need to recreate the pages from the server and then the server uses a database and that database incurs costs because we're getting that information from there. So pretty much every time anybody's requesting a page, we pay for it and it adds up. And the more bots you have crawling, the more it adds up. So then what I do is I tend to look at who's crawling me the most and what value am I getting out of that. So for instance, Google is crawling like crazy and I get value from that. I get organic traffic and that traffic then converts for me, so I'm getting revenue out of it. So I'm happy with Google crawling. Same for Bing and Yandex and Baidu and other search engines in countries where I want to have visibility with this website, but we live in an AI era and everybody is now crawling for information to put in their large language models and train whatever they want to train. So that is a problem because I'm paying for their training in this case. They have to request my content, so I'm incurring a cost, but I'm not seeing a benefit out of it because it's their model that they're monetizing or whatever they're doing. So for me at this point, looking at crawls from AI related bots, that's kind of the biggest area. And the problem is some of them will have descriptive names and you'll recognize them as being various companies that I'm not going to name and shame, but some of them use third party bots that don't resemble the name of the company using them. They're like bots for hire. And I think those are the ones you want to have a lookout for and block because you're really getting nothing out of it. You don't even know who's hired them. Crystal Carter: Right. That's really interesting. So people who are new to the concept of robots and crawling and all of that sort of stuff, you were talking about how it costs your server, it costs server time. So essentially they're calling the page when they're crawling the page, and so that's triggering server response. You're talking about much, much bigger sites, but even on smaller sites, I've seen it where somebody sent a bot to there and it's a junk bot, it's a spam bot or whatever that's coming through and it's causing tons and tons of traffic to the site that's messing up your analytics; It's causing server issues and things like that. So yeah, it is really important to pay attention to who they are, where they are, even from a smaller site. But also when thinking about these AI considerations and all of that sort of stuff. I guess I don't want to get into spilling all of the company details or whatever, but have you ever had to take immediate action to block people who are behaving in ways they shouldn't? Roxana Stingu: Yeah. It's part of security practices. You always do it. You look at malicious kind of requests, that's what we call them, so there's patterns to them. And you notice there's a big wave of requests and then it goes down and it's periodical and you can kind of see that pattern, and you know it's unnatural. To quote from my favorite movie, "It's unnatural, mate." Sorry, that accent, see, I can't do that. But you kind of notice these and you think, why are they crawling me? Is this a reputable bot? Because you have IPs of Googlebot and other bots and you can verify it's them and it's not somebody else. Or other times you get what's called DDoS or a denial of service attack. So that's when somebody starts sending so many hits to your website, your hosting can't deal with that. So then everything kind of freezes in your server is just refusing to connect to anything, so then your website's down even for your users. And this is not about large websites, it's about the bandwidth that your hosting will allow in terms of connection. So it's been in the past that I worked to small blogs that had low bandwidth hosting and I would create a fake DDoS with just the crawler because I was crawling too fast. So sending too many requests to it per second that the hosting just couldn't handle it. And I think small business websites, personal blogs, things like that will not go for a very expensive hosting package because there's no reason to. But they could be the victims of these DDoS because it's really easy to create them if your hosting doesn't allow a lot of hits to come through. Mordy Oberstein: Another reason why using Wix is great, because we'll take care of all that for you and your server won't get overloaded because we optimize the server network for you. Roxana Stingu: Exactly. One less thing to worry about. Mordy Oberstein: Two less things to worry about among other things. But thinking about small businesses, one of the other ways that I think you can think about using your botlux is understanding Google's behavior. Where are they crawling on your website? Which pages are they crawling on your website? And is there a problem? For example, I had a situation one time where there was a massive redirect done on the site and there was a glitch somewhere and you could see Google ignoring the redirect and going to the old page and not the new page. So you can take a look at your Botlogs and say, "Wait a second. I thought that was all good. Everything looks like it's fine, but there might be an underlying problem here because Google's ignoring it and they're going to the old page." Roxana Stingu: Yeah, that's absolutely one of the reasons why you should even go through these files. They're just like, you can export them as text files. It's just lines upon lines upon lines of who requested, like the referrer. Who requested what, the page on your site, and then information like the IP of the person or the service or the crawler requesting it. And other information that might be useful or not to you, like the browser, for instance, and the HTTP status code that come back, did that service get the page? 200? Okay, did it get a server error, a 5xx? What's going on? But the reason to go through all that information, because it's going to be a lot, is exactly as you said, to identify points where things are not working. I mentioned small businesses before and they tend to have a calendar for reservations on their website. And those tend to create infinite spaces because for every single combination of day, month, time, whatever, and especially in the future because the calendar goes forever, you create a page or you create a parameter that creates a new URL and Google and other bots can just get stuck in that and they literally just go in an infinite space and can't come out. So you are getting all these hits as if Google is identifying all these millions of new pages on your website when your site might just have 10 pages. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that people often don't understand the connection between that and your marketing activity or your other activity. So if Google's finding that, then that might be stopping Google from indexing the rest of your content, that might be stopping Google from completing their crawl, and that might mean that pages that you're expecting to be indexed aren't being indexed. And let's say those pages are the things that you're trying to sell. Maybe those things, the pages that aren't being indexed are the core of your business. Roxana Stingu: Exactly. You are making an update with the new offer, but Google's too busy in that infinite space. Instead of going and indexing the information about your new offer and showing your new maybe title or description that can convert that click. Mordy Oberstein: And also if quality is a domain level metric, right? So let's say with a helpful content system, which is now part of the core algorithm, they're looking at helpfulness across the entire domain. If they're not seeing your entire website and they're only seeing X, Y, and Z pages, that entire score is built up on X, Y, and Z pages and not the entire corpus of content on your entire website, which is not what you want. Roxana Stingu: Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure people heard about crawl budget before, and I think looking into log files, you can kind of see where that budget is being allocated. So for people who haven't worked with this term before, imagine you have a finite sum of money like all of us have when we get our payment at the beginning of the month or end of the month, and then you can allocate that money towards different things. You can put more money in food or more money in fun, but then you can pay rent. Google does something similar where they can put more crawl towards certain types of pages or other types of pages and it kind of has to find a balance in your website. And if we put too much money towards fun, that's great for us, but we're not really getting the value because then we starve. It's the same with Google. If it puts too much crawl towards pages where there's just errors, the pages don't load, they're really slow, their quality overall is low, it will stop putting money there because there's no value. So it will either shift the budget elsewhere or understand that maybe it needs to spend less with your website because it's not that good. So again, crawl log files can help you with this because if you segment your page types, so if it's a bigger website, you might do it by template, let's say. So you have category pages, you have product pages, you might have some, I don't know, blog pages, whatever you have, you segment by that. And then you look at how many hits am I getting from whatever search engine you're analyzing in these pages. And has that behavior kind of changed in time? Am I seeing a reduction that kind of matches maybe a core updates? All of a sudden I'm thinking, well, Google doesn't find it as quality as it did before. Maybe I need to up my game on these pages. Do something, right? And that's the thing. Quality will get stricter and stricter with every update because the internet just gets bigger and bigger, so Google needs to keep it clean. So if you notice this reduced crawling behavior in your pages, even though your number of pages is the same or higher, maybe kind of focus on this. Maybe that template needs a boost somehow, so try to understand what a quality boost would be in that case. Mordy Oberstein: Great point. Crystal Carter: I think also the other thing, you talk about how often people are crawling. Is that something that you look for in a Botlog, like how often Google's coming to the site? How often Bing is coming to the site? How often Yandex is coming to the site, for instance? Roxana Stingu: So that matters as well because if your content is interesting or of interest, which is different from being interesting to you, then you will notice that bots will come and crawl more frequently because they want to make sure they have the latest version of it because it's of interest. If you run a news website, you'll get so many crawls, it'll be insane because news is all about freshness. So then this is why Google recommends you have a news sitemap if you have a news website because then crawl patterns will change because it's more time-sensitive. But regarding this crawl frequency, have a look at pages that get a lot of crawls and very frequent ones. And then think, are these pages actually driving a lot of traffic or are they being crawled a lot but driving no traffic? Because then why is there an interest in getting updated information from pages that drive no traffic, right? So that might be a reason for you to look at those pages and try to understand, is this something I want to show to my users? And if yes, why isn't Google showing it to users, so no traffic? Or is this something like one of those spaces we talked about where just parameters which are duplicates of other pages or subsets that maybe I should just block and not crawl anymore because users don't need to see this, why am I allowing bots to see it? And then we use robots.txt and you block that. Crystal Carter: If you're seeing that it's crawling then and Google's kind of interested in it, if it is a page that's maybe an older blog or something like that, maybe that's a candidate for updating, for instance. Maybe we can update this and maybe can look at the... To make it so that it's indexable because they're already interested in it. They know where it is. Roxana Stingu: Yeah, exactly. If you're 2020 guide is still getting a lot of crawls, then it might mean that the topic of the guide is of interest, but information is outdated. So exactly as you said, go update that. Make it a 2024 guide and you might attract even more traffic then. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, even look at which part of the website Google tends to be crawling more often. You have products and you have a blog and you're fundamentally trying to use the blog to get people to the product pages because that what your website is actually earning money on. But if Google's crawling your blog way more frequently or not crawling your product-oriented content a lot at all, maybe you have a problem there. Maybe you need to interlink better. Whatever it may be, you need to understand that Google's seeing you as a blog website, not as a commerce website. Roxana Stingu: And here's where we get it wrong. We use crawlers and we always start the crawl from the homepage. And even though we use a Googlebot user agent or whatever, we think that's how search engines will crawl us, but that's just the one crawler that we're using. By using log files, it can actually see how search engines crawl because they don't always start from the homepage. They can start from a random page and then the priority they give the URLs they found and how they crawl might be different from the priority a crawler gives. So then it's really not the same thing and it should be comparing the two. And if you're kind of seeing the same stuff, great, then you don't need to do that comparison all the time. But if you compare crawl coming from a tool with where the main hits go to from your log files and you see major discrepancies, then you have to kind of consider weight. Why is it so different for bots than it is for my crawler? Why are bots not crawling these other links or URLs? Maybe they're too hidden in the page, maybe I already have so many links they give up. It gives you ideas of how to analyze a page and figure out what's not working. Crystal Carter: And I think in terms of comparison, one thing that I've looked at and Google's like, "Yeah, we're mobile first. Mobile, mobile, mobile." But then I see properties and it says that it's the desktop crawler, like in Google Search Console, it says the desktop crawler, whatever and things. And I'm like, "Y'all, really?" And then when I go into my Botlogs, I can see that the mobile crawler is not crawling me very often. The desktop crawler is crawling me more. Are you comparing the different bots to optimize accordingly in your day to day? Roxana Stingu: I have good news for you. Google is killing off the desktop crawler this month. It's going away. It's out. Crystal Carter: Okay, that's it. Roxana Stingu: So you're not going to see it anymore. Well, at least not- Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to miss. It's sad. Used to hanging out. We used to have a beer once in a while. All right, well, I guess that- Roxana Stingu: I know. It used to be fun, but good news is you're getting a crawl reduction because it's going away, because it's like duplicate crawl. You are getting crawled by the desktop and the smartphone one, and now the desktop one is going away. But I'm assuming it's going to be small percentages for people because Google has been mobile first, so crawling more like that. But there's other Google bots and not just Google, but other user agents from search engines that you need to keep an eye on. So for instance, you can see major spikes from Adsbot even though you don't serve ads, and that can take up a lot of bandwidth. And it's a good idea to keep an eye on that and just kind of monitor it, especially if it's not useful to you and you have an Adsbot robots.txt specific where you can say, "Right, I'm allowing you to do this, but not that." Or you just use your robots.txt where you say, "Right, Adsbot, I don't want this. Go away." So there's options there depending on if you have ads or not. Another thing that's interesting is that Google will crawl images with a different bot, and that's a bit slower than your regular HTML bot. So if you have an image heavy website and not seeing those crawls come in, give it a few weeks. But after that you should definitely be seeing that. And again, analyze the patterns there. If Google's not really crawling your images or doesn't really care about your images, maybe you should assess what your images are, because they might not be that useful. Crystal Carter: I think also one thing that's really interesting is, Mordy has the SEO Brand Podcast web page, I have a couple of other. I've got a little space site that I have, and I have my personal site or whatever. Neither of those have podcasts on them. I've looked at the Botlogs for Mordy's podcast site. He has a completely different set of bots that come to his website. He's got a completely different crew of robots that orbit his site- Roxana Stingu: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Those are my homies. Roxana Stingu: Your homies, yeah. But it's the same as with the Adbots. Once in a while Google will send all these different bots to discover, have you added a podcast in the meantime? Have you added more images? Have you added advertising? So you will see these hits once in a while and you should probably let that happen unless they go wild when you don't have podcasts, but you're getting half of your crawls from a podcast bot. You don't want that. So it's good to understand all the different bots and what they do and let them be if it's low values, because that's how search engines discover the web and changes to the web. But if they start being problematic and you don't have that type of content, just block them. Crystal Carter: And that's something you can do in your robots.txt? Roxana Stingu: Absolutely. Crystal Carter: And we have content on that, on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, which can help you learn all of that stuff. Roxana, This has been such a fantastic discussion. I've absolutely loved geeking out with you on this. Thank you so much for joining us. Mordy Oberstein: I, as well. Roxana Stingu: Always. Always for geeking out. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry for going all nerd on you earlier with the William Shatter thing. My bad. Roxana Stingu: It's acceptable. It's fine. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Roxana Stingu: I'll take it. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so you're more of a card person, I get it. I understand. Roxana Stingu: Yeah, I am. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, all good. All good there. Crystal Carter: Well, thank you so much for making it so today, and I think- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, where do people follow you? Roxana Stingu: I'm on X. I almost called it Twitter. I'm on X. It's just roxanastingu, one word. And same thing on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: Awesome. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much for joining us. Roxana Stingu: Thank you very much for having me. This has been fun. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Roxana Stingu: Bye, everybody. Mordy Oberstein: So you might be thinking like, I love Botlogs at this point. They're great, they're fantastic. You might also be thinking, Botlogs? That sounds complicated. How do I set those up? How do I do those? So good news for both you who love Botlogs and you who think Botlogs? That sounds complicated. How do I do that? Because we have our own Botlog reporting for you as we go tool time. So for those lucky folks who are using Wix, you have built in Botlog reports as visuals and they're awesome. Crystal Carter: And you don't have to ask a dev for them. Mordy Oberstein: No. Or connect this or connect that. You don't have to do anything. You just have to click on Analytics, go to SEO and click on Botlog Reports. Crystal Carter: Right. Go to the search bar, type in bot traffic over time, and you'll be able to find whatever you need. It really is genuinely fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: Can I say a salty point? Crystal Carter: Sure. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. For those like, "Oh, I like work because I get to control the server." Outside of locking yourselves out, leaving that aside for a minute, to me it's always opportunity costs. It's not either good or bad, it's whatever you need. This is the opportunity cost of not having control over the server and us having control over the server. Because we have control over the server, we automatically create Botlog reports for you because it's our server. Crystal Carter: And we have eyes on lots of different bots and can identify them. So I'm looking at the one from my private website, which to be honest, doesn't get tons and tons of traffic and just sort of does what it does. And on it, I can see the bot for Baidu in the Botlog Reports. Basically if you go to the Wix Botlog Report, and if you want to find out more about this, we have an article on the Wix SEO Learning Hub by one Mr. George Nguyen, link in show notes, who gets into lots of some of the details there. But the kind of bots that I'll see on my private website are going to be different from the bots that I'll see on say the Wix's SEO Learning Hub. I think we mentioned this in one of the other parts of this podcast as well, they're very different from the bots that Mordy gets on his podcast website, for instance. So my personal website doesn't have a podcast, so I don't get podcast bots on my website, but Mordy's gets tons. Tons of podcast bots. Bots I didn't even know existed. And I think that one of the things that's really interesting about this is that it can help you figure out, like Yandex is a bot that shows up on my site; HubSpot is one that shows up on my site; I've got Google Web Snippet, I've got Facebook, I've got Common Crawler, I've got Baidu. So for instance, if I'm seeing that the Baidu bot, a spider is showing up on my website a lot, guess what? That means that Baidu wants to know who I am. Guess what? That might tell me that maybe I should be investing more in markets where Baidu is a bigger player, because that's telling me that users there are interested in it because Baidu's interested in it. Same with Yandex. Mordy Oberstein: AKA China. Crystal Carter: Right? Same with Yandex and same with some other things as well. DuckDuckGo is another one as well. Someone was asking me about DuckDuckGo a while back and I'm like, "It can be really useful for people who don't want to leave a paper trail when they're online, and this can be really important-" Mordy Oberstein: If your market is criminals, DuckDuckGo might be for you. Crystal Carter: The CBD market, for instance, I think can be a bit more complex. So for instance, I think that Google has different rules around how CBD products are ranked on Google than they are on say, DuckDuckGo for instance. I don't think you're really able to do ads if you're a CBD product, and even if they are fully legal. So for instance, folks like that might see more traffic from DuckDuckGo. And again, that might give you an idea of, oh, actually, maybe we should invest some more time in that. And it's incredibly useful and making them so accessible, as we do in our Botlogs Report, is fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: It's all that. I mean, all the SEO tools are in there. So you can see like, hey, I'm paying for SEMrush and you're asking to audit my website. How come I'm not seeing any SEMrush on my website? Maybe they're not really auditing. They are. SEMrush will audit you. I'm not saying anything bad. Just an example. The visuals are built in, so you don't have to do any fancy footwork in order to take what's in a chart and to turn into a visual that A, you can share with the client that you could use yourself. And by the way, it's an easy way to check status codes on your website. Like, oh snap, what are people looking for that's pulling up a 404? What are the bots getting this pulling up a 404? Because you can filter by status code. Which pages are they seeing, a reader? Or, and I mentioned this earlier in the show, you could see if the search engines or whatever bot you were looking at are crawling the wrong pages. It's as simple as going to one of the reports and looking at the bar graph that shows which pages whatever bot you selected is crawling. Crystal Carter: Right, and you can also see that by the day. So let's say there was an issue on Tuesday or something and you want to see which pages were affected by that issue that you had on the Tuesday or something. You can go and filter by the one day that it happened and you can see whether or not you saw reduction before or after of that particular crawl rate, or whether or not you've seen bots crawling you less since then, that sort of thing. So you can see it by the date and filtered out by the different response codes and all of that sort of stuff. And the response codes get into details. It's not just 200, it's like 200, 304, 503, 504. It gets into the detail. Mordy Oberstein: So we're trying to say is check out the Botlog Reports in your Wix channel analytics. It's really great information for you. It's really easy. It's really streamlined. So if you are someone who listened to this podcast like, "There's this whole bot thing, but it's also terrifying," don't just go right in. Crystal Carter: Can I also say it's also downloadable as a CSV or for Excel or as an image. So if you, for instance, wanted to demonstrate that, guess what, we did mobile optimization on your site and now we're seeing lot more crawls from Google's mobile bot, you can take a little snapshot from the Botlog, the bot traffic over time report. You can put that in your report, you can get your gold star, maybe get yourself a raise. We- Mordy Oberstein: It is great for reporting. Crystal Carter: We out here helping y'all in these economic times. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Hey, you got to report in order to get the buy-in. You know what else is great at reporting? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Barry Schwartz is great at reporting. Crystal Carter: How did I not know that that was coming? Mordy Oberstein: It's only been 102 episodes, Crystal. I mean, come on. But who's counting? We are. We're counting. We're counting on Barry to cover this week's snappy SEO news. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. I will try to keep it snappier than usual because last week I got a complaint from Barry Schwartz that I droned on and on and on and on and on trying to cover his story that went on and on and on and on and on about Danny Sullivan's take on algorithm updates, the interview that Barry did. So I will try to keep it snappier this week. Barry, I'm so sorry. Anyway, from Barry Schwartz, both articles from Barry, they're both from seoroundtable.com. First up, Google search ranking volatility still heated a week after core-update. Barry wrote that on September 11th. I'm looking at the SEMRush Sensor on September 15th, and it's still high. It was high before the update, it was high during the update and it's been crazy high after the update. Is it all one update? No, but it's bonkers. Barry asked me, actually if this is like an Ask SEMRush... This is the longest period of high or very high volatility they've recorded. I should have known the answer because I actually researched that a while ago and the answer's no, we're not there yet. We need 15 more days of high volatility to break the record. I think that was back in 2022, 2021. I don't remember. I could look at my email. I forgot exactly when it was, but I think it had to do with the product review update, something like that, and there was this crazy volatility forever. So it's not the longest period of rank volatility, high rank volatility we've seen, but it's up there. I would say more, but I'll keep it snappy, Barry. Okay, also from Barry, report half Google AI overviews. You're missing an of. Report half of Google AI overviews links overlap with top search results. This study came from Rich Sanger, a great guy, great SEO, follow him on social media. He partnered up with the Authoritas and they looked at, hey, how often are the organic results, the links there, the URLs there matching what Google is showing the URLs in the AI overviews? Been a bunch of studies on this. They all have different data. What does that mean? I think it means the tools have a hard time tracking this stuff. Take that and, I don't know, do with it what you will. What Rich and Authoritas showed was 46% of the URLs in the AI overviews match up with the top organic results on page one. They actually did something interesting I thought that was cool. They went and clicked through to the related search features, like people also ask, people also search for, related search at the bottom of the page, and they click through and then recalculated to see if any of the URLs on that second SERP also match the AI overview URLs. And the number jumps up to around 64%. I could say more, but I don't. I do want to, but I can't because I don't want to set Barry by going on and on and on covering his stories. Barry, I'm so sorry. To the audience, also sorry, but really I'm just messing. And that's really all I have to say. We'll link to the articles in the show notes. Have a look at them, click through to look at the actual study that Rich did. It's pretty interesting. And I hope I kept it snappier. Snappy News, over and out. I just call Barry all reliable, all dependable. What's it called? That's like a geyser, isn't it? Like all reliable? Crystal Carter: Old Faithful. Mordy Oberstein: Old Faithful. There we go, Barry, aka all faithful. Crystal Carter: There we go. Is he the same age as you? Mordy Oberstein: Is he? Barry? No, Barry's older than me. Crystal Carter: Is he? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I'll check his Wikipedia page out, see what it says. Does it have his birthday on it? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it does. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Crystal Carter: Don't ask me how I know that. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, good. Barry is old, not new. I was going to say like a geyser, he is blowing out a lot of hot air, but that wouldn't be nice. Crystal Carter: No, and to be fair, it's steam, really- Mordy Oberstein: Steam, right. Barry is not an angry person, so he doesn't blow off a lot of steam like a geyser would. There we go. That's good. That's better. There we go. All right, thanks Barry. Moving on from people to people, our follow of the week this week is the one, the only from Lumar, Anne Berlin. Crystal Carter: Anne Berlin is fantastic. She's such a wealth of technical knowledge. She's really active in the women in tech SEO community as well. I did a webinar for Lumar with her a little while back, and it was really, really engaging. So we were talking about technical SEO audits and how you can get into those and why they're really valuable. And she's somebody who's able to understand that really, really well. And I think that in terms of Botlogs, bot traffic, etc, etc, when you're doing your technical SEO audit, it should absolutely be a part of it. And when you're using a tool like the Wix SEO bot traffic over time report or even Lumar's tool, which gets into more detail, you'll learn different things. And one of the things we talked about during that session was how you need to adjust your settings. Lumar has some great detail that you can go into and to how you adjust the settings for your crawl when you're doing your audit to find out which things the bots are looking at, which things people are looking at, which things you should be prioritizing. So shout out to Anne, shout out to the whole Lumar team for some great insights there. Mordy Oberstein: We got their app in the Wix App Market as well. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: Indeed. Crystal Carter: Did the podcast compute? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Yeah, it computed. Crystal Carter: That's good. So we don't need to control, alt, delete the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm kind of hoping we're moving to a world where bots become more like cyborgs because I don't know, cyborgs are more interesting. You never know what they're going to do. They're kind of unpredictable. Crystal Carter: I saw a TikTok of two ChatGPT-4 or something like the app or something, they were chatting to each other. They were like, "Hi, how can I help you?" And they were like, "Oh no, this is interesting. Oh, that's an interesting thing. I would like to know more about the latest top or what you're interested in." And then someone was like, "Oh yes, I'm interested in quantum computing." And then they had a long conversation about quantum computing. Their opening gamut wasn't like, "Oh, the weather..." Wasn't like, "Oh, let's talk about..." Because obviously robots aren't affected by the weather. But yeah, they jumped straight into quantum computing. It was like, "Oh my gosh, yes, quantum computing-" Mordy Oberstein: Course. Crystal Carter: "... Amazing. My favorite." Mordy Oberstein: And then they got into drinking urine and eating glue right afterwards. But did you see, by the way, I know this is off topic a little bit, and old news by the time this episode comes out, there's a social media platform where you create an avatar, like an AI avatar of yourself, and it talks to other AI avatars of other people? Crystal Carter: Twitter? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. No, no. That's where you talk to real people who you wish were AI avatars. This is- Crystal Carter: I mean, if we're talking about bots, we got to talk about Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: No, this is like AI talking to AI, but it's social media, which I understand the point of social media is I interact with other people, but now I'm having my avatar interact on my behalf with other avatars. I think it's called Butterfly or something. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: I'm not sure I'm just an old person and I don't get it, but I don't get it. Crystal Carter: It sounds to me a little bit like a Tamagotchi. Mordy Oberstein: That's what. Exactly what it sounds like. Crystal Carter: You put your Tamagotchi in the Tamagotchi land and then they put their Tamagotchi in the Tamagotchi land, and then you just come back and see what happened- Mordy Oberstein: Mine would just die every time. Crystal Carter: Do you know what actually? And maybe I should, if anyone makes this, I should get the rights for the IP because they definitely brought it from me, but that would be a really interesting way to do a dating app, to upgrade a dating app. It's basically you give your avatar loads of personality points that are your personality points, they give their avatar loads of personality points that are their personality parts. You put them in a meta universe and then whoever your little bot happens to find or gravitate towards or whatever, that's your match. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. AI should create dating bots because nothing will go wrong there. The divorce rate will not jump up. It'll be just fine. On that happy marital note, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, back next week with the new episode as we dive into the gaps between those who optimize and those who search. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content that we have on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Lidia Infante has been working in SEO for almost a decade, helping businesses in SaaS, media and eCommerce grow online. She has a BSC in Psychology and a Master in Digital Business, and is a regular speaker at international SEO events such as MozCon, BrightonSEO, and WTSFest. Lidia Infante SEO Consultant Lidia Infante has been working in SEO for almost a decade, helping businesses in SaaS, media and eCommerce grow online. She has a BSC in Psychology and a Master in Digital Business, and is a regular speaker at international SEO events such as MozCon, BrightonSEO, and WTSFest. Articles & Resources 31 Aug 2023 SEO gap analysis: Outrank your competitors with data 2 Mar 2023 How to find your real SEO competitors 1 Dec 2022 International SEO: The essential guide to global success Resources Lidia Infante SEO competitor audit Google Sheet Analyze the SERP competition by conducting a data-driven audit with this SEO worksheet. 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

People trust other people. Study after study has shown that people trust the content in reviews over what the brand says. That’s why Mordy and Crysta discuss the importance of encouraging user-generated reviews and their role in SEO. When talking about reviews for SEO, the focus is on user-generated reviews. This podcast investigates why getting reviews is crucial and how it impacts your organic visibility. From how reviews might affect ranking in the Local Pack to where reviews appear across the Google SERP and throughout the Google ecosystem, this podcast episode gives you a comprehensive understanding of the role reviews play in organic search. Get actionable advice from Claire Carlile of BrightLocal to encourage user-generated reviews and learn what marketers and business owners can and should be doing with them. It’s time to generate some understanding around user-generated reviews today on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back The value of valuing reviews People trust other people. Study after study has shown that people trust the content in reviews over what the brand says. That’s why Mordy and Crysta discuss the importance of encouraging user-generated reviews and their role in SEO. When talking about reviews for SEO, the focus is on user-generated reviews. This podcast investigates why getting reviews is crucial and how it impacts your organic visibility. From how reviews might affect ranking in the Local Pack to where reviews appear across the Google SERP and throughout the Google ecosystem, this podcast episode gives you a comprehensive understanding of the role reviews play in organic search. Get actionable advice from Claire Carlile of BrightLocal to encourage user-generated reviews and learn what marketers and business owners can and should be doing with them. It’s time to generate some understanding around user-generated reviews today on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 15 | November 30, 2022 | 34 MIN 00:00 / 33:31 This week’s guests Claire Carlile Claire Carlile is BrightLocal's Local Search Expert. Her work at Claire Carlile Marketing, where she helps businesses of all sizes make the most of the local search opportunity, allows her to provide real-world skills and expertise to what BrightLocal does. 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 putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the infallible, the illustrious, I don't have any other adjectives, Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter: Hello there SEOs and internet people and friends and colleagues and wonderful people listening to the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: I reversed it there. I put your name first and then your title. Crystal Carter: Oh, yes. Mordy Oberstein: On accident. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. That's okay. Mordy Oberstein: I realized midway through, I'm like, "I forgot your title." Crystal Carter: Remix, that's all right. Mordy Oberstein: We're all about the titles. Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. No, we're talking about reviews today, not titles. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my mistake. Crystal Carter: Different topic. Mordy Oberstein: I'm looking at the wrong podcast deck. Crystal Carter: Different one. Mordy Oberstein: I'm sorry. Crystal Carter: We'll talk about titles another time. Mordy Oberstein: I'm with the program. I'm with the program. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we'll be fine. Mordy Oberstein: I'm with the program. Crystal Carter: Have you left a review of it? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, don't forget to leave a review because we're talking about reviews. But anyway, we're not there yet. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where we have an entire suite of amazing reporting insights from bot logs to blog traffic, to user behavior to eComm analytics. If you're using Wix and you're not digging into all that Wix Analytics has to offer you, then you're missing out and that's not a sales pitch, that's truth. Crystal Carter: It's just facts, people. Mordy Oberstein: It's just facts. Crystal Carter: Just facts. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, great show for you. Today, as Crystal mentioned, we're talking about reviews. The wonderful, hard to garner user reviews and their role. Crystal Carter: That's right, that's right. I mean, five stars for you for that intro, Mordy, I would just like to say five star. Mordy Oberstein: Rate this intro. Thank you for rating this intro. Crystal Carter: I should rate every segment. Mordy Oberstein: I rank number one in the local pack for intros near me. Anyway, we're talking about user reviews and their value in SEO, repurposing reviews, wear review snippets, show up in the Google ecosystem because they're kind of all over the place, plus BrightLocal's Claire Carlile stops by to share her strategy to get people to leave you those ever powerful reviews. We'll also dive deep into aggregate review pages. Thin, not thin. Great, not great. We got a deeper thought for you all about aggregate review pages and if they have any real value for your website. And as always, we have the snappiest of news for you and who you should be following on social or more SEO awesomeness. Episode 15 of the SERP's Up podcast is off the tarmac. I like off the tarmac. It's good, right? Crystal Carter: Off the tarmac. Mordy Oberstein: I was writing that for the intro. It's like one of the only parts of this podcast, little behind the scenes that I script out. Off the tarmac, that's how we're going to do this. Crystal Carter: That's right. Mordy Oberstein: Leave a review for the end part of the intro there, off the tarmac. Five starts if you liked it. Crystal Carter: Four and a half. Mordy Oberstein: Four and a half. Okay. I feel, by the way, this is the episode we could shamelessly plug, please leave a review for the podcast, wherever you're listening. Crystal Carter: Oh my God. Please leave review. Please leave a review of the podcast. Wherever you enjoy podcasts, please leave us a review. Mordy Oberstein: I enjoy podcasts in my ears. Where do you enjoy them? Crystal Carter: Yes, that's true. Also ears, ears are good. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Five star review for ears. This got off the rails already. Crystal Carter: Oh my gosh. Mordy Oberstein: User reviews. What are we talking about Crystal? Crystal Carter: Okay, so when we're talking about reviews, today we're talking about user rated reviews, getting them what we think about them, why they matter, why they're important. When Google talks about reviews, they also have their product review updates, which are not around user generated reviews. They're more about the content that people make when they say, "Oh, I've got this blog and I've reviewed this pair of headphones or something." That's a different kind of review. Today what we're talking about are user generated reviews and basically we're talking about how you can think about them. Now, Google gets really involved with user generated reviews in a few different ways. Probably the most relevant to most people who are listening to this podcast is in Google Business Profile. And Google Business Profile, they actually have some good information about how to manage user generated reviews. So they say, remind customers to leave reviews. Let them know that it's quick and easy to leave reviews. You shouldn't necessarily incentivize, but it's good to remind people that it's there. So you can say, leave a link and at the bottom of your email that you send out to them after they've completed a transaction. Or you can say, leave a link at the bottom of your email footer, or you can put a little sticker on your door that says, review us on TripAdvisor, or review us on Google Business Profile, that sort of thing. Reply to reviews to build customer trust. That is absolutely great advice and it's a really good way to make sure that users know that if they leave a review that you are someone who's going to be engaging with them. They also say value all reviews. So again, not every review is going to be five stars. Some of them are going to be four and a half, some of them might be a little bit lower. And basically, you just want to make sure that you're checking in on all of those reviews. One of the great things about reviews is that they show up not just in Google Business Profile, but they can also show up on products. They can also show up for your shop overall, for instance, if you're working on Google Merchant Center. And if you're using things like TripAdvisor or RevU or Trustpilot or things like that, you might also see reviews there. Facebook will also give you review information and things like that. But reviews offer a great amount of social proof for the value of your company and the value of your services. And so making sure that you're thinking about how you're getting those reviews and how you're managing those reviews can be really, really important to moving the needle both with ranking and also with building your brand. Mordy Oberstein: That's amazing. I don't know where to start with this first off. Yeah, the thing for me about reviews you've comprehensively covered in a minute, which is amazing in its own right, that gets a five star review right there too. You get a five star review and you get a five star review. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: But reviews show up everywhere in the ecosystem. So we're probably going to get and talk about ranking factors and where that comes in to Google ranking you in local packs and the local finder and how reviews factor into all of that. But leave that aside just for a second. Reviews are so important obviously to your business because there's social proof that what you offer is good. By the way, great point that not all the reviews are going to be 100% five star reviews. And that's actually a good thing because when I see all five star reviews, I think fake reviews. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly, exactly. And sometimes the one star reviews are nothing to do with whether or not something is good. Sometimes it's like, "Oh, I gave this laptop one star because I spilled yogurt all over it and it didn't work after that." It's like, I think that's user error. That they didn't necessarily- Mordy Oberstein: I was not happy with the quality of the packaging and wrapper. You know what I'm doing with the wrapper? I'm throwing it out anyway. So I don't really care. Crystal Carter: So I always check the top reviews and I always check the bottom reviews as well. And if the bottom reviews I'm like, ah, that's not going to apply to me, or oh, okay, I'll take that into account or whatever, then that's fine. But yeah, absolutely, pay attention to those. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, if you're looking like, oh, I do have negative reviews, if that's the negative review that you're getting and someone's going to look at it, which I do, I think everybody kind of does, if it's a nothing burger, it's a nothing burger. Don't fret. But reviews show up, they're in structured data markup, they're kind of everywhere. And it's one of the things that Google, because again, Google wants to show you that what you're getting is, as a user, is a quality result. And it's one of the easy ways that Google can clearly show the user that what we as in Google are offering you is great. So Google uses those reviews. So they're just everywhere. Crystal Carter: Right, absolutely. And if you look up your business and your business name, you'll often see multiple websites that are showing the reviews and you'll often see different things are either going there. And the point that Google was talking about, about responding to reviews is really important because it shows that you're present and that you're engaging with your customers. And even if there's a nothing burger review, even if you're like, "Thank you very much for your insights, we'll take that to the team" or something, that's better than nothing. I've seen conversations where a customer wasn't happy about something and the company came back and said, "Well, we've adjusted this or we've improved that." And the person said, "Oh, thank you." That can be really good and that can help build trust. And that can also show any potential customers that if something does go wrong, you're the kind of business that will help them to address it. So I think that reviews are something that is really useful for businesses of all sizes. And certainly, as a reviewer, I've spoken a lot recently about how I am a level six Google Guide, now. I have stock. I'm just saying. Anyway, as a level six Google Guide, one of the things that I find really important is to make sure that I review businesses that I think are really, really valuable that I really enjoy. And even sometimes if I wasn't able to make a purchase at the place, but I had a great experience at the place, it's something that I really, really value. And I've seen with clients when I've been working client side that when they have more reviews, they seem to see more visibility on local pack. And this is something that's been a little bit of a debate amongst SEOs as to whether or not that affects Google Business Profile rankings. But what I've seen from working with clients is that when they have more reviews, they get better traffic to their website. But what I've also seen is that sometimes, as a user, if I'm looking for something, sometimes the reviews will show up in the search. So if I'm searching for maybe vegan donuts and the website or the profile for the bakery doesn't have vegan donuts, but there's a review that says vegan donuts, sometimes it shows up on there. And again, there's some debate about whether or not that's something that there's some debate about whether or not other people have seen that. But I've definitely seen that in the wild. Mordy Oberstein: I've definitely seen the local pack pulling in reviews, snippets into the local pack. So Google is taking those snippets of reviews would mean like when we say reviews are everywhere, it's not the stars, it's actual the words that people are leaving and throwing it into the local pack. So curious if Google, another value of reviews is, does it give Google semantic understanding of what you do and who you are? I don't know. It's a little bit hard to do that because the reviewer doesn't necessarily leave that kind of wording in the review. It might say this was great. So that's not going to be semantically relevant. But many times they do. Crystal Carter: Well, what's interesting is as a Google Guide, this I think is really important that people think about and people engage with the Google Guide system. There are millions of people doing the Google Guide system. And basically what Google Guides does is when you leave a review, you get more points as a Google Guide. So you can move up to level seven if you have more words in your review. Also, if you add a photo to your review, they say, what is this? Is this a hamburger? Is this a hot dog? Is this a pizza? Which part of the menu is that? So Google Guides people, Google guides their Google Guides to leave the kinds of reviews that they expect to see, particularly in Google Business Profile reviews. So I think that when you are thinking about the kinds of reviews you might be getting and you are thinking about the kinds of reviews, you might be... What did they say? They said recommending or reminding. Reminding people to leave. Then also you want to think about how Google is actually guiding people through that review process. Sorry, if I can say one more thing. But during the last year I've been talking a lot about visual search and Google has been using a lot of the images from Google Guides for their visual search thing. So for instance, if you take a picture of a hamburger and you put near me, then Google will search their Google Guides photos and the reviews that they've had from Google Business Profile to surface content that's from businesses that serve that kind of thing. So thinking about making sure that you have things that are review worthy and you have imagery that is review worthy within your establishment can also help you to increase the kinds of reviews that you get for your business. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. And all of that information, whether it be simply because people are leaving that information other people are looking at, or Google is in the Symantec web, is using it to sort of contextualize and understand who you are, what you do and how well you do it is super important. You might want to think about when you're asking people to leave reviews, to sort formalize it in a way or construct it in a way where you're sort of guiding them towards leaving a more specific kind of review. So if let's say it's a restaurant, put it in, let us know what you thought of the restaurant, the service, what was your favorite dish? And then people will tell you, "Yeah, I really enjoyed this," whatever, whatever dish that you have. You're trying to nudge them along to be a little more specific in that review, which is a better quality to review and offers a little bit more teeth of semantically for Google to grab onto. But I want to jump back really quickly to the whole ranking factor thing. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Our reviews are ranking factor. Now I know there's a bunch of debate as you mentioned about it. But on the side that says that reviews do, and just keep this in mind, the local pack when you search for pizza near me and there's a big box there and there's one, two, three businesses listed in there, is a separate algorithm than the normal Google algorithm. I want to say normal, the general Google algorithm. If indeed reviews are a part of that, that's a major thing because you're only talking about three listings in there. And if reviews are a major factor, it's not something to ignore. Is it not, first off, what do you lose? Secondly, if it is, it's a major part of getting visibility online and it's not just random people saying reviews are a ranking fact. There's people like Darren Shaw who we'll talk about more later, Joy Hawkins. And there's studies. For example, Joy Hawkins recently did a study, we'll link to it in the show notes. I think Barry Schwartz over at SE Roundtable covered it, maybe on Search Engine Land showing that businesses that have more than 10 reviews tend to rank better than businesses less than 10 reviews in the local pack. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And Darren Shaw shared, he has an article on the Wix SEO hub, why Google reviews are important for local businesses. And he shared a report from 2001 about local pack ranking factors and he found that reviews contributed 17% of the time to ranking in Google Business Profile. Mordy Oberstein: It seems like there's, not say a consensus, but there's a broad understanding by a lot of really smart local SEO folks that reviews factor in. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And as you say, it's a good thing to do anyway. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. It's like what do you lose? With that though, we did talk about how you actually encourage people to leave you those reviews because it's a little bit awkward. I don't want to ask them. How do you actually go about doing that? So for you, for your review health, we have local search expert over from BrightLocal who's one of the major local SEO platforms. She the one, she's the only Claire Carlile and she's here to help you understand how you can encourage people to write reviews. Take it away Claire. Claire Carlile: So we use reviews as consumers to help us decide which product, which service, which organization or which business to choose over another. So as a business or an organization, we're probably going to want to encourage people to leave reviews. So here are a few things to think about. First of all, ask yourselves, are you ready? Is your business ready to start to get an influx of reviews? Is your product or service ready? Are there any preexisting issues? Because it might be a good idea to iron those out before you start getting negative reviews based on those. So you can have a look at your existing review corpus. So say for example, you might look at Google Business Profile reviews, have a little look at the place topics that Google is pulling through for your business and then work out what those are saying about you. If you've got phrases like professional service or very thorough, then that's great. If you have got place topics like disgusting or dirty, then you could probably do with having a little look at those and dealing with those before you get a big influx of reviews. And then you need to think about where you're actually needing those reviews. What type of reviews on what type of sites are you trying to target? So we can think about what shows in our Google Business Profile. Well, first of all, we've got Google Reviews. But secondly we also have sometimes reviews being pulled in from other platforms, say for example Facebook or it could be niche specific review sites in your vertical. So also have a little look for your brand name in Google and have a look to see what is on page one and page two in terms of reviews for your business. You might need to target reviews in those places as well. And don't forget, we might want first party reviews, but we probably will, that we can use as testimonials across all sorts of pages on our website. We can use them on our marketing materials, our social channels, and we can use them to display in our bricks and mortar establishments. And if we're trying to get reviews for a particular product, if we get reviews just for that product, we can use them to mark up our product schema to get some nice visibility in the serp. So number three, what makes a good review? Well, in my mind, an ideal review is positive I sentiment because obviously that's what we would like and it's rich in terms of content. So it uses the name of the service or the product and it uses any of the attributes that you'd like to be associated with your business. Ideally, it would have photos as well if possible. So number four, we actually need to ask for reviews. If you're going to leave it to chance, it's likely you're going to get fewer reviews. And also the ones that you do get could quite possibly be negative because it does seem to me that it's people that have an extreme experience of a product or service or business that tend to leave those reviews. So if you ask everyone, then you are more likely to get a fair balance of the reviews. Now, how and where? Well you need to make it easy and you need to offer options. It does depend on the type of service or product you're providing on the journey of the customer. So make sure that you're asking the right people at the right time and you should automate the process where possible. But try and incorporate some customer service feedback and input before you send out the review request. So say for example, you have had lots of people staying at your hotel for the weekend, you know that perhaps some of them had some issues, then why don't you deal with that first before you blanket send out a generic email to all of those people. You need to make sure that those are personalized for the people that you are sending them out to. And then finally, we need to monitor and reply because new and potential customers are going to read your review responses. So this is your chance to let them know that even if a review might be a bit negative in sentiment, that you are actually a good business and it's also your chance to turn an unhappy customer into a happier customer. And don't forget to use those reviews for business intelligence. Positive and negative themes, positive and negative sentiment can all be pulled out to help feed into your business to fix and improve your products and services. Don't just make the review process just ticking boxes. And then bonus tip, monitor your competitor review corpus. The place topics are an easy place to monitor. What are the positives of people's experiences and what are the negatives and how can you use that information to help you plan your own product and service delivery as well as your marketing materials? Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much Claire. That was really amazing and I totally agree. You definitely want to make the process frictionless. You want to make this easy and smooth and fun, for lack of a better word. Don't offer them money or gifts and exchanges against Google guidelines, but you want to make it as nice of experience as possible. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I think yeah, add some joy to it. The other thing that she also talked about, which I think is something that I've definitely seen is display your reviews. So this is something I've seen in a few different ways and something I always recommend is there's an app for instance called Elfsight that allows you to show your reviews on your website. There's also, sometimes you can embed your TripAdvisor reviews or your Trustpilot reviews or whatever on your website. And very often, in my experience anyway, if you display your reviews on your website, you're much more likely to get more reviews for your website or your business when you do that. I highly advise making a reviews page where you showcase the collection of reviews of various different things. Mordy Oberstein: Which goes back to repurposing reviews. It's a great thing. I don't know if we actually mentioned it. We didn't, oh my goodness. But repurpose your reviews. Put them in tweets, put them on this page or that page, here, there and everywhere. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. So yeah, Claire talks about displaying them in your business, online, all over the place. It's absolutely true. You should totally do that because sometimes it brings more reviews. Somebody says, "Mordy who is working at the register was super helpful to me the other day." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, he was super helpful. He's a very helpful fellow. Crystal Carter: And somebody's like, "Yeah, he was really great." Mordy Oberstein: Handsome too. Reviews beget reviews. And speaking of reviews, ever get to a page that reviews a product? Say it reviews the best microwaves and it has heard just a quick list of various products i.e. microwaves, with maybe their price and star rating. Google seems to hate them these days, but do they have value? Here's a deep thought on aggregate product review pages. By the way, I feel like we're going to have a little bit of a debate here. So I'm just going to ring the bell right here, ding, ding, ding. Crystal Carter: Oh, it's on Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: It's on, because I hate these pages. I was talking to Rebecca Berbel from over at Oncrawl and we're like, "Yeah, we hate those kind of pages." I mentioned we're going to cover this. She's like, "Yeah, I hate." She's also a big content person. But you'll like them. So let's start with that. Crystal Carter: So I like these pages because I don't having to go to 25 different pages to see what's going on. I like a page where it's like best microwaves or something and then I can see 20 different microwaves and they're like review, no cost, et cetera. And I can compare them very, very quickly. I like that. I can get in, if I see the reviews, a general trend of the reviews and I can go off and get more details after I've made a short list. Mordy Oberstein: I get that and I get the idea, okay, you go to a page and say it again, best microwaves and all they have there is 20 of these boxes to have the name of the product, the picture of the product, the rating, and a whole bunch of affiliate links for themselves. So that to me, I guess is why part of the, I guess bias that I have against these pages. Because I know what's going on here. You're just trying to get your fund. I am all for affiliates. Do not take me the wrong way. I am all for affiliates earning their keep, but I also feel it should be value to the user and I understand why somebody will look at that as value. And I think the lesson we're going to walk away from this is different intents, different strokes for different folks. You have to know your audience and there might be an audience for this, although Google doesn't seem to think so. But anyway. Crystal Carter: Maybe I'm an army of one, who knows? But I think also maybe there's room for both. So maybe there's room for putting a TLDR of the reviews at the top in say a table for instance, and then maybe get into the details further on that sort of thing. Because for those of us with short patience, short attention spans, I want the Cliff notes. Mordy Oberstein: I'm all for that. But as a content snob, I want to know that you put some kind of effort into this and you actually... Because, okay, what tells me that this rating that you put there is not just because that's the affiliate link giving you the most money. It's the content. You've contextualized that rating you went through and you told me all the great things and all the bad things and all the mediocre things about this microwave. And now I feel like, okay, I can trust that four star rating. So I challenge you. Crystal Carter, how do you know that that four star rating, five star rating is good unless you see some contextualization around it? Crystal Carter: Here's my question, here's my counter question. How is this different from the Google shopping page? You go to a Google shopping page and you type in best microwaves, they give you a list of a bunch of best microwaves, they give you a list of best ratings, they've got all the star ratings there and you can scan through all of those and those are all links going off to somewhere. And I'm just like, how is this different? Mordy Oberstein: Counterpoint. When you go to Google shopping, you're going to actually buy the thing. You've already researched the thing, you already know what you're doing. You just kind of need a general understanding of what you're looking at. When you're looking for best microwave, it's an informational commercial, whatever intent, you're looking to learn more. And you just listing the product and a picture with affiliate links and a rating doesn't teach me anything. Crystal Carter: I don't want to learn about microwaves, I just want hot food. Mordy Oberstein: You're missing out. Crystal Carter: I don't want to spend three years reading about the ins and outs of microwaves. Mordy Oberstein: That a good point, though. That I agree with you, right? Because a lot of these things that are ranking for best microwaves, these product review pages, they have buyer guides, they're really kind of prolific and they're really good. But sometimes, let's say I've already read one in those pages and I'm diving a little bit deeper. Now I just want to go back, I want to get a quick review of what I looked at or what was there. I don't want all of that. Maybe you make a good point in the sense that you ever go to a recipe page, you all have, and there's like 400 words, 4,000 pages to scrolls, folds, just to get to the recipe. Crystal Carter: I went for a walk in the park and the leaves were falling and the colors were amazing and there was a butterfly. And this butterfly really reminded me of my grandmother. Mordy Oberstein: Meat Loaf. It reminded me of Meat Loaf. Not the food, the musical artist. At one time in a meatloaf contest, I had a wonderful tuna sandwich. So here's my recipe for the best tuna fish a sandwich. Crystal Carter: I would do anything to get to the end of that review. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes tuna fish sandwiches in the mirror may appear closer than they are. But I agree, there kind of needs to be a balance there. And I hope we don't get to that point. And I think perhaps there's different intents within best microwaves that maybe Google can do a better job of catering to. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But I still hold dear to the truth that, or my truth at least, that as a whole, aggregate review pages don't offer much value except to a small minutia of people on this planet called Crystal. Crystal Carter: I think there's a place for both. And I think that Google's getting pretty good at being able to drill down into that. So for instance, if the deal breaker on the microwave is whether or not it's pops popcorn really well, for instance, if I want to know what is the best microwave for doing Orville Redenbacher for instance, because I don't like burnt popcorn, it's the worst. Mordy Oberstein: I love burnt popcorn. Crystal Carter: Burnt popcorn makes your whole house smell. I do not like that. Mordy Oberstein: Round two, ding, ding, ding. Crystal Carter: I like perfectly popped popcorn. And I don't wasting kernels either. So for instance, if that's something there, then if I Google best popcorn for not wasting kernels. Google is getting very good at catering to those of us who have a short attention span and to click and to get through things. They're very good at getting to the highlighter section. So they'll highlight the section, they'll highlight the text within a longer form review. Now you're not going to get that kind of detail about whether or not this particular microwave is really good at popping popcorn so that you don't have any kernels left, for instance, in one of those aggregate reviews. So I think Google's getting better at sort of addressing the needs of people who just want the TLDR, people who want to wax poetical about microwaves, whichever. Mordy Oberstein: I think this is a good case where, we talked about this before in the previous podcasts where we had George fill in for you, you were on vacation and we talked about multiple intents on one page. I think this is a good case where you can cater to multiple intents of one page. And you see the pages that do this well, they'll have a table up top where they'll go through all the information that you want. But underneath that, and I think it's important that the table's on top Google, if you're listening, hi John, to have the deeper information underneath it. Now, as a second point, I understand about the burnt popcorn and it does stink up the house. I am with you, but it tastes so much better. And sometimes I will freely admit I burn the popcorn on purpose just a tad. And I'm so like on eggshells, is my wife going to get angry at me that I made the entire house smell like burn popcorn. But I do it anyway. Crystal Carter: Honestly, Mrs. Oberstein, I don't know what you're having to go through these days. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes I wait for her to be asleep to make popcorn just for no reason. Crystal Carter: Does the popping not wake her up? Mordy Oberstein: She sleeps through everything. I am on the opposite. I wake up at every single little noise. Okay, TMI, for all the listeners at this point, which brings us to our next segment. I'm just going to quickly pivot because I think there's no smoothness to this pivot. Do not rate this pivot. Let's get to the snappy news. Here's the snappy news. Snappy News. Snappy News. Snappy News from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google Documents Search Ranking Updates As Systems, Labels Live Or Archived Notable Algorithms. In a nutshell, Google came out and released an official list of its ranking systems, emphasis on systems. Feel like William Shatner, systems. Versus algorithms as some of the things are pre or meta algorithm, for example. Google uses machine learning like BERT, to better understand what the heck it's looking at. That's meta-algorithmic. That sounds super snazzy. Meta-algorithmic. The better Google can understand something, the better can apply relevancy, which is a ranking factor, which is kind of by focusing on the ranking factors per se is not the way. This is not the way. If you look at the doc Google created, you can sort of see the split as specific algorithms like the one that shows local news content in the top stories carousel. Those are called systems, as in the local news systems, or the helpful content system or the freshness system. Whereas, the properties that work at the metal level just have names, for example, BERT or MUM or neural matching. There's no system attached to the name. So little bit of a way for you to see the kind of split there and little trick there in my honest opinion. Anyway, we'll link link to both Barry's coverage and the actual doc from Google in the show notes is definitely worth giving it a read through if anything, but to refresh yourself. Refreshing. And that is it for this week's Snappy News. Tis was the snappiest of news. Again, it's always great to keep up what's going on in the ins and outs of the SEO industry. Crystal Carter: Yeah, you did that news like a bat out of hell. Mordy Oberstein: Back with the Meat Loaf. Love that. Wow, that was full 360 right there, Crystal. Five stars for you. You get a gold star, five gold stars. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: You're welcome. I was a former teacher. I'm not easy giving out the gold stars. Very hard to a gold star for Mr. Okay, mainly because I didn't buy stickers. Yeah, well. It's their loss, anyway. This brings us to our last little part of the show. We make sure that you have access to more great people where you can find more great information. And we mentioned him before, but he is the godfather of local SEO, in my opinion. He's Darren Shaw over at Whitespark, @DarrenShaw_ on Twitter, @D-A-R-R-E-N-S-H-A-W_ underscore on Twitter. And Darren is fabulous about local SEO information. He's considered one of the supreme authorities on local SEO. Crystal Carter: You come to me and you ask me about reviews near me. Mordy Oberstein: Come the day of the daily grand opening. That's why I'm not in the pack. It's a grand opening. No one knows you exists yet. Crystal Carter: My cannoli business is needing to be- Mordy Oberstein: I love cannolis. I love cannolis. I miss them so much. Crystal Carter: I love cannolis. I don't know why- Mordy Oberstein: What are we talking about, again? Oh, Darren. Crystal Carter: Darren. Not the Godfather. Well yes, the Godfather. So Darren's amazing. He's written a really great article on the Wix SEO Hub. I mentioned it earlier, but you check it. He also writes some amazing articles just generally and normally does, I think he tends to do an annually, an annual report on local SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah. Where at Whitespark, they put out an annual report, I'm pretty sure it's annual, going through what matters on local SEO. Crystal Carter: Really valuable. I've spoken at Whitespark Local Search Summit, which is a great event and has some fantastic SEOs speaking at it, including myself. But also like lots of other people. So do check that out if you see it happening. And also, I think they have an archive around where you can look through some of the information there. So there's some great stuff there, talking about reviews, talking about other things that you could do for a local business to rank and perform and drive people both online and in store. Mordy Oberstein: His Twitter feed is just fabulous. He's obviously a great person, but he is also offering great SEO information on his feed. So definitely check out Darren Shaw, wherever he is. He's also on Mastadon, by the way. I should have looked it up. He is on Mastadon. If you are Mastadon, Darren Shaw is there. He helped me- Crystal Carter: He's also on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: On LinkedIn, yes. I don't know about Facebook, having TikTok. But those are, Mastadon and LinkedIn and Twitter, he is there. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into the vital need for an all channels approach to 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 SER? Check on all the great content and webinars on the Wick SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. And very appropriate for this show, 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 Claire Carlile BrightLocal Rebecca Berbel OnCrawl Darren Shaw WhiteSpark Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub How Much Does Review Recency Impact Google Local Pack Rankings [Case Study] How Google reviews can transform your business More intents more problems: SEO for multiple user intents News: Google Documents Search Ranking Updates As Systems; Labels Live Or Archived Notable Algorithms A guide to Google Search ranking systems Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Claire Carlile BrightLocal Rebecca Berbel OnCrawl Darren Shaw WhiteSpark Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub How Much Does Review Recency Impact Google Local Pack Rankings [Case Study] How Google reviews can transform your business More intents more problems: SEO for multiple user intents News: Google Documents Search Ranking Updates As Systems; Labels Live Or Archived Notable Algorithms A guide to Google Search ranking systems 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 putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the infallible, the illustrious, I don't have any other adjectives, Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter: Hello there SEOs and internet people and friends and colleagues and wonderful people listening to the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: I reversed it there. I put your name first and then your title. Crystal Carter: Oh, yes. Mordy Oberstein: On accident. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. That's okay. Mordy Oberstein: I realized midway through, I'm like, "I forgot your title." Crystal Carter: Remix, that's all right. Mordy Oberstein: We're all about the titles. Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. No, we're talking about reviews today, not titles. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my mistake. Crystal Carter: Different topic. Mordy Oberstein: I'm looking at the wrong podcast deck. Crystal Carter: Different one. Mordy Oberstein: I'm sorry. Crystal Carter: We'll talk about titles another time. Mordy Oberstein: I'm with the program. I'm with the program. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we'll be fine. Mordy Oberstein: I'm with the program. Crystal Carter: Have you left a review of it? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, don't forget to leave a review because we're talking about reviews. But anyway, we're not there yet. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where we have an entire suite of amazing reporting insights from bot logs to blog traffic, to user behavior to eComm analytics. If you're using Wix and you're not digging into all that Wix Analytics has to offer you, then you're missing out and that's not a sales pitch, that's truth. Crystal Carter: It's just facts, people. Mordy Oberstein: It's just facts. Crystal Carter: Just facts. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, great show for you. Today, as Crystal mentioned, we're talking about reviews. The wonderful, hard to garner user reviews and their role. Crystal Carter: That's right, that's right. I mean, five stars for you for that intro, Mordy, I would just like to say five star. Mordy Oberstein: Rate this intro. Thank you for rating this intro. Crystal Carter: I should rate every segment. Mordy Oberstein: I rank number one in the local pack for intros near me. Anyway, we're talking about user reviews and their value in SEO, repurposing reviews, wear review snippets, show up in the Google ecosystem because they're kind of all over the place, plus BrightLocal's Claire Carlile stops by to share her strategy to get people to leave you those ever powerful reviews. We'll also dive deep into aggregate review pages. Thin, not thin. Great, not great. We got a deeper thought for you all about aggregate review pages and if they have any real value for your website. And as always, we have the snappiest of news for you and who you should be following on social or more SEO awesomeness. Episode 15 of the SERP's Up podcast is off the tarmac. I like off the tarmac. It's good, right? Crystal Carter: Off the tarmac. Mordy Oberstein: I was writing that for the intro. It's like one of the only parts of this podcast, little behind the scenes that I script out. Off the tarmac, that's how we're going to do this. Crystal Carter: That's right. Mordy Oberstein: Leave a review for the end part of the intro there, off the tarmac. Five starts if you liked it. Crystal Carter: Four and a half. Mordy Oberstein: Four and a half. Okay. I feel, by the way, this is the episode we could shamelessly plug, please leave a review for the podcast, wherever you're listening. Crystal Carter: Oh my God. Please leave review. Please leave a review of the podcast. Wherever you enjoy podcasts, please leave us a review. Mordy Oberstein: I enjoy podcasts in my ears. Where do you enjoy them? Crystal Carter: Yes, that's true. Also ears, ears are good. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Five star review for ears. This got off the rails already. Crystal Carter: Oh my gosh. Mordy Oberstein: User reviews. What are we talking about Crystal? Crystal Carter: Okay, so when we're talking about reviews, today we're talking about user rated reviews, getting them what we think about them, why they matter, why they're important. When Google talks about reviews, they also have their product review updates, which are not around user generated reviews. They're more about the content that people make when they say, "Oh, I've got this blog and I've reviewed this pair of headphones or something." That's a different kind of review. Today what we're talking about are user generated reviews and basically we're talking about how you can think about them. Now, Google gets really involved with user generated reviews in a few different ways. Probably the most relevant to most people who are listening to this podcast is in Google Business Profile. And Google Business Profile, they actually have some good information about how to manage user generated reviews. So they say, remind customers to leave reviews. Let them know that it's quick and easy to leave reviews. You shouldn't necessarily incentivize, but it's good to remind people that it's there. So you can say, leave a link and at the bottom of your email that you send out to them after they've completed a transaction. Or you can say, leave a link at the bottom of your email footer, or you can put a little sticker on your door that says, review us on TripAdvisor, or review us on Google Business Profile, that sort of thing. Reply to reviews to build customer trust. That is absolutely great advice and it's a really good way to make sure that users know that if they leave a review that you are someone who's going to be engaging with them. They also say value all reviews. So again, not every review is going to be five stars. Some of them are going to be four and a half, some of them might be a little bit lower. And basically, you just want to make sure that you're checking in on all of those reviews. One of the great things about reviews is that they show up not just in Google Business Profile, but they can also show up on products. They can also show up for your shop overall, for instance, if you're working on Google Merchant Center. And if you're using things like TripAdvisor or RevU or Trustpilot or things like that, you might also see reviews there. Facebook will also give you review information and things like that. But reviews offer a great amount of social proof for the value of your company and the value of your services. And so making sure that you're thinking about how you're getting those reviews and how you're managing those reviews can be really, really important to moving the needle both with ranking and also with building your brand. Mordy Oberstein: That's amazing. I don't know where to start with this first off. Yeah, the thing for me about reviews you've comprehensively covered in a minute, which is amazing in its own right, that gets a five star review right there too. You get a five star review and you get a five star review. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: But reviews show up everywhere in the ecosystem. So we're probably going to get and talk about ranking factors and where that comes in to Google ranking you in local packs and the local finder and how reviews factor into all of that. But leave that aside just for a second. Reviews are so important obviously to your business because there's social proof that what you offer is good. By the way, great point that not all the reviews are going to be 100% five star reviews. And that's actually a good thing because when I see all five star reviews, I think fake reviews. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly, exactly. And sometimes the one star reviews are nothing to do with whether or not something is good. Sometimes it's like, "Oh, I gave this laptop one star because I spilled yogurt all over it and it didn't work after that." It's like, I think that's user error. That they didn't necessarily- Mordy Oberstein: I was not happy with the quality of the packaging and wrapper. You know what I'm doing with the wrapper? I'm throwing it out anyway. So I don't really care. Crystal Carter: So I always check the top reviews and I always check the bottom reviews as well. And if the bottom reviews I'm like, ah, that's not going to apply to me, or oh, okay, I'll take that into account or whatever, then that's fine. But yeah, absolutely, pay attention to those. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, if you're looking like, oh, I do have negative reviews, if that's the negative review that you're getting and someone's going to look at it, which I do, I think everybody kind of does, if it's a nothing burger, it's a nothing burger. Don't fret. But reviews show up, they're in structured data markup, they're kind of everywhere. And it's one of the things that Google, because again, Google wants to show you that what you're getting is, as a user, is a quality result. And it's one of the easy ways that Google can clearly show the user that what we as in Google are offering you is great. So Google uses those reviews. So they're just everywhere. Crystal Carter: Right, absolutely. And if you look up your business and your business name, you'll often see multiple websites that are showing the reviews and you'll often see different things are either going there. And the point that Google was talking about, about responding to reviews is really important because it shows that you're present and that you're engaging with your customers. And even if there's a nothing burger review, even if you're like, "Thank you very much for your insights, we'll take that to the team" or something, that's better than nothing. I've seen conversations where a customer wasn't happy about something and the company came back and said, "Well, we've adjusted this or we've improved that." And the person said, "Oh, thank you." That can be really good and that can help build trust. And that can also show any potential customers that if something does go wrong, you're the kind of business that will help them to address it. So I think that reviews are something that is really useful for businesses of all sizes. And certainly, as a reviewer, I've spoken a lot recently about how I am a level six Google Guide, now. I have stock. I'm just saying. Anyway, as a level six Google Guide, one of the things that I find really important is to make sure that I review businesses that I think are really, really valuable that I really enjoy. And even sometimes if I wasn't able to make a purchase at the place, but I had a great experience at the place, it's something that I really, really value. And I've seen with clients when I've been working client side that when they have more reviews, they seem to see more visibility on local pack. And this is something that's been a little bit of a debate amongst SEOs as to whether or not that affects Google Business Profile rankings. But what I've seen from working with clients is that when they have more reviews, they get better traffic to their website. But what I've also seen is that sometimes, as a user, if I'm looking for something, sometimes the reviews will show up in the search. So if I'm searching for maybe vegan donuts and the website or the profile for the bakery doesn't have vegan donuts, but there's a review that says vegan donuts, sometimes it shows up on there. And again, there's some debate about whether or not that's something that there's some debate about whether or not other people have seen that. But I've definitely seen that in the wild. Mordy Oberstein: I've definitely seen the local pack pulling in reviews, snippets into the local pack. So Google is taking those snippets of reviews would mean like when we say reviews are everywhere, it's not the stars, it's actual the words that people are leaving and throwing it into the local pack. So curious if Google, another value of reviews is, does it give Google semantic understanding of what you do and who you are? I don't know. It's a little bit hard to do that because the reviewer doesn't necessarily leave that kind of wording in the review. It might say this was great. So that's not going to be semantically relevant. But many times they do. Crystal Carter: Well, what's interesting is as a Google Guide, this I think is really important that people think about and people engage with the Google Guide system. There are millions of people doing the Google Guide system. And basically what Google Guides does is when you leave a review, you get more points as a Google Guide. So you can move up to level seven if you have more words in your review. Also, if you add a photo to your review, they say, what is this? Is this a hamburger? Is this a hot dog? Is this a pizza? Which part of the menu is that? So Google Guides people, Google guides their Google Guides to leave the kinds of reviews that they expect to see, particularly in Google Business Profile reviews. So I think that when you are thinking about the kinds of reviews you might be getting and you are thinking about the kinds of reviews, you might be... What did they say? They said recommending or reminding. Reminding people to leave. Then also you want to think about how Google is actually guiding people through that review process. Sorry, if I can say one more thing. But during the last year I've been talking a lot about visual search and Google has been using a lot of the images from Google Guides for their visual search thing. So for instance, if you take a picture of a hamburger and you put near me, then Google will search their Google Guides photos and the reviews that they've had from Google Business Profile to surface content that's from businesses that serve that kind of thing. So thinking about making sure that you have things that are review worthy and you have imagery that is review worthy within your establishment can also help you to increase the kinds of reviews that you get for your business. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. And all of that information, whether it be simply because people are leaving that information other people are looking at, or Google is in the Symantec web, is using it to sort of contextualize and understand who you are, what you do and how well you do it is super important. You might want to think about when you're asking people to leave reviews, to sort formalize it in a way or construct it in a way where you're sort of guiding them towards leaving a more specific kind of review. So if let's say it's a restaurant, put it in, let us know what you thought of the restaurant, the service, what was your favorite dish? And then people will tell you, "Yeah, I really enjoyed this," whatever, whatever dish that you have. You're trying to nudge them along to be a little more specific in that review, which is a better quality to review and offers a little bit more teeth of semantically for Google to grab onto. But I want to jump back really quickly to the whole ranking factor thing. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Our reviews are ranking factor. Now I know there's a bunch of debate as you mentioned about it. But on the side that says that reviews do, and just keep this in mind, the local pack when you search for pizza near me and there's a big box there and there's one, two, three businesses listed in there, is a separate algorithm than the normal Google algorithm. I want to say normal, the general Google algorithm. If indeed reviews are a part of that, that's a major thing because you're only talking about three listings in there. And if reviews are a major factor, it's not something to ignore. Is it not, first off, what do you lose? Secondly, if it is, it's a major part of getting visibility online and it's not just random people saying reviews are a ranking fact. There's people like Darren Shaw who we'll talk about more later, Joy Hawkins. And there's studies. For example, Joy Hawkins recently did a study, we'll link to it in the show notes. I think Barry Schwartz over at SE Roundtable covered it, maybe on Search Engine Land showing that businesses that have more than 10 reviews tend to rank better than businesses less than 10 reviews in the local pack. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And Darren Shaw shared, he has an article on the Wix SEO hub, why Google reviews are important for local businesses. And he shared a report from 2001 about local pack ranking factors and he found that reviews contributed 17% of the time to ranking in Google Business Profile. Mordy Oberstein: It seems like there's, not say a consensus, but there's a broad understanding by a lot of really smart local SEO folks that reviews factor in. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And as you say, it's a good thing to do anyway. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. It's like what do you lose? With that though, we did talk about how you actually encourage people to leave you those reviews because it's a little bit awkward. I don't want to ask them. How do you actually go about doing that? So for you, for your review health, we have local search expert over from BrightLocal who's one of the major local SEO platforms. She the one, she's the only Claire Carlile and she's here to help you understand how you can encourage people to write reviews. Take it away Claire. Claire Carlile: So we use reviews as consumers to help us decide which product, which service, which organization or which business to choose over another. So as a business or an organization, we're probably going to want to encourage people to leave reviews. So here are a few things to think about. First of all, ask yourselves, are you ready? Is your business ready to start to get an influx of reviews? Is your product or service ready? Are there any preexisting issues? Because it might be a good idea to iron those out before you start getting negative reviews based on those. So you can have a look at your existing review corpus. So say for example, you might look at Google Business Profile reviews, have a little look at the place topics that Google is pulling through for your business and then work out what those are saying about you. If you've got phrases like professional service or very thorough, then that's great. If you have got place topics like disgusting or dirty, then you could probably do with having a little look at those and dealing with those before you get a big influx of reviews. And then you need to think about where you're actually needing those reviews. What type of reviews on what type of sites are you trying to target? So we can think about what shows in our Google Business Profile. Well, first of all, we've got Google Reviews. But secondly we also have sometimes reviews being pulled in from other platforms, say for example Facebook or it could be niche specific review sites in your vertical. So also have a little look for your brand name in Google and have a look to see what is on page one and page two in terms of reviews for your business. You might need to target reviews in those places as well. And don't forget, we might want first party reviews, but we probably will, that we can use as testimonials across all sorts of pages on our website. We can use them on our marketing materials, our social channels, and we can use them to display in our bricks and mortar establishments. And if we're trying to get reviews for a particular product, if we get reviews just for that product, we can use them to mark up our product schema to get some nice visibility in the serp. So number three, what makes a good review? Well, in my mind, an ideal review is positive I sentiment because obviously that's what we would like and it's rich in terms of content. So it uses the name of the service or the product and it uses any of the attributes that you'd like to be associated with your business. Ideally, it would have photos as well if possible. So number four, we actually need to ask for reviews. If you're going to leave it to chance, it's likely you're going to get fewer reviews. And also the ones that you do get could quite possibly be negative because it does seem to me that it's people that have an extreme experience of a product or service or business that tend to leave those reviews. So if you ask everyone, then you are more likely to get a fair balance of the reviews. Now, how and where? Well you need to make it easy and you need to offer options. It does depend on the type of service or product you're providing on the journey of the customer. So make sure that you're asking the right people at the right time and you should automate the process where possible. But try and incorporate some customer service feedback and input before you send out the review request. So say for example, you have had lots of people staying at your hotel for the weekend, you know that perhaps some of them had some issues, then why don't you deal with that first before you blanket send out a generic email to all of those people. You need to make sure that those are personalized for the people that you are sending them out to. And then finally, we need to monitor and reply because new and potential customers are going to read your review responses. So this is your chance to let them know that even if a review might be a bit negative in sentiment, that you are actually a good business and it's also your chance to turn an unhappy customer into a happier customer. And don't forget to use those reviews for business intelligence. Positive and negative themes, positive and negative sentiment can all be pulled out to help feed into your business to fix and improve your products and services. Don't just make the review process just ticking boxes. And then bonus tip, monitor your competitor review corpus. The place topics are an easy place to monitor. What are the positives of people's experiences and what are the negatives and how can you use that information to help you plan your own product and service delivery as well as your marketing materials? Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much Claire. That was really amazing and I totally agree. You definitely want to make the process frictionless. You want to make this easy and smooth and fun, for lack of a better word. Don't offer them money or gifts and exchanges against Google guidelines, but you want to make it as nice of experience as possible. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I think yeah, add some joy to it. The other thing that she also talked about, which I think is something that I've definitely seen is display your reviews. So this is something I've seen in a few different ways and something I always recommend is there's an app for instance called Elfsight that allows you to show your reviews on your website. There's also, sometimes you can embed your TripAdvisor reviews or your Trustpilot reviews or whatever on your website. And very often, in my experience anyway, if you display your reviews on your website, you're much more likely to get more reviews for your website or your business when you do that. I highly advise making a reviews page where you showcase the collection of reviews of various different things. Mordy Oberstein: Which goes back to repurposing reviews. It's a great thing. I don't know if we actually mentioned it. We didn't, oh my goodness. But repurpose your reviews. Put them in tweets, put them on this page or that page, here, there and everywhere. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. So yeah, Claire talks about displaying them in your business, online, all over the place. It's absolutely true. You should totally do that because sometimes it brings more reviews. Somebody says, "Mordy who is working at the register was super helpful to me the other day." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, he was super helpful. He's a very helpful fellow. Crystal Carter: And somebody's like, "Yeah, he was really great." Mordy Oberstein: Handsome too. Reviews beget reviews. And speaking of reviews, ever get to a page that reviews a product? Say it reviews the best microwaves and it has heard just a quick list of various products i.e. microwaves, with maybe their price and star rating. Google seems to hate them these days, but do they have value? Here's a deep thought on aggregate product review pages. By the way, I feel like we're going to have a little bit of a debate here. So I'm just going to ring the bell right here, ding, ding, ding. Crystal Carter: Oh, it's on Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: It's on, because I hate these pages. I was talking to Rebecca Berbel from over at Oncrawl and we're like, "Yeah, we hate those kind of pages." I mentioned we're going to cover this. She's like, "Yeah, I hate." She's also a big content person. But you'll like them. So let's start with that. Crystal Carter: So I like these pages because I don't having to go to 25 different pages to see what's going on. I like a page where it's like best microwaves or something and then I can see 20 different microwaves and they're like review, no cost, et cetera. And I can compare them very, very quickly. I like that. I can get in, if I see the reviews, a general trend of the reviews and I can go off and get more details after I've made a short list. Mordy Oberstein: I get that and I get the idea, okay, you go to a page and say it again, best microwaves and all they have there is 20 of these boxes to have the name of the product, the picture of the product, the rating, and a whole bunch of affiliate links for themselves. So that to me, I guess is why part of the, I guess bias that I have against these pages. Because I know what's going on here. You're just trying to get your fund. I am all for affiliates. Do not take me the wrong way. I am all for affiliates earning their keep, but I also feel it should be value to the user and I understand why somebody will look at that as value. And I think the lesson we're going to walk away from this is different intents, different strokes for different folks. You have to know your audience and there might be an audience for this, although Google doesn't seem to think so. But anyway. Crystal Carter: Maybe I'm an army of one, who knows? But I think also maybe there's room for both. So maybe there's room for putting a TLDR of the reviews at the top in say a table for instance, and then maybe get into the details further on that sort of thing. Because for those of us with short patience, short attention spans, I want the Cliff notes. Mordy Oberstein: I'm all for that. But as a content snob, I want to know that you put some kind of effort into this and you actually... Because, okay, what tells me that this rating that you put there is not just because that's the affiliate link giving you the most money. It's the content. You've contextualized that rating you went through and you told me all the great things and all the bad things and all the mediocre things about this microwave. And now I feel like, okay, I can trust that four star rating. So I challenge you. Crystal Carter, how do you know that that four star rating, five star rating is good unless you see some contextualization around it? Crystal Carter: Here's my question, here's my counter question. How is this different from the Google shopping page? You go to a Google shopping page and you type in best microwaves, they give you a list of a bunch of best microwaves, they give you a list of best ratings, they've got all the star ratings there and you can scan through all of those and those are all links going off to somewhere. And I'm just like, how is this different? Mordy Oberstein: Counterpoint. When you go to Google shopping, you're going to actually buy the thing. You've already researched the thing, you already know what you're doing. You just kind of need a general understanding of what you're looking at. When you're looking for best microwave, it's an informational commercial, whatever intent, you're looking to learn more. And you just listing the product and a picture with affiliate links and a rating doesn't teach me anything. Crystal Carter: I don't want to learn about microwaves, I just want hot food. Mordy Oberstein: You're missing out. Crystal Carter: I don't want to spend three years reading about the ins and outs of microwaves. Mordy Oberstein: That a good point, though. That I agree with you, right? Because a lot of these things that are ranking for best microwaves, these product review pages, they have buyer guides, they're really kind of prolific and they're really good. But sometimes, let's say I've already read one in those pages and I'm diving a little bit deeper. Now I just want to go back, I want to get a quick review of what I looked at or what was there. I don't want all of that. Maybe you make a good point in the sense that you ever go to a recipe page, you all have, and there's like 400 words, 4,000 pages to scrolls, folds, just to get to the recipe. Crystal Carter: I went for a walk in the park and the leaves were falling and the colors were amazing and there was a butterfly. And this butterfly really reminded me of my grandmother. Mordy Oberstein: Meat Loaf. It reminded me of Meat Loaf. Not the food, the musical artist. At one time in a meatloaf contest, I had a wonderful tuna sandwich. So here's my recipe for the best tuna fish a sandwich. Crystal Carter: I would do anything to get to the end of that review. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes tuna fish sandwiches in the mirror may appear closer than they are. But I agree, there kind of needs to be a balance there. And I hope we don't get to that point. And I think perhaps there's different intents within best microwaves that maybe Google can do a better job of catering to. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But I still hold dear to the truth that, or my truth at least, that as a whole, aggregate review pages don't offer much value except to a small minutia of people on this planet called Crystal. Crystal Carter: I think there's a place for both. And I think that Google's getting pretty good at being able to drill down into that. So for instance, if the deal breaker on the microwave is whether or not it's pops popcorn really well, for instance, if I want to know what is the best microwave for doing Orville Redenbacher for instance, because I don't like burnt popcorn, it's the worst. Mordy Oberstein: I love burnt popcorn. Crystal Carter: Burnt popcorn makes your whole house smell. I do not like that. Mordy Oberstein: Round two, ding, ding, ding. Crystal Carter: I like perfectly popped popcorn. And I don't wasting kernels either. So for instance, if that's something there, then if I Google best popcorn for not wasting kernels. Google is getting very good at catering to those of us who have a short attention span and to click and to get through things. They're very good at getting to the highlighter section. So they'll highlight the section, they'll highlight the text within a longer form review. Now you're not going to get that kind of detail about whether or not this particular microwave is really good at popping popcorn so that you don't have any kernels left, for instance, in one of those aggregate reviews. So I think Google's getting better at sort of addressing the needs of people who just want the TLDR, people who want to wax poetical about microwaves, whichever. Mordy Oberstein: I think this is a good case where, we talked about this before in the previous podcasts where we had George fill in for you, you were on vacation and we talked about multiple intents on one page. I think this is a good case where you can cater to multiple intents of one page. And you see the pages that do this well, they'll have a table up top where they'll go through all the information that you want. But underneath that, and I think it's important that the table's on top Google, if you're listening, hi John, to have the deeper information underneath it. Now, as a second point, I understand about the burnt popcorn and it does stink up the house. I am with you, but it tastes so much better. And sometimes I will freely admit I burn the popcorn on purpose just a tad. And I'm so like on eggshells, is my wife going to get angry at me that I made the entire house smell like burn popcorn. But I do it anyway. Crystal Carter: Honestly, Mrs. Oberstein, I don't know what you're having to go through these days. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes I wait for her to be asleep to make popcorn just for no reason. Crystal Carter: Does the popping not wake her up? Mordy Oberstein: She sleeps through everything. I am on the opposite. I wake up at every single little noise. Okay, TMI, for all the listeners at this point, which brings us to our next segment. I'm just going to quickly pivot because I think there's no smoothness to this pivot. Do not rate this pivot. Let's get to the snappy news. Here's the snappy news. Snappy News. Snappy News. Snappy News from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google Documents Search Ranking Updates As Systems, Labels Live Or Archived Notable Algorithms. In a nutshell, Google came out and released an official list of its ranking systems, emphasis on systems. Feel like William Shatner, systems. Versus algorithms as some of the things are pre or meta algorithm, for example. Google uses machine learning like BERT, to better understand what the heck it's looking at. That's meta-algorithmic. That sounds super snazzy. Meta-algorithmic. The better Google can understand something, the better can apply relevancy, which is a ranking factor, which is kind of by focusing on the ranking factors per se is not the way. This is not the way. If you look at the doc Google created, you can sort of see the split as specific algorithms like the one that shows local news content in the top stories carousel. Those are called systems, as in the local news systems, or the helpful content system or the freshness system. Whereas, the properties that work at the metal level just have names, for example, BERT or MUM or neural matching. There's no system attached to the name. So little bit of a way for you to see the kind of split there and little trick there in my honest opinion. Anyway, we'll link link to both Barry's coverage and the actual doc from Google in the show notes is definitely worth giving it a read through if anything, but to refresh yourself. Refreshing. And that is it for this week's Snappy News. Tis was the snappiest of news. Again, it's always great to keep up what's going on in the ins and outs of the SEO industry. Crystal Carter: Yeah, you did that news like a bat out of hell. Mordy Oberstein: Back with the Meat Loaf. Love that. Wow, that was full 360 right there, Crystal. Five stars for you. You get a gold star, five gold stars. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: You're welcome. I was a former teacher. I'm not easy giving out the gold stars. Very hard to a gold star for Mr. Okay, mainly because I didn't buy stickers. Yeah, well. It's their loss, anyway. This brings us to our last little part of the show. We make sure that you have access to more great people where you can find more great information. And we mentioned him before, but he is the godfather of local SEO, in my opinion. He's Darren Shaw over at Whitespark, @DarrenShaw_ on Twitter, @D-A-R-R-E-N-S-H-A-W_ underscore on Twitter. And Darren is fabulous about local SEO information. He's considered one of the supreme authorities on local SEO. Crystal Carter: You come to me and you ask me about reviews near me. Mordy Oberstein: Come the day of the daily grand opening. That's why I'm not in the pack. It's a grand opening. No one knows you exists yet. Crystal Carter: My cannoli business is needing to be- Mordy Oberstein: I love cannolis. I love cannolis. I miss them so much. Crystal Carter: I love cannolis. I don't know why- Mordy Oberstein: What are we talking about, again? Oh, Darren. Crystal Carter: Darren. Not the Godfather. Well yes, the Godfather. So Darren's amazing. He's written a really great article on the Wix SEO Hub. I mentioned it earlier, but you check it. He also writes some amazing articles just generally and normally does, I think he tends to do an annually, an annual report on local SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah. Where at Whitespark, they put out an annual report, I'm pretty sure it's annual, going through what matters on local SEO. Crystal Carter: Really valuable. I've spoken at Whitespark Local Search Summit, which is a great event and has some fantastic SEOs speaking at it, including myself. But also like lots of other people. So do check that out if you see it happening. And also, I think they have an archive around where you can look through some of the information there. So there's some great stuff there, talking about reviews, talking about other things that you could do for a local business to rank and perform and drive people both online and in store. Mordy Oberstein: His Twitter feed is just fabulous. He's obviously a great person, but he is also offering great SEO information on his feed. So definitely check out Darren Shaw, wherever he is. He's also on Mastadon, by the way. I should have looked it up. He is on Mastadon. If you are Mastadon, Darren Shaw is there. He helped me- Crystal Carter: He's also on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: On LinkedIn, yes. I don't know about Facebook, having TikTok. But those are, Mastadon and LinkedIn and Twitter, he is there. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into the vital need for an all channels approach to 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 SER? Check on all the great content and webinars on the Wick SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. And very appropriate for this show, 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

Veruska is an SEO consultant that works at the intersection of SEO and localization to help companies enter non-English-speaking markets. She follows a culturalized approach to SEO and localization, leveraging cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and data. Veruska Anconitano International and Multilingual SEO Consultant Veruska is an SEO consultant that works at the intersection of SEO and localization to help companies enter non-English-speaking markets. She follows a culturalized approach to SEO and localization , leveraging cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and data. Articles & Resources 7 Jan 2025 Omnichannel marketing for search algorithm resilience 5 Dec 2023 How to use implicit search intent for multilingual SEO 29 Aug 2023 Exploring implicit search intent for better SEO 9 Nov 2022 Why cultural relevance is the key to international SEO success 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

Marcus Tober is a leading global SEO specialist and speaker, named a top 8 Online Influencer in Digital Marketing and EU Search Personality of the Year 2016. He previously founded and led Searchmetrics, a global search experience platform, and joined Semrush as Head of Enterprise in 2022. Marcus Tober Head of Enterprise, Semrush Marcus Tober is a leading global SEO specialist and speaker, named a top 8 Online Influencer in Digital Marketing and EU Search Personality of the Year 2016. He previously founded and led Searchmetrics, a global search experience platform, and joined Semrush as Head of Enterprise in 2022. Articles & Resources 23 Aug 2022 Keyword intent: What you need to know about how customers search 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

Giuseppe is a global marketing leader with 20+ years' experience. He excels in crafting content and marketing strategies for SaaS enterprises. Recognized as 2-time influential European B2B marketer, he has an MBA from SDA Bocconi and is trained in M&A at London Business School. Giuseppe Caltabiano VP of Marketing at Rock Content Giuseppe is a global marketing leader with 20+ years' experience. He excels in crafting content and marketing strategies for SaaS enterprises. Recognized as 2-time influential European B2B marketer, he has an MBA from SDA Bocconi and is trained in M&A at London Business School. Articles & Resources 11 Jul 2024 Visual content marketing 101: Build your audience and distinguish your brand with images 6 Mar 2024 How to craft the perfect SEO content brief: The elements you need to include 5 Oct 2023 When to use AI and when to use freelancers to write your content Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Back Your resource is ready Use this developers SEO checklist for a smoother SEO process. We’ve emailed you a link so it’s easy to access. Make a copy Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Back SEO toolkit for Wix web design Make SEO an integral part of your web design process effectively and efficiently with this toolkit. 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 toolkit for designers to: Analyze your audience, their user journey and what your competitors are doing in search Follow a comprehensive checklist for a successful website launch, from the research phase to post handover Access a set of free SEO tools Learn to elevate your SEO with a guide to Wix’s built-in optimization features and their functionality Understand SEO terminology at a glance with a handy glossary Crystal Carter Head of SEO Communications, Wix LinkedIn Facebook X Instagram Crystal Carter is an SEO & digital marketing professional whose previous clients include Disney, McDonalds, and Tomy. She hosts SEO webinars and podcasts and her work has been featured at Google Search Central, BrightonSEO, Moz, Lumar (DeepCrawl), Semrush, and more. More about this topic Watch this webinar on designing Wix sites with SEO in mind 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

Is there a difference between enterprise SEO and SMB SEO? Yes, there is, but it’s probably not what you think it is. Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein sit down with Wix’s own Matt Matergia, Vice President of Global Strategic Sales, to discuss the challenges of navigating the enterprise space. They also welcome guest Eli Schwartz, author of Product-Led SEO, who discusses how SEOs can ensure that they’re staying hands-on and sharp at their craft. Walk with us into the enterprise this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Back What you need to know if you want to go Enterprise SEO Is there a difference between enterprise SEO and SMB SEO? Yes, there is, but it’s probably not what you think it is. Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein sit down with Wix’s own Matt Matergia, Vice President of Global Strategic Sales, to discuss the challenges of navigating the enterprise space. They also welcome guest Eli Schwartz, author of Product-Led SEO, who discusses how SEOs can ensure that they’re staying hands-on and sharp at their craft. Walk with us into the enterprise this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 33 | April 12, 2023 | 40 MIN 00:00 / 40:26 This week’s guests Eli Schwartz Eli Schwartz is the bestselling author of Product-Led SEO: The Why Behind Building Your Organic Growth Strategy. A growth advisor and consultant, his ability to demystify and craft organic marketing strategies has generated billions in value for some of the internet's top sites. Matt Matergia Matt works with some of Wix’s largest channel partners. With over 10 years of experience in the digital marketing and SaaS industries, Matt knows what it takes for digital service providers and software companies to successfully serve small businesses’ online needs. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by someone who is good, Crystal Carter, head of SEO Communications here at Wix. Totally got you by surprise at that one. Crystal Carter:: You did. I thought you were going to be like, "Ooh." Mordy Oberstein: Nope. Someone who is good. Crystal Carter:: That was a good note. Thanks for just... Yes. Also, thank you. Mordy Oberstein: So, the context for this is, and I guess you'll see our recording schedule and I'll hint at it. Yesterday was Barry Schwartz's birthday. Happy birthday, Barry. Crystal Carter: Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to Barry rested break. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But by the time he hears it's going to be weeks after his actual birthday, but Barry- Crystal Carter:: We should also wish him happy birthday when this comes out. Mordy Oberstein: We should. So, Barry put out a Tweet saying, "I wish there was some kind of automated AI that would automatically reply back to when people wish you happy birthday on Twitter with, 'Thank you.'" So, you could have gone on Twitter and wrote an entire spiel to Barry like, "Barry, we love you. You're amazing." He would literally reply back to everyone, "Thank you." Period. Crystal Carter:: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: So, that's where I got my intro to Crystal this week. Crystal Carter:: There you go. Thank you. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Period. Crystal Carter:: Full stop. End of sentence. Mordy Oberstein: Full stop. End of sentence. Crystal Carter:: Moving on. Mordy Oberstein: All right, please. Moving on. Period. Thank you. Period. Do you know who Barry Schwartz is? By the way, Barry Schwartz, I call him the Godfather of SEO. He has been covering the SEO news for literally forever. He has SERoundtable.com, news editor at SearchEngineland.com. He is a huge asset to the industry. So, please follow Barry Schwartz and read his news content. You will learn a tremendous amount about SEO. And he's a great follow on Twitter because he is, as much as he denies it, he's a real character. Crystal Carter:: He also has a weekly video roundup, which is sponsored by Wix. Mordy Oberstein: That's true. Crystal Carter:: So, yeah, check that out. That's a really good watch on a Friday morning while you're having your cup of coffee. It's a good way to keep up on point. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. You can see Barry wearing a Wix hat. This episode is sponsored by Barry. No, just kidding. Crystal Carter:: No, it's not. Mordy Oberstein: This podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can filter through all of your pages with the Wix site inspection tool. Literally, filter through them because they now have filters. So, you can filter through up to 2000 pages of Google Search Console, URL inspection, API data to look at the indexation status of the specific types of pages on your site, or filter according to indexation status. Or filter according to a whole bunch of other different ways, because it's Wix making it easier for you to work at scale, which is a large part of... Crystal Carter:: I just wanted to chime in and just say I love it. I love that feature so much. I'm sure Daniel Weisberg from Google might be listening, but it's better than Google Search Console because you can search for a word that might be in your URL, it might be in the page title. You can search by that. You can filter by rich results. You can see that all on one table. I literally love it so much. Mordy Oberstein: Same here. Crystal Carter:: They announced that there was a filter and I lost my mind. It's brilliant. Check it out, please. Mordy Oberstein: You can now search for pages by the keyword in the URL, by the words in the URL. There's a million ways to now organize your data. Crystal Carter:: And on Google Search Console, you have to do three clicks or a redjects or a thing to find the thing. It's like, what? Just let me search for- Mordy Oberstein: Before you even finish the whole word that you type in, it's already pulled it out for you. Crystal Carter:: Yes, I love it. I literally love it. Mordy Oberstein: It is amazing. Which is a large part of doing SEO at scale, which is a large part of enterprise SEO, which is what today's episode is all about. No, it's not a Star Trek convention. It's the enterprise, but it's enterprise SEO. Or SEO for enterprise, however you want to phrase it. Crystal Carter:: Engage. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, thank you. Engage. Thank you. Make it so. Today, we are looking at what you should expect when working SEO at the enterprise level. How enterprise SEO does and doesn't differ from "regular SEO." What skills come into focus when doing enterprise SEO? And we have someone who has become synonymous with enterprise SEO stopping by to talk about how you can do enterprise SEO and still be hands on. Eli Schwartz, the author of Product-Led SEO is stopping and by to share his thoughts and his insights. Plus, we're going to talk to vice president of Global Strategic Sales at Wix, Matt Matergia, who's going to stop by with us to chat all about what it means and what you should know when talking to enterprise level clients. And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. Beam me up, Scotty, because episode number 33 of the SERP's Up podcast is taking on the enterprise. Crystal Carter:: I'm like, more Star Trek jokes. Honestly, please. Mordy Oberstein: Endless. Did you know by the way, that he never, Kirk never said Captain Kirk, William Shatner of Star Trek, never said, "Beam me up, Scotty," ever on the show or the movies? Crystal Carter:: Who said, "Beam me up, Scotty"? Mordy Oberstein: No one. Crystal Carter:: Leonard Nemoy? Mordy Oberstein: No one said it. He said something similar to it. Crystal Carter:: That's not rational. Mordy Oberstein: Fascinating. Crystal Carter:: In a sense it's futile. I know. I can literally just spat out things. Mordy Oberstein: Endless. Endless. We'll know we've gone too far when we break out into William Shatner impersonations. Okay, so. Crystal Carter:: Okay, wait, wait, wait. Who's your favorite Star Trek captain? Mordy Oberstein: Kirk. Crystal Carter:: Kirk. Mordy Oberstein: Kirk. It's absolutely. Crystal Carter:: Come on. Mordy Oberstein: First of all, I grew up on Kirk in the movies. It's very nostalgic for me. Crystal Carter:: I'm sorry. So, it's a close tie between Janeway and Picard, and all Sisko. Mordy Oberstein: Janeway is wonderful. I think the number two for me is Picard, followed by Janeway, followed by a Sisko, followed by it doesn't matter anymore. Crystal Carter:: I put Kirk pretty low on the thing. People, listeners, listeners, listeners to this podcast of who I know the Treking community is a lot, chime in. Tell us who's your favorite captain? Who's your favorite captain? Mordy Oberstein: There is no competition. We've gone too far. There is a bias. There is a bias in SEO. If I can go out on a limb here, people will think local SEO was simple because it's SMBs, and enterprise SEO is complex because it's huge in large organizations. That I don't think is the truth. Certainly not in the way that the perception of many of us think it is. Local SEO can in fact, by the way, be enterprise. Right? Think, I don't know, you're doing local SEO for Taco Bell. Crystal Carter:: Yeah. Dairy Queen. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Crystal Carter:: Pret a Manger. Mordy Oberstein: We listed all these companies. Papa Johns. Forever. Crystal Carter:: People who have multiple locations. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That is what we're trying to say. Also, by the way, small websites have their own complications and SEO at the enterprise level might not be as complicated as you think the way you think. Sure, they might have lots of pages. More pages than a typical SMB. But is that fundamentally what makes enterprise SEO more complex? Let's find out. Crystal Carter:: Make it so. Mordy Oberstein: Make it so. Engage. I think there's this general thought around enterprise SEO where it's more paid ads, therefore it's more complex. That's what enterprise SEO more complex words to me, and being at Wix at the enterprise level, why at SEMrush also is very enterprise. To me, and I don't think I'm going out on a limb here, we could talk to Nick Wilson about this on another podcast. What makes enterprise SEO complicated is the sheer size of the company itself, not the size of the website. Crystal Carter:: Yeah. I think it can be a little bit of both and I think it can also be the difference between a tugboat and a cruise ship. If you need to move a cruise ship through a space, you have to move it all at once and you have to do a lot of planning. It's going to take a lot of planning in order to make sure. If you've got a tugboat or a canoe or whatever and you need to leave the harbor, you just go. Mordy Oberstein: You untie the boat, you throw on your little captain's hat. Crystal Carter:: Right, exactly. Let's talk about captains. Lots of stuff about captains, right. So, you can get yourself on your little ship and you can sail away into the blue. Mordy Oberstein: Someone put on the Styx Come Sail Away right now. Crystal Carter:: I was thinking of Enya, Sail Away. Anyway. So, if you're sailing out, it's not a big deal. Yeah, you can do that and you can be nimble. It's not a big deal because you can say, oh, you know what? I'm just going to post that blog. You could be nimble. If you are moving an entire unit, then you have to plan and that planning can take a long time. So, if we're talking about the cruise ship metaphor, because I love a folksy metaphor, if we're talking about that you need to tell the harbor master, you need to tell the people who look after the harbor, I'm moving my ship. Right? I'm getting out of this dock and I'm moving my ship. They're like, okay, we need to clear the way, we need to do these things. Mordy Oberstein: Sign these forms. Crystal Carter:: Right. There's things you have to do in order to engage that. On an enterprise level, if you want to do things, there's lead time. You have to take lead time into account, and sometimes that lead time can be months. Sometimes that lead time can be even longer than that. So, when you're thinking about your SEO and you're thinking about SEO implementations, particularly like tech SEOS implementations. If you want to address some tech debt for instance, that's in your website stack. Or if you want to create a new asset on your blog or create a new asset for the digital asset or something. You have to think about the fact that there are wheels within wheels within wheels, and you have to be able to move as a unit. You can't think of yourself in a siloed space because you're part of a larger unit. Mordy Oberstein: You know what it's like, to use another analogy? Let's say you want to get ice cream. You hop in the car, you get ice cream. Now, let's say you have 10 kids. Now go try to get ice cream. Crystal Carter:: Right, right, right. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: You have 10 different people with 10 different considerations and it's at the enterprise level. So, you might think, wow, let's target this keyword. Make it a really simple case. Target this keyword, engage. Then someone says, the brand manager says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That is not on brand for us." But the SEO, the traffic. That's not what the brand does. There's so many different teams with so many different considerations, who have a voice and a legitimate voice on what you do and what you don't do. Navigating all of that, extremely complex. If you were to ask me, if I'm doing SEO with scale already and I want to move to the enterprise level. Or I'm not doing SEO with what I want to go into enterprise. The greatest skill I think you can have is being able to navigate different relationships, considerations, compromising, planning. That back and forth with other people comes much into focus, uniquely so, in enterprise SEO. Crystal Carter:: This is something that Eli Schwartz talks about. He says you need to make friends with everyone. I think also you need to have your ears to the ground about where things are moving. I was on a recent discussion with the women in tech SEO crew, talking about their state of technical SEO report that they put out with ERA digital. We were talking about enterprise SEO and we were talking about how you get things implemented. One of the consensuses that we came to was that timing is everything. If you know that a team is moving on an initiative across your company, and this also applies to smaller businesses as well. But let's say that you're working for a theme park or something and the theme park has a new ride that they want to promote. And you have an SEO thing that you want to get done and you've been trying for months to get it done. If you can position the SEO tactic, the SEO implementation that you want as a benefit to this other initiative that's coming down the pipe, which you know that the company has momentum on, then you're more likely to get that sign off than if you just have something random that's like a thing that you think is a good thing that's best practice that will generally help the website. If you have something that works with the timing of the company, that's really useful to think about. And thinking about budgets allocation, thinking about when your company signs off marketing plans, for instance. If the marketing plans are signed off in October and you show up with this great idea in December, they've already signed it off and they're midway through and you need to think about that as well. So, I think there's a lot of wheels within wheels and finding out is really helpful. Mordy Oberstein: That goes back to your point about the boats, or in my case, the kids and the ice cream. If you want to successfully navigate that slow moving ship, it means that you have to be almost a type A personality to a certain extent. If that's not you, by the way, then make sure there's somebody on your team who that is them. Because you need to know in advance, be able to plan it in advance and predict the various scenarios that will play out. If this happens, we're going to have to do that and now I'm going to know these five different things and set up meetings with these five different people, and have that all planned out. So, before you even get to the doc, or before you even offer the kids, hey, let's go for ice cream, you need to have a plan of how that's going to happen and what that's going to look like. Crystal Carter:: I know that for instance with Wix there's a logo maker tool, which the team put together, and that took a little while to put together, but it's a fantastic tool. It's a fantastic tool for users in lots of ways and adds a lot of user value for users for instance. Putting that together and getting all the moving parts and getting everyone together to make that happen is something that's really valuable. I think also when you're in an enterprise team, and even when you're in a smaller in-house team or an agency as well, being prescient, being aware of who the gatekeepers are. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Very much so. Crystal Carter:: Can be really, really, really useful. I don't mean gatekeepers as in like boo, you can't come in, but I mean people that are facilitators. Being conscious of who those people are and identifying them and being able to see who that works, because it might not even be the people that you would normally on paper assume. It might be that there's somebody who manages the diary for the CEO or manages the diary for the CMO or something. If you don't speak well to them, you will not get a meeting. It might be that might be the person that you need to think about. It might be that it's not necessarily the person who is the team lead, but it's the project lead who's actually driving some of the decisions and things. So, be aware of those so that you can get your implementations met. Also, when you're thinking about your SEO implementations, I think it's also important to tie them into the team's priorities. If they don't fit in with the team's priorities, then it's going to be very difficult to get signed off. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's another thing that really has to align priorities. Also, because in my experience you could only, and I think you understand this also, we've experienced this both, where you're going to have overlap. People have their own priorities and your priorities are going to overlap. Sometimes your priorities align and you work together, and sometimes your priorities are the same and it means cannibalization. Crystal Carter:: Right. So, you've got to think about that. I think from a keyword research point of view, from an enterprise, that's definitely something that people should think about. If you're working on a big domain, and one of the things that's tricky with enterprise domains is that not only do you have your main domain, but you very often will have your knowledge base or whatever. You'll very often have support docs, help docs and things like that. You may also have a lot of old content. So, if you're working on a website, if you've gotten to an enterprise level, chances are the domain is a little bit older and is going to have a lot of webpages. It might be that there are pages from way, way, way, way, way back. Mordy Oberstein: You talked about this in a previous podcast, you have to be careful with those things also because if you pull off the wallpaper, sometimes the wall crumbles. Crystal Carter:: Right. Precisely. I think that when you're looking at your keyword research, you should also be looking at how to make sure that you're not overlapping with yourself. I think we talked a little bit about keyword cannibalization, which I think is a challenge for enterprise SEOs. One of the tools that I found recently that's really useful is a keyword gap analysis tool, Semrush. Mordy Oberstein: Pretty cool. Crystal Carter:: Which is supposed to be for they're looking at competitors. But it's actually really, really useful for looking at your own content and finding the gaps in the existing content you have, so that you can create some complimentary rather than competitive content. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So, different folders compared to each other, different sub-domains compared to each other, that kind of thing. Crystal Carter:: Precisely. It's a really, really good tool that you can look at for your own. So, if you compare all of those different things and then you can see untapped, picked from the untapped. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Where it's overlapped and you're just going to end up killing their page, people are not going to be happy. Don't do that. Yeah. Crystal Carter:: Yeah. It may even mean you have to work harder to make your content rank and perform and engage and all of that sort of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Or if you are going to do that, you need to sync up to make sure that everyone's aligned in all the resources and all of the SEO juice are going to one place, for lack of a better word. Now, if you're doing keyword research, that's great. You're at the enterprise level, you're doing keyword research. Are you really though? Are you that hands-on? Is it all strategies? Should you be hands-on? Probably, yeah, but how do you remain hands-on at the enterprise level when you're so busy? All these big pages and big things and different meetings and different teams. Oh my goodness. To help us answer that, Product Led SEO's author, Eli Schwartz, is here to tell us how to remain hands on when working at the enterprise level. Eli Schwartz: Figuring out how to stay hands on an SEO when you're working at an enterprise level is no easy feat. By the very nature of the job, your job is more likely to be focused on meetings, architecture, strategy, diplomacy, politics and all things that are the furthest thing from hands-on. As a consultant, this is even more challenging for me because I'm not hands on. I'm not working within a company. I don't really get to look at the source code of anything. I don't see Jira tickets. I'm barely in Slack conversations. When I am in, these are the conversations that I'm invited into. So, I have to find other ways to be hands-on. I'll do things like work on my own projects, launch pages, break pages. I recently launched a new website with Wix, and when I forwarded my website over from WordPress over to Wix, I intentionally 404ed pages to see how long they would still be in the index. Spoiler, it's been about two months and they're still in the Google index. So, if you do a site query on my site, EliSchwartz.co, you're still going to find webpages that are 404ed and they're still in the Google index. So, I do things like that to stay really on top of the real hands-on part of SEO. The other things I'll do is I'll do things that are out of my typical role as a consultant. I'll coach new SEOs or I'll coach enterprise SEOs and help them understand and help work with them, and really for my own learning to understand how to navigate the challenges that they're working on as a part of their roles. If they have a challenge with how do they get an engineer to do something, how do they understand the reporting they have? These aren't things that I get to do in my regular consulting, but these are things that I get to really learn and do from coaching. Coaching isn't necessarily the part of consulting that I might earn the most from or I might focus the most time on, but it actually is for me the most rewarding because I am getting my hands dirty. I am learning things and I am navigating challenges, and it keeps me up to date with existing issues around SEO. For example, most of my larger clients are very, very unlikely to ever get hit by a Google algorithm update. They aren't going to get penalties, they aren't even doing things that are big enough and important enough to get the attention of Google. However, with some of the coaching projects that I work on, those are smaller sites. Those will be the kinds of things where they are seeing changes from Google algorithm updates and they need to message that to executives. They are seeing things and they need to message to counterparts across the company, how do we go ahead and fix this? That's the primary way that I'll get most of my hands-on access and really stay up to date. Of course, I'm sure other people are recommending and I would totally agree with that, read blog posts. Be on Twitter, be on LinkedIn, be a part of conversations. But the one extra piece I do is when I hear these things and I see these conversations, I go ahead and try to test it on my own. But this is something that I am very proactive about. How do I stay hands-on rather than just staying high level? Mordy Oberstein: Thank you very much, Eli. Don't forget to check out Eli's book, Product-Led SEO. A little plug for Eli. Hey, if somebody's coming on the podcast and they have a book, we have to plug the book. Crystal Carter:: Plug the book. Mordy Oberstein: Plug the book. Crystal Carter:: That's what you do. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like I'm like Jay Leno or something. I have a guest on, I'm plugging the book. Crystal Carter:: Some shameless self-promotion but not self-promotion. Something that's just- Mordy Oberstein: Marketer's going to market. That's how it goes. Crystal Carter:: This is it. This is it. Mordy Oberstein: Respect. Crystal Carter:: Resistant is futile. Mordy Oberstein: It's a good point and it's a good point at the enterprise level and in general. If you want to get hands-on experiences with SEO and you're like, I don't know, I don't have a local SEO client or whatever it is, I don't have an eCommerce. So, try to spin up a mock site. Try to get your hands on. Take that extra initiative. If you're sitting at strategy meetings all day long, great, start a podcast. Create a podcast website. Run that website. Do something with it, not just a test. Actually run something. Create a blog, run that blog, do the work read. Keep your hands dirty in the SEO by being a little bit proactive and spending a little bit of time on, even if it's a small website, it's something tangible. Crystal Carter:: Yeah, yeah, it's so true and the best SEOs do this all the time. I hear people who are like, oh, I did this course but I need to get some SEO experience and I need to get a job somewhere. Or I need to get a thing somewhere. I'm like, you don't need anyone's permission to do SEO. You can just do SEO. You can start a website right now and you can do SEO. You can start creating content. You can start doing content optimization. You can start thinking about your content and that sort of thing on things like Medium, on things like LinkedIn, on things like that. But do SEO. And then I think really nice working on enterprise level, John Sehada is also somebody who does this a lot. Barry interviewed him recently, or there's a video interview of Barry and John talking about this as well. John's like, oh yeah, I did this, I did that, I did this, I did that. Barry was like, I literally love how in the weeds you are. The best SEOs are doing this all the time. I know somebody who is an enterprise SEO who works for a major fashion label. She's like, oh yeah, we've been experimenting on this project with AI content and seeing how that performs and that sort of thing. I think that if you want to learn how to do SEO, doing is the most important thing. Because SEO in theory is great and you can learn a lot of stuff from reading blogs, but until you put the content into, until you set it live, it's not really active. You have to set it live and you have to see how Google responds, how people respond, how the internet responds to your content. Mordy Oberstein: This goes to a point John Mueller made a while back a couple years ago, where someone's talking about creating a test site. John's like, well. John, the search advocate over at Google. You don't usually put the same kind of effort into a test site as you do a real site, so it's hard to really see how things would actually work and play themselves out. The real thing is the real thing. Now, sometimes in enterprise SEO, you work in-house. Sometimes, however, very often actually, you consult at the enterprise level when doing SEO. Which means you have clients, which means you have high stake clients who have big budgets and big expectations, on my. To ease our anxiety around this, we're going to talk to someone who knows a thing or two about how to talk to big name brands or running big budgets with big expectations. Our very own vice president of Global Strategic Sales at Wix, Matt Matergia stops by as we go across the Wix verse. Speaker 5: Three, two, one. Ignition. Lift-off. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to the show, Matt. Really nice to have you here. Matt Matergia: Pleasure to be here. Mordy Oberstein: I'm kind of excited to pick your brain. Enterprise level clients. When you're talking to SEO, not SEO, just purely in abstract, not connected to any vertical, what goes through your mind when you have to deal with a, say, a complicated SEO? I'm sorry, a complicated enterprise. We're not doing SEO. A complicated enterprise client. Matt Matergia: You can't get off of the SEO. Mordy Oberstein: It's like a drug. Matt Matergia: So, all right. I think SEO doesn't matter what you're talking about with an enterprise client, right? It all comes back to understanding their business and understanding the problems that they're having and how their business works. In the sales world, we talk about discovery, right? Discovery is basically understanding who you're talking to, where they are in the organization, what their goals are, what their problems are, what opportunities you can gain out of this. So, we always say good discovery leads to good opportunities, and that's Sales 101, right? But that is really understanding clients and understanding their business. Crystal Carter:: What's your process for getting that level of understanding that helps you to create an effective relationship between yourself and an enterprise client? Matt Matergia: I would say base level, it's curiosity. Crystal Carter:: Okay. Matt Matergia: It's curiosity and asking good questions. Mordy Oberstein: You and John Mueller. So, we did an episode on building the good SEO team, and we asked Google's John Mueller, what are the traits of a good SEO team? He said curiosity. Matt Matergia : All right. Mordy Oberstein: Great minds. Matt Matergia: Yeah. Wow, what a level I've set myself at. Mordy Oberstein: That is, right? You've reached. We all aspired to each level of John. You have just said we've been trying for this, what, how many episodes? Like 33 episodes? And you've been here for five minutes. Matt Matergia: Yeah. Well, I'm honored. I think maybe we should just end this right here. Mordy Oberstein: Somebody's got another meeting to go to. Crystal Carter:: I would say also when you're working with clients who are enterprise or are part of a larger organization, in my experience, timelines can be something of a challenge or can be something that needs to be managed anyway. Have you found that to be the case as well? Matt Matergia : Yes, of course. Timelines, budgets, and also what is driving the timeline is usually it's the process on the other side. It's that decision making process that you need to understand, because we all have maybe a timeline in our head of the ideal process that we want to go through. But if you don't understand what's going on the other side and the business case that they need to make, the people that they need to get involved, the approval that they have to get, then those timelines, it's expectation versus reality. There can be some huge gap between what you're expecting the timelines to be and what they might be expecting. Which goes back to curiosity because you need to ask the questions to understand what that process is going to be. Crystal Carter:: Right, and I think that that's part of building a relationship with someone from a team like that. And that's a healthy relationship because you don't want to be pressuring someone. How come you haven't responded to this email when they don't have the capacity to get back to you straight away. Or they've got some other things that are going on around or that sort of thing. So yeah, I don't know if you can talk more about that. Matt Matergia: Well, I was joking. We had a sales kickoff in New York, I guess it was two months ago now, but I was joking with the team because we were talking about building trust and where you need to get with your main stakeholders and the sales process. We were talking about breaking the cell phone barrier. We were saying if you don't have your main contact cell phone and you don't have the right to be texting, calling, whatever, and you don't have that relationship, forget it. You're not closing the deal because you haven't established trust. Right? I made that up, breaking the cell phone barrier, but it goes back to trust really. Mordy Oberstein: I don't have your number so I kind of... Matt Matergia: We don't have a good relationship. Mordy Oberstein: We're not there, huh? Oh man. I really misassessed this whole relationship. Matt Matergia: I'll Slack it to you. We're on Slack. Mordy Oberstein: Oh okay, we're on Slack? Okay, so Slack is not... Wait, what if you're in a group Slack together with them, so it's a cross company Slack? Matt Matergia: Actually, that is definitely a good sign, right? When you have something like a joint Monday board or a joint Slack channel and now you're bringing in all the players. I feel like now you're starting to work on actual implementation or getting to the actual project, for sure. Mordy Oberstein: So, you're really trying to integrate with that person as much as possible. Matt Matergia: Yes. Yeah, definitely. Crystal Carter:: I think from an SEO point of view, the process of building trust with your clients is very similar whether they're enterprise or whether they're a smaller scale. I think when you have that level of trust, when you think about timelines, sometimes it might not be the right time for whatever it is that you're doing. But if you have a level of trust where they've got you on speed dial, they've got your number, they've got all your information, they know that you're solid and stuff. Then you were talking about opportunity as well, then they're able to connect with you when they need you for whatever it is, and you're able to fulfill whatever it is that they need. Matt Matergia: It's expectation setting. It's been a long time since I've worked selling SEO to enterprise clients, and I'm sure in a decade. But sophistication of the marketing teams, I'm sure it has improved or let's hope. But a lot of the partners that I'm working with today, they're working with small businesses. You think, all right, I'm going to invest money in SEO and overnight I'm going to show up on Google first page because you have a unscrupulous SEO agencies that are always saying that, right? So, part of the way that you can build trust is also that you do proper expectation setting. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, a great positive or bonus is that when this person you've made contact with, whether it be you have their home phone number, their children's names, whatever it is that you have, if they go to another company, I've seen this a gazillion times, if they like you, they'll bring you into that company. Which means that you've not lost the other client. They don't necessarily get rid of you because your POC is gone and you've gained a new client, because your POC is now in a new company. And you know that person's children's names and you're on a first name basis, and you go to the country club. Whatever it is that you do together. Matt Matergia: I feel like CMO turnover is the bread and butter of marketing agents. Mordy Oberstein: You're like, all right, let's see. When you intake a new client, I wonder what's their churn rate going to be here at their own company? Matt Matergia: Yeah. Like, all right, every two years I can just hit the. Mordy Oberstein: This guy's great. I love this person. He just brought me 10 clients just by himself moving around. Matt Matergia: Exactly. Crystal Carter:: I think there's also, talking about churn, sometimes when there's new team, let's say you're working with an account or you're working with a team, sometimes when there's a new company or a new team member, sometimes they're like, we want to clear out. We want to get new contacts and things like that. Have you got any advice for how to establish good relationships with talent incoming management? Matt Matergia: Yeah. In the sales world, we look for signals. Signals could be maybe a company has raised money or maybe they had a change in strategy. But certainly a signal could be new leadership coming in. Because 100% whether they're going to come in and bring existing vendors and existing relationships, or they're going to look for new ones, they're going to 100% make changes and they're going to want to make those changes usually within the first 90 to 180 days. So, specific to how do I establish those new relationships, I don't think it's any different necessarily than just establishing relationships in general. But I think looking for those buying signals is very important, and having your finger on the pulse to know what's going on to be proactive in those situations is important. Crystal Carter:: In my experience, also having your act together also helps. So, if you have a well-oiled machine and you're like, this is our report that we do every month and this is our thing that we do every month, then when the new person comes in, you've got all that stuff for them to see and the transition is easier. I don't know if you find that that's useful from a sales point of view as well? Matt Matergia: Everybody wants to look good. So, if you are the facilitator of that person looking good, then you've just earned their trust, right? 100%. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter:: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of looking good, if people wanted to look good and follow you out there on social media, where can they find you? Matt Matergia: I am MTerg on Twitter. M-T-E-R-G. Mordy Oberstein: Nice, and we'll link to that in the show notes. Matt Matergia: I'm not as active as either of you, but I am there. Crystal Carter:: But you're on LinkedIn as well, yes? Matt Matergia: And on LinkedIn. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. LinkedIn's great. I go there once in a while. I visit. Not like TikTok. I don't even know what that is. Crystal Carter:: That's not true. Marty has a very active TikTok where he does lots of dances, too. Mordy Oberstein: Dancing and I fall downstairs. That's what I do. On purpose. Or some people can like it, laugh at me. I just hurt myself. Anyway, forgetting that rabbit hole, Matt, thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate you sharing your expertise and experience with us and look forward to seeing you around the virtual office, because we're not in the same office. We're not in any office together. Matt Matergia: Nope. One day I'll get to Tel Aviv. Mordy Oberstein: One day I'll get to Denver. Matt Matergia: Yes. Look forward to that. Crystal Carter:: Fantastic. Matt Matergia: Thank you both. It's a pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: Three, two, one, ignition. Lift-off. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Matt. I've had numerous conversations over the years with Matt. Super nice guy, super friendly, super accessible, and one of these people who you walk away feeling like they know way more than they let on kind of thing. Crystal Carter:: In a good way. Mordy Oberstein: In a good way. I mean it in the best way possible. Some things that I'm not going to let on that I do know, well maybe I will, that you'll soon know, if that makes any sense whatsoever. I'm not sure. As I pivot into the snappy news. Crystal Carter:: And now, with the snappy news and news from Bing, they have announced that their new Bing has increased the number of conversations that you can have with Bing chat from 15 up to 20. You can also have a total of up to 200, which is an increase from 150. They've also explained that they are adding in image and video search, which will make it a lot easier for you to have a bit more information there. And that they're adding local grounding to give better results for local search. Also in local search, if you are using Bing places, you might also be interested to know that they have improved their location recognition API to include something called local intelligence, which allows you to create territories and to do better local SEO via Bing. They're also adding more information about demographics and continuing to build and grow. We reported last week that the March core algorithm update had completed. However, in the early days of April, we are starting to see a lot of movement around there, to the point that Barry Schwartz reported seeing early signs of a Google search algorithm update on the third. A lot of people were saying that they have seen some reversals and a lot of changes early in the month. So, if you have a website that you're looking after, have a look at those results and see if anything has changed. Picking up on the AI news from Google, they continue to roll out Bard in a testing framework, so more people are reporting that they're getting access to Bard. They also announced recently during a podcast with the New York Times that they are also testing Bard in Gmail. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, discussed some of their approaches to innovation and responsibility, and also discussed and denied that he ever issued a code red as part of their approach to AI. Finally, news from ChatGPT is that ChatGPT has been disabled for users in Italy, reported by Christie Hines in Search Engine Journal. It seems that OpenAI did not in properly inform users that it was collecting personal data. This may have been in contravention with GDPR. And as such, they have now blocked access to ChatGPT for Italian users while they tried to make adjustments to potentially reestablish the ground rules for use in that area. This brings into question some potential challenges for how generative AI tools like Chachi PT, Bard and New Bing may approach this privacy space going forward. That's all for today's SERP's Up podcast snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: Coming back now from the snappy news, always good to have news. Crystal Carter:: Always good. Have we reached the final frontier of our podcast? Mordy Oberstein: It was the undiscovered country of SEO enterprises. Crystal Carter:: That's very fair. Mordy Oberstein: A little Star Trek Six reference for you there. All right. I feel like we're spanning generations, we keep this podcast going on any longer. But before we do lead the part, we need to talk about who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness, and this week we have a great follow for you, Paul Andre Devera, also known as Dre. An absolute character who you may not realize specializes in enterprise SEO. Crystal Carter:: So, he is living my podcast sound effects dreams because he has a fantastic podcast and webcast called The SEO Show. Do check the out on YouTube and on all of your best channels. He is somebody who drops the air horns that go. He just drops them in the middle of whatever he's doing and it's amazing. He has a lot of fun with his podcast and with a lot of his web stuff, but don't let the fun fool you. He's so smart and so strategic about the things that he does. I was on a recent discussion for Majestic, where we were talking about enterprise level SEO. The amount of sense he was talking, the amount of clarity that he has about how to approach enterprise SEO is phenomenal. He's super intelligent and really engaging, and a great follow. Mordy Oberstein: I've had numerous conversations with him. I've interviewed him. He is so on the ball and his take on SEO is so accurate and it's real. You're not getting the influencer flop. You're getting a real take from him. Again, like the SEO Video Show, the production value is off the chain. Little plug from myself, beginning of each show I do the SEO joke. So, if you want to hear me do an SEO joke, check out Dre's show. Marketers going to market. Crystal Carter:: Yeah, he's got a fantastic theme song as well. Which I thought that he'd done it himself, but he didn't do it himself. I wish he had, but there we go. Mordy Oberstein: He's over on Twitter at Paul Andre, that's P-A-U-L-A-N-D-R-E. Paul Andre on Twitter. We'll link to it in the show notes so you could follow him, check him out across all of his platforms, especially on YouTube and his SEO Video Show. And that's it. That's all we got. Crystal Carter:: That's it. We've reached the final frontier. We have- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, you made that joke already today. Crystal Carter:: Did I? Can I not do it again? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You can pick it again. Crystal Carter:: Oh, come on. Mordy Oberstein: Another Star Trek joke. Crystal Carter:: Oh, an insert Star Trek joke here. Mordy Oberstein: Live long and prosper, everybody. Thank you for joining us on the SERB's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with the new episode as we dive into SEO on PPC with our powers combined. Look for wherever you could consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO loading app over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn a little more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Eli Schwartz Matt Matergia Paul Andre De Vera Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Enterprise SEO Tips Product Led SEO Eli Schwartz SEO Consulting State of Technical SEO 2023 The Searchlight Newsletter News: Google CEO Sundar Pichai Talks Bard & The Future Of Search Seeing Early Signs Of A Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Maximizing Sales Team Efficiency with Location Intelligence Bing Preview Release Notes: Image & Video Search Exploring Italy’s ChatGPT Ban And Its Potential Impact Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Eli Schwartz Matt Matergia Paul Andre De Vera Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Enterprise SEO Tips Product Led SEO Eli Schwartz SEO Consulting State of Technical SEO 2023 The Searchlight Newsletter News: Google CEO Sundar Pichai Talks Bard & The Future Of Search Seeing Early Signs Of A Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Maximizing Sales Team Efficiency with Location Intelligence Bing Preview Release Notes: Image & Video Search Exploring Italy’s ChatGPT Ban And Its Potential Impact Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by someone who is good, Crystal Carter, head of SEO Communications here at Wix. Totally got you by surprise at that one. Crystal Carter:: You did. I thought you were going to be like, "Ooh." Mordy Oberstein: Nope. Someone who is good. Crystal Carter:: That was a good note. Thanks for just... Yes. Also, thank you. Mordy Oberstein: So, the context for this is, and I guess you'll see our recording schedule and I'll hint at it. Yesterday was Barry Schwartz's birthday. Happy birthday, Barry. Crystal Carter: Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to Barry rested break. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But by the time he hears it's going to be weeks after his actual birthday, but Barry- Crystal Carter:: We should also wish him happy birthday when this comes out. Mordy Oberstein: We should. So, Barry put out a Tweet saying, "I wish there was some kind of automated AI that would automatically reply back to when people wish you happy birthday on Twitter with, 'Thank you.'" So, you could have gone on Twitter and wrote an entire spiel to Barry like, "Barry, we love you. You're amazing." He would literally reply back to everyone, "Thank you." Period. Crystal Carter:: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: So, that's where I got my intro to Crystal this week. Crystal Carter:: There you go. Thank you. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Period. Crystal Carter:: Full stop. End of sentence. Mordy Oberstein: Full stop. End of sentence. Crystal Carter:: Moving on. Mordy Oberstein: All right, please. Moving on. Period. Thank you. Period. Do you know who Barry Schwartz is? By the way, Barry Schwartz, I call him the Godfather of SEO. He has been covering the SEO news for literally forever. He has SERoundtable.com, news editor at SearchEngineland.com. He is a huge asset to the industry. So, please follow Barry Schwartz and read his news content. You will learn a tremendous amount about SEO. And he's a great follow on Twitter because he is, as much as he denies it, he's a real character. Crystal Carter:: He also has a weekly video roundup, which is sponsored by Wix. Mordy Oberstein: That's true. Crystal Carter:: So, yeah, check that out. That's a really good watch on a Friday morning while you're having your cup of coffee. It's a good way to keep up on point. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. You can see Barry wearing a Wix hat. This episode is sponsored by Barry. No, just kidding. Crystal Carter:: No, it's not. Mordy Oberstein: This podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can filter through all of your pages with the Wix site inspection tool. Literally, filter through them because they now have filters. So, you can filter through up to 2000 pages of Google Search Console, URL inspection, API data to look at the indexation status of the specific types of pages on your site, or filter according to indexation status. Or filter according to a whole bunch of other different ways, because it's Wix making it easier for you to work at scale, which is a large part of... Crystal Carter:: I just wanted to chime in and just say I love it. I love that feature so much. I'm sure Daniel Weisberg from Google might be listening, but it's better than Google Search Console because you can search for a word that might be in your URL, it might be in the page title. You can search by that. You can filter by rich results. You can see that all on one table. I literally love it so much. Mordy Oberstein: Same here. Crystal Carter:: They announced that there was a filter and I lost my mind. It's brilliant. Check it out, please. Mordy Oberstein: You can now search for pages by the keyword in the URL, by the words in the URL. There's a million ways to now organize your data. Crystal Carter:: And on Google Search Console, you have to do three clicks or a redjects or a thing to find the thing. It's like, what? Just let me search for- Mordy Oberstein: Before you even finish the whole word that you type in, it's already pulled it out for you. Crystal Carter:: Yes, I love it. I literally love it. Mordy Oberstein: It is amazing. Which is a large part of doing SEO at scale, which is a large part of enterprise SEO, which is what today's episode is all about. No, it's not a Star Trek convention. It's the enterprise, but it's enterprise SEO. Or SEO for enterprise, however you want to phrase it. Crystal Carter:: Engage. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, thank you. Engage. Thank you. Make it so. Today, we are looking at what you should expect when working SEO at the enterprise level. How enterprise SEO does and doesn't differ from "regular SEO." What skills come into focus when doing enterprise SEO? And we have someone who has become synonymous with enterprise SEO stopping by to talk about how you can do enterprise SEO and still be hands on. Eli Schwartz, the author of Product-Led SEO is stopping and by to share his thoughts and his insights. Plus, we're going to talk to vice president of Global Strategic Sales at Wix, Matt Matergia, who's going to stop by with us to chat all about what it means and what you should know when talking to enterprise level clients. And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. Beam me up, Scotty, because episode number 33 of the SERP's Up podcast is taking on the enterprise. Crystal Carter:: I'm like, more Star Trek jokes. Honestly, please. Mordy Oberstein: Endless. Did you know by the way, that he never, Kirk never said Captain Kirk, William Shatner of Star Trek, never said, "Beam me up, Scotty," ever on the show or the movies? Crystal Carter:: Who said, "Beam me up, Scotty"? Mordy Oberstein: No one. Crystal Carter:: Leonard Nemoy? Mordy Oberstein: No one said it. He said something similar to it. Crystal Carter:: That's not rational. Mordy Oberstein: Fascinating. Crystal Carter:: In a sense it's futile. I know. I can literally just spat out things. Mordy Oberstein: Endless. Endless. We'll know we've gone too far when we break out into William Shatner impersonations. Okay, so. Crystal Carter:: Okay, wait, wait, wait. Who's your favorite Star Trek captain? Mordy Oberstein: Kirk. Crystal Carter:: Kirk. Mordy Oberstein: Kirk. It's absolutely. Crystal Carter:: Come on. Mordy Oberstein: First of all, I grew up on Kirk in the movies. It's very nostalgic for me. Crystal Carter:: I'm sorry. So, it's a close tie between Janeway and Picard, and all Sisko. Mordy Oberstein: Janeway is wonderful. I think the number two for me is Picard, followed by Janeway, followed by a Sisko, followed by it doesn't matter anymore. Crystal Carter:: I put Kirk pretty low on the thing. People, listeners, listeners, listeners to this podcast of who I know the Treking community is a lot, chime in. Tell us who's your favorite captain? Who's your favorite captain? Mordy Oberstein: There is no competition. We've gone too far. There is a bias. There is a bias in SEO. If I can go out on a limb here, people will think local SEO was simple because it's SMBs, and enterprise SEO is complex because it's huge in large organizations. That I don't think is the truth. Certainly not in the way that the perception of many of us think it is. Local SEO can in fact, by the way, be enterprise. Right? Think, I don't know, you're doing local SEO for Taco Bell. Crystal Carter:: Yeah. Dairy Queen. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Crystal Carter:: Pret a Manger. Mordy Oberstein: We listed all these companies. Papa Johns. Forever. Crystal Carter:: People who have multiple locations. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That is what we're trying to say. Also, by the way, small websites have their own complications and SEO at the enterprise level might not be as complicated as you think the way you think. Sure, they might have lots of pages. More pages than a typical SMB. But is that fundamentally what makes enterprise SEO more complex? Let's find out. Crystal Carter:: Make it so. Mordy Oberstein: Make it so. Engage. I think there's this general thought around enterprise SEO where it's more paid ads, therefore it's more complex. That's what enterprise SEO more complex words to me, and being at Wix at the enterprise level, why at SEMrush also is very enterprise. To me, and I don't think I'm going out on a limb here, we could talk to Nick Wilson about this on another podcast. What makes enterprise SEO complicated is the sheer size of the company itself, not the size of the website. Crystal Carter:: Yeah. I think it can be a little bit of both and I think it can also be the difference between a tugboat and a cruise ship. If you need to move a cruise ship through a space, you have to move it all at once and you have to do a lot of planning. It's going to take a lot of planning in order to make sure. If you've got a tugboat or a canoe or whatever and you need to leave the harbor, you just go. Mordy Oberstein: You untie the boat, you throw on your little captain's hat. Crystal Carter:: Right, exactly. Let's talk about captains. Lots of stuff about captains, right. So, you can get yourself on your little ship and you can sail away into the blue. Mordy Oberstein: Someone put on the Styx Come Sail Away right now. Crystal Carter:: I was thinking of Enya, Sail Away. Anyway. So, if you're sailing out, it's not a big deal. Yeah, you can do that and you can be nimble. It's not a big deal because you can say, oh, you know what? I'm just going to post that blog. You could be nimble. If you are moving an entire unit, then you have to plan and that planning can take a long time. So, if we're talking about the cruise ship metaphor, because I love a folksy metaphor, if we're talking about that you need to tell the harbor master, you need to tell the people who look after the harbor, I'm moving my ship. Right? I'm getting out of this dock and I'm moving my ship. They're like, okay, we need to clear the way, we need to do these things. Mordy Oberstein: Sign these forms. Crystal Carter:: Right. There's things you have to do in order to engage that. On an enterprise level, if you want to do things, there's lead time. You have to take lead time into account, and sometimes that lead time can be months. Sometimes that lead time can be even longer than that. So, when you're thinking about your SEO and you're thinking about SEO implementations, particularly like tech SEOS implementations. If you want to address some tech debt for instance, that's in your website stack. Or if you want to create a new asset on your blog or create a new asset for the digital asset or something. You have to think about the fact that there are wheels within wheels within wheels, and you have to be able to move as a unit. You can't think of yourself in a siloed space because you're part of a larger unit. Mordy Oberstein: You know what it's like, to use another analogy? Let's say you want to get ice cream. You hop in the car, you get ice cream. Now, let's say you have 10 kids. Now go try to get ice cream. Crystal Carter:: Right, right, right. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: You have 10 different people with 10 different considerations and it's at the enterprise level. So, you might think, wow, let's target this keyword. Make it a really simple case. Target this keyword, engage. Then someone says, the brand manager says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That is not on brand for us." But the SEO, the traffic. That's not what the brand does. There's so many different teams with so many different considerations, who have a voice and a legitimate voice on what you do and what you don't do. Navigating all of that, extremely complex. If you were to ask me, if I'm doing SEO with scale already and I want to move to the enterprise level. Or I'm not doing SEO with what I want to go into enterprise. The greatest skill I think you can have is being able to navigate different relationships, considerations, compromising, planning. That back and forth with other people comes much into focus, uniquely so, in enterprise SEO. Crystal Carter:: This is something that Eli Schwartz talks about. He says you need to make friends with everyone. I think also you need to have your ears to the ground about where things are moving. I was on a recent discussion with the women in tech SEO crew, talking about their state of technical SEO report that they put out with ERA digital. We were talking about enterprise SEO and we were talking about how you get things implemented. One of the consensuses that we came to was that timing is everything. If you know that a team is moving on an initiative across your company, and this also applies to smaller businesses as well. But let's say that you're working for a theme park or something and the theme park has a new ride that they want to promote. And you have an SEO thing that you want to get done and you've been trying for months to get it done. If you can position the SEO tactic, the SEO implementation that you want as a benefit to this other initiative that's coming down the pipe, which you know that the company has momentum on, then you're more likely to get that sign off than if you just have something random that's like a thing that you think is a good thing that's best practice that will generally help the website. If you have something that works with the timing of the company, that's really useful to think about. And thinking about budgets allocation, thinking about when your company signs off marketing plans, for instance. If the marketing plans are signed off in October and you show up with this great idea in December, they've already signed it off and they're midway through and you need to think about that as well. So, I think there's a lot of wheels within wheels and finding out is really helpful. Mordy Oberstein: That goes back to your point about the boats, or in my case, the kids and the ice cream. If you want to successfully navigate that slow moving ship, it means that you have to be almost a type A personality to a certain extent. If that's not you, by the way, then make sure there's somebody on your team who that is them. Because you need to know in advance, be able to plan it in advance and predict the various scenarios that will play out. If this happens, we're going to have to do that and now I'm going to know these five different things and set up meetings with these five different people, and have that all planned out. So, before you even get to the doc, or before you even offer the kids, hey, let's go for ice cream, you need to have a plan of how that's going to happen and what that's going to look like. Crystal Carter:: I know that for instance with Wix there's a logo maker tool, which the team put together, and that took a little while to put together, but it's a fantastic tool. It's a fantastic tool for users in lots of ways and adds a lot of user value for users for instance. Putting that together and getting all the moving parts and getting everyone together to make that happen is something that's really valuable. I think also when you're in an enterprise team, and even when you're in a smaller in-house team or an agency as well, being prescient, being aware of who the gatekeepers are. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Very much so. Crystal Carter:: Can be really, really, really useful. I don't mean gatekeepers as in like boo, you can't come in, but I mean people that are facilitators. Being conscious of who those people are and identifying them and being able to see who that works, because it might not even be the people that you would normally on paper assume. It might be that there's somebody who manages the diary for the CEO or manages the diary for the CMO or something. If you don't speak well to them, you will not get a meeting. It might be that might be the person that you need to think about. It might be that it's not necessarily the person who is the team lead, but it's the project lead who's actually driving some of the decisions and things. So, be aware of those so that you can get your implementations met. Also, when you're thinking about your SEO implementations, I think it's also important to tie them into the team's priorities. If they don't fit in with the team's priorities, then it's going to be very difficult to get signed off. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's another thing that really has to align priorities. Also, because in my experience you could only, and I think you understand this also, we've experienced this both, where you're going to have overlap. People have their own priorities and your priorities are going to overlap. Sometimes your priorities align and you work together, and sometimes your priorities are the same and it means cannibalization. Crystal Carter:: Right. So, you've got to think about that. I think from a keyword research point of view, from an enterprise, that's definitely something that people should think about. If you're working on a big domain, and one of the things that's tricky with enterprise domains is that not only do you have your main domain, but you very often will have your knowledge base or whatever. You'll very often have support docs, help docs and things like that. You may also have a lot of old content. So, if you're working on a website, if you've gotten to an enterprise level, chances are the domain is a little bit older and is going to have a lot of webpages. It might be that there are pages from way, way, way, way, way back. Mordy Oberstein: You talked about this in a previous podcast, you have to be careful with those things also because if you pull off the wallpaper, sometimes the wall crumbles. Crystal Carter:: Right. Precisely. I think that when you're looking at your keyword research, you should also be looking at how to make sure that you're not overlapping with yourself. I think we talked a little bit about keyword cannibalization, which I think is a challenge for enterprise SEOs. One of the tools that I found recently that's really useful is a keyword gap analysis tool, Semrush. Mordy Oberstein: Pretty cool. Crystal Carter:: Which is supposed to be for they're looking at competitors. But it's actually really, really useful for looking at your own content and finding the gaps in the existing content you have, so that you can create some complimentary rather than competitive content. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So, different folders compared to each other, different sub-domains compared to each other, that kind of thing. Crystal Carter:: Precisely. It's a really, really good tool that you can look at for your own. So, if you compare all of those different things and then you can see untapped, picked from the untapped. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Where it's overlapped and you're just going to end up killing their page, people are not going to be happy. Don't do that. Yeah. Crystal Carter:: Yeah. It may even mean you have to work harder to make your content rank and perform and engage and all of that sort of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Or if you are going to do that, you need to sync up to make sure that everyone's aligned in all the resources and all of the SEO juice are going to one place, for lack of a better word. Now, if you're doing keyword research, that's great. You're at the enterprise level, you're doing keyword research. Are you really though? Are you that hands-on? Is it all strategies? Should you be hands-on? Probably, yeah, but how do you remain hands-on at the enterprise level when you're so busy? All these big pages and big things and different meetings and different teams. Oh my goodness. To help us answer that, Product Led SEO's author, Eli Schwartz, is here to tell us how to remain hands on when working at the enterprise level. Eli Schwartz: Figuring out how to stay hands on an SEO when you're working at an enterprise level is no easy feat. By the very nature of the job, your job is more likely to be focused on meetings, architecture, strategy, diplomacy, politics and all things that are the furthest thing from hands-on. As a consultant, this is even more challenging for me because I'm not hands on. I'm not working within a company. I don't really get to look at the source code of anything. I don't see Jira tickets. I'm barely in Slack conversations. When I am in, these are the conversations that I'm invited into. So, I have to find other ways to be hands-on. I'll do things like work on my own projects, launch pages, break pages. I recently launched a new website with Wix, and when I forwarded my website over from WordPress over to Wix, I intentionally 404ed pages to see how long they would still be in the index. Spoiler, it's been about two months and they're still in the Google index. So, if you do a site query on my site, EliSchwartz.co, you're still going to find webpages that are 404ed and they're still in the Google index. So, I do things like that to stay really on top of the real hands-on part of SEO. The other things I'll do is I'll do things that are out of my typical role as a consultant. I'll coach new SEOs or I'll coach enterprise SEOs and help them understand and help work with them, and really for my own learning to understand how to navigate the challenges that they're working on as a part of their roles. If they have a challenge with how do they get an engineer to do something, how do they understand the reporting they have? These aren't things that I get to do in my regular consulting, but these are things that I get to really learn and do from coaching. Coaching isn't necessarily the part of consulting that I might earn the most from or I might focus the most time on, but it actually is for me the most rewarding because I am getting my hands dirty. I am learning things and I am navigating challenges, and it keeps me up to date with existing issues around SEO. For example, most of my larger clients are very, very unlikely to ever get hit by a Google algorithm update. They aren't going to get penalties, they aren't even doing things that are big enough and important enough to get the attention of Google. However, with some of the coaching projects that I work on, those are smaller sites. Those will be the kinds of things where they are seeing changes from Google algorithm updates and they need to message that to executives. They are seeing things and they need to message to counterparts across the company, how do we go ahead and fix this? That's the primary way that I'll get most of my hands-on access and really stay up to date. Of course, I'm sure other people are recommending and I would totally agree with that, read blog posts. Be on Twitter, be on LinkedIn, be a part of conversations. But the one extra piece I do is when I hear these things and I see these conversations, I go ahead and try to test it on my own. But this is something that I am very proactive about. How do I stay hands-on rather than just staying high level? Mordy Oberstein: Thank you very much, Eli. Don't forget to check out Eli's book, Product-Led SEO. A little plug for Eli. Hey, if somebody's coming on the podcast and they have a book, we have to plug the book. Crystal Carter:: Plug the book. Mordy Oberstein: Plug the book. Crystal Carter:: That's what you do. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like I'm like Jay Leno or something. I have a guest on, I'm plugging the book. Crystal Carter:: Some shameless self-promotion but not self-promotion. Something that's just- Mordy Oberstein: Marketer's going to market. That's how it goes. Crystal Carter:: This is it. This is it. Mordy Oberstein: Respect. Crystal Carter:: Resistant is futile. Mordy Oberstein: It's a good point and it's a good point at the enterprise level and in general. If you want to get hands-on experiences with SEO and you're like, I don't know, I don't have a local SEO client or whatever it is, I don't have an eCommerce. So, try to spin up a mock site. Try to get your hands on. Take that extra initiative. If you're sitting at strategy meetings all day long, great, start a podcast. Create a podcast website. Run that website. Do something with it, not just a test. Actually run something. Create a blog, run that blog, do the work read. Keep your hands dirty in the SEO by being a little bit proactive and spending a little bit of time on, even if it's a small website, it's something tangible. Crystal Carter:: Yeah, yeah, it's so true and the best SEOs do this all the time. I hear people who are like, oh, I did this course but I need to get some SEO experience and I need to get a job somewhere. Or I need to get a thing somewhere. I'm like, you don't need anyone's permission to do SEO. You can just do SEO. You can start a website right now and you can do SEO. You can start creating content. You can start doing content optimization. You can start thinking about your content and that sort of thing on things like Medium, on things like LinkedIn, on things like that. But do SEO. And then I think really nice working on enterprise level, John Sehada is also somebody who does this a lot. Barry interviewed him recently, or there's a video interview of Barry and John talking about this as well. John's like, oh yeah, I did this, I did that, I did this, I did that. Barry was like, I literally love how in the weeds you are. The best SEOs are doing this all the time. I know somebody who is an enterprise SEO who works for a major fashion label. She's like, oh yeah, we've been experimenting on this project with AI content and seeing how that performs and that sort of thing. I think that if you want to learn how to do SEO, doing is the most important thing. Because SEO in theory is great and you can learn a lot of stuff from reading blogs, but until you put the content into, until you set it live, it's not really active. You have to set it live and you have to see how Google responds, how people respond, how the internet responds to your content. Mordy Oberstein: This goes to a point John Mueller made a while back a couple years ago, where someone's talking about creating a test site. John's like, well. John, the search advocate over at Google. You don't usually put the same kind of effort into a test site as you do a real site, so it's hard to really see how things would actually work and play themselves out. The real thing is the real thing. Now, sometimes in enterprise SEO, you work in-house. Sometimes, however, very often actually, you consult at the enterprise level when doing SEO. Which means you have clients, which means you have high stake clients who have big budgets and big expectations, on my. To ease our anxiety around this, we're going to talk to someone who knows a thing or two about how to talk to big name brands or running big budgets with big expectations. Our very own vice president of Global Strategic Sales at Wix, Matt Matergia stops by as we go across the Wix verse. Speaker 5: Three, two, one. Ignition. Lift-off. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to the show, Matt. Really nice to have you here. Matt Matergia: Pleasure to be here. Mordy Oberstein: I'm kind of excited to pick your brain. Enterprise level clients. When you're talking to SEO, not SEO, just purely in abstract, not connected to any vertical, what goes through your mind when you have to deal with a, say, a complicated SEO? I'm sorry, a complicated enterprise. We're not doing SEO. A complicated enterprise client. Matt Matergia: You can't get off of the SEO. Mordy Oberstein: It's like a drug. Matt Matergia: So, all right. I think SEO doesn't matter what you're talking about with an enterprise client, right? It all comes back to understanding their business and understanding the problems that they're having and how their business works. In the sales world, we talk about discovery, right? Discovery is basically understanding who you're talking to, where they are in the organization, what their goals are, what their problems are, what opportunities you can gain out of this. So, we always say good discovery leads to good opportunities, and that's Sales 101, right? But that is really understanding clients and understanding their business. Crystal Carter:: What's your process for getting that level of understanding that helps you to create an effective relationship between yourself and an enterprise client? Matt Matergia: I would say base level, it's curiosity. Crystal Carter:: Okay. Matt Matergia: It's curiosity and asking good questions. Mordy Oberstein: You and John Mueller. So, we did an episode on building the good SEO team, and we asked Google's John Mueller, what are the traits of a good SEO team? He said curiosity. Matt Matergia : All right. Mordy Oberstein: Great minds. Matt Matergia: Yeah. Wow, what a level I've set myself at. Mordy Oberstein: That is, right? You've reached. We all aspired to each level of John. You have just said we've been trying for this, what, how many episodes? Like 33 episodes? And you've been here for five minutes. Matt Matergia: Yeah. Well, I'm honored. I think maybe we should just end this right here. Mordy Oberstein: Somebody's got another meeting to go to. Crystal Carter:: I would say also when you're working with clients who are enterprise or are part of a larger organization, in my experience, timelines can be something of a challenge or can be something that needs to be managed anyway. Have you found that to be the case as well? Matt Matergia : Yes, of course. Timelines, budgets, and also what is driving the timeline is usually it's the process on the other side. It's that decision making process that you need to understand, because we all have maybe a timeline in our head of the ideal process that we want to go through. But if you don't understand what's going on the other side and the business case that they need to make, the people that they need to get involved, the approval that they have to get, then those timelines, it's expectation versus reality. There can be some huge gap between what you're expecting the timelines to be and what they might be expecting. Which goes back to curiosity because you need to ask the questions to understand what that process is going to be. Crystal Carter:: Right, and I think that that's part of building a relationship with someone from a team like that. And that's a healthy relationship because you don't want to be pressuring someone. How come you haven't responded to this email when they don't have the capacity to get back to you straight away. Or they've got some other things that are going on around or that sort of thing. So yeah, I don't know if you can talk more about that. Matt Matergia: Well, I was joking. We had a sales kickoff in New York, I guess it was two months ago now, but I was joking with the team because we were talking about building trust and where you need to get with your main stakeholders and the sales process. We were talking about breaking the cell phone barrier. We were saying if you don't have your main contact cell phone and you don't have the right to be texting, calling, whatever, and you don't have that relationship, forget it. You're not closing the deal because you haven't established trust. Right? I made that up, breaking the cell phone barrier, but it goes back to trust really. Mordy Oberstein: I don't have your number so I kind of... Matt Matergia: We don't have a good relationship. Mordy Oberstein: We're not there, huh? Oh man. I really misassessed this whole relationship. Matt Matergia: I'll Slack it to you. We're on Slack. Mordy Oberstein: Oh okay, we're on Slack? Okay, so Slack is not... Wait, what if you're in a group Slack together with them, so it's a cross company Slack? Matt Matergia: Actually, that is definitely a good sign, right? When you have something like a joint Monday board or a joint Slack channel and now you're bringing in all the players. I feel like now you're starting to work on actual implementation or getting to the actual project, for sure. Mordy Oberstein: So, you're really trying to integrate with that person as much as possible. Matt Matergia: Yes. Yeah, definitely. Crystal Carter:: I think from an SEO point of view, the process of building trust with your clients is very similar whether they're enterprise or whether they're a smaller scale. I think when you have that level of trust, when you think about timelines, sometimes it might not be the right time for whatever it is that you're doing. But if you have a level of trust where they've got you on speed dial, they've got your number, they've got all your information, they know that you're solid and stuff. Then you were talking about opportunity as well, then they're able to connect with you when they need you for whatever it is, and you're able to fulfill whatever it is that they need. Matt Matergia: It's expectation setting. It's been a long time since I've worked selling SEO to enterprise clients, and I'm sure in a decade. But sophistication of the marketing teams, I'm sure it has improved or let's hope. But a lot of the partners that I'm working with today, they're working with small businesses. You think, all right, I'm going to invest money in SEO and overnight I'm going to show up on Google first page because you have a unscrupulous SEO agencies that are always saying that, right? So, part of the way that you can build trust is also that you do proper expectation setting. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, a great positive or bonus is that when this person you've made contact with, whether it be you have their home phone number, their children's names, whatever it is that you have, if they go to another company, I've seen this a gazillion times, if they like you, they'll bring you into that company. Which means that you've not lost the other client. They don't necessarily get rid of you because your POC is gone and you've gained a new client, because your POC is now in a new company. And you know that person's children's names and you're on a first name basis, and you go to the country club. Whatever it is that you do together. Matt Matergia: I feel like CMO turnover is the bread and butter of marketing agents. Mordy Oberstein: You're like, all right, let's see. When you intake a new client, I wonder what's their churn rate going to be here at their own company? Matt Matergia: Yeah. Like, all right, every two years I can just hit the. Mordy Oberstein: This guy's great. I love this person. He just brought me 10 clients just by himself moving around. Matt Matergia: Exactly. Crystal Carter:: I think there's also, talking about churn, sometimes when there's new team, let's say you're working with an account or you're working with a team, sometimes when there's a new company or a new team member, sometimes they're like, we want to clear out. We want to get new contacts and things like that. Have you got any advice for how to establish good relationships with talent incoming management? Matt Matergia: Yeah. In the sales world, we look for signals. Signals could be maybe a company has raised money or maybe they had a change in strategy. But certainly a signal could be new leadership coming in. Because 100% whether they're going to come in and bring existing vendors and existing relationships, or they're going to look for new ones, they're going to 100% make changes and they're going to want to make those changes usually within the first 90 to 180 days. So, specific to how do I establish those new relationships, I don't think it's any different necessarily than just establishing relationships in general. But I think looking for those buying signals is very important, and having your finger on the pulse to know what's going on to be proactive in those situations is important. Crystal Carter:: In my experience, also having your act together also helps. So, if you have a well-oiled machine and you're like, this is our report that we do every month and this is our thing that we do every month, then when the new person comes in, you've got all that stuff for them to see and the transition is easier. I don't know if you find that that's useful from a sales point of view as well? Matt Matergia: Everybody wants to look good. So, if you are the facilitator of that person looking good, then you've just earned their trust, right? 100%. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter:: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of looking good, if people wanted to look good and follow you out there on social media, where can they find you? Matt Matergia: I am MTerg on Twitter. M-T-E-R-G. Mordy Oberstein: Nice, and we'll link to that in the show notes. Matt Matergia: I'm not as active as either of you, but I am there. Crystal Carter:: But you're on LinkedIn as well, yes? Matt Matergia: And on LinkedIn. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. LinkedIn's great. I go there once in a while. I visit. Not like TikTok. I don't even know what that is. Crystal Carter:: That's not true. Marty has a very active TikTok where he does lots of dances, too. Mordy Oberstein: Dancing and I fall downstairs. That's what I do. On purpose. Or some people can like it, laugh at me. I just hurt myself. Anyway, forgetting that rabbit hole, Matt, thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate you sharing your expertise and experience with us and look forward to seeing you around the virtual office, because we're not in the same office. We're not in any office together. Matt Matergia: Nope. One day I'll get to Tel Aviv. Mordy Oberstein: One day I'll get to Denver. Matt Matergia: Yes. Look forward to that. Crystal Carter:: Fantastic. Matt Matergia: Thank you both. It's a pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: Three, two, one, ignition. Lift-off. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Matt. I've had numerous conversations over the years with Matt. Super nice guy, super friendly, super accessible, and one of these people who you walk away feeling like they know way more than they let on kind of thing. Crystal Carter:: In a good way. Mordy Oberstein: In a good way. I mean it in the best way possible. Some things that I'm not going to let on that I do know, well maybe I will, that you'll soon know, if that makes any sense whatsoever. I'm not sure. As I pivot into the snappy news. Crystal Carter:: And now, with the snappy news and news from Bing, they have announced that their new Bing has increased the number of conversations that you can have with Bing chat from 15 up to 20. You can also have a total of up to 200, which is an increase from 150. They've also explained that they are adding in image and video search, which will make it a lot easier for you to have a bit more information there. And that they're adding local grounding to give better results for local search. Also in local search, if you are using Bing places, you might also be interested to know that they have improved their location recognition API to include something called local intelligence, which allows you to create territories and to do better local SEO via Bing. They're also adding more information about demographics and continuing to build and grow. We reported last week that the March core algorithm update had completed. However, in the early days of April, we are starting to see a lot of movement around there, to the point that Barry Schwartz reported seeing early signs of a Google search algorithm update on the third. A lot of people were saying that they have seen some reversals and a lot of changes early in the month. So, if you have a website that you're looking after, have a look at those results and see if anything has changed. Picking up on the AI news from Google, they continue to roll out Bard in a testing framework, so more people are reporting that they're getting access to Bard. They also announced recently during a podcast with the New York Times that they are also testing Bard in Gmail. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, discussed some of their approaches to innovation and responsibility, and also discussed and denied that he ever issued a code red as part of their approach to AI. Finally, news from ChatGPT is that ChatGPT has been disabled for users in Italy, reported by Christie Hines in Search Engine Journal. It seems that OpenAI did not in properly inform users that it was collecting personal data. This may have been in contravention with GDPR. And as such, they have now blocked access to ChatGPT for Italian users while they tried to make adjustments to potentially reestablish the ground rules for use in that area. This brings into question some potential challenges for how generative AI tools like Chachi PT, Bard and New Bing may approach this privacy space going forward. That's all for today's SERP's Up podcast snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: Coming back now from the snappy news, always good to have news. Crystal Carter:: Always good. Have we reached the final frontier of our podcast? Mordy Oberstein: It was the undiscovered country of SEO enterprises. Crystal Carter:: That's very fair. Mordy Oberstein: A little Star Trek Six reference for you there. All right. I feel like we're spanning generations, we keep this podcast going on any longer. But before we do lead the part, we need to talk about who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness, and this week we have a great follow for you, Paul Andre Devera, also known as Dre. An absolute character who you may not realize specializes in enterprise SEO. Crystal Carter:: So, he is living my podcast sound effects dreams because he has a fantastic podcast and webcast called The SEO Show. Do check the out on YouTube and on all of your best channels. He is somebody who drops the air horns that go. He just drops them in the middle of whatever he's doing and it's amazing. He has a lot of fun with his podcast and with a lot of his web stuff, but don't let the fun fool you. He's so smart and so strategic about the things that he does. I was on a recent discussion for Majestic, where we were talking about enterprise level SEO. The amount of sense he was talking, the amount of clarity that he has about how to approach enterprise SEO is phenomenal. He's super intelligent and really engaging, and a great follow. Mordy Oberstein: I've had numerous conversations with him. I've interviewed him. He is so on the ball and his take on SEO is so accurate and it's real. You're not getting the influencer flop. You're getting a real take from him. Again, like the SEO Video Show, the production value is off the chain. Little plug from myself, beginning of each show I do the SEO joke. So, if you want to hear me do an SEO joke, check out Dre's show. Marketers going to market. Crystal Carter:: Yeah, he's got a fantastic theme song as well. Which I thought that he'd done it himself, but he didn't do it himself. I wish he had, but there we go. Mordy Oberstein: He's over on Twitter at Paul Andre, that's P-A-U-L-A-N-D-R-E. Paul Andre on Twitter. We'll link to it in the show notes so you could follow him, check him out across all of his platforms, especially on YouTube and his SEO Video Show. And that's it. That's all we got. Crystal Carter:: That's it. We've reached the final frontier. We have- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, you made that joke already today. Crystal Carter:: Did I? Can I not do it again? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You can pick it again. Crystal Carter:: Oh, come on. Mordy Oberstein: Another Star Trek joke. Crystal Carter:: Oh, an insert Star Trek joke here. Mordy Oberstein: Live long and prosper, everybody. Thank you for joining us on the SERB's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with the new episode as we dive into SEO on PPC with our powers combined. Look for wherever you could consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO loading app over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn a little more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Google’s Local Pack is filled with secrets… Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back in action to identify the hidden gems of Google's Local Pack. In this episode, our hosts are joined by the VP of Solutions at Uberall, Krystal Taing. Together the crew helps you uncover the range of possibilities offered within the Local Pack. Prepare to pack your brain full of knowledge, as this week; you’ll learn the ins, outs, and in-betweens of the Local Pack on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Things you never knew about the Local Pack Google’s Local Pack is filled with secrets… Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back in action to identify the hidden gems of Google's Local Pack. In this episode, our hosts are joined by the VP of Solutions at Uberall, Krystal Taing. Together the crew helps you uncover the range of possibilities offered within the Local Pack. Prepare to pack your brain full of knowledge, as this week; you’ll learn the ins, outs, and in-betweens of the Local Pack on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 78 | March 13, 2024 | 51 MIN 00:00 / 51:10 This week’s guests Krystal Taing Krystal Taing is the Global Director of Pre-sales Solutions at Uberall. She is a Google Business Profile Platinum Product Expert and faculty member at LocalU. She helps brands at managing hybrid customer experiences. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It is the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We'll put you on 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 local, the very locally oriented, the very near-me Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, hello, internet people. We are here live and people have looked up directions to how to get to the SERP's Up SEO podcast and they maybe mapped it out, maybe- Mordy Oberstein: SERP's Up podcast near me. Crystal Carter: SERP's Up podcasts near me, also- Mordy Oberstein: Podcast, podcast, SERP's Up New York, New York podcast, podcast. Crystal Carter: And top podcast in your local area, all of those sorts of things. These are important things to think about because you- Mordy Oberstein: Obviously. Crystal Carter: You don't want a podcast that's not in your local area. Mordy Oberstein: My favorite, and obviously we're talking about local SEO today if you haven't figured that out, is when businesses name themselves 'Near Me', their actual business name is Dentists Near Me. Crystal Carter: For people who are not complete SEO nerds, this is something that SEOs are just like, "Oh yes, this is gold dust," when they see that in the strip mall next to the Little Caesars, and there's Dentists Near Me and on the wall that is like, "Oh, I must tell other SEOs about this." Mordy Oberstein: And people are like, "Why are they called Dentists Near Me?" And all the SEOs are like, "We know why." Crystal Carter: We all know why. Mordy Oberstein: For the older people out there, it's the equivalent of naming your business AAAA whatever, so that you show up first in the phonebook. Crystal Carter: It's a real thing. Triple A or AA taxis, Aardvark. Mordy Oberstein: Aardvark. Crystal Carter: How many businesses are called Aardvark? That was a thing. Mordy Oberstein: Why do people love that animal so much? Crystal Carter: Also, I feel sorry for young people who've never felt the weight of a full yellow pages. Mordy Oberstein: And when you got them both delivered, the white pages and you had to schlub those inside, you'd need a wheelbarrow. Crystal Carter: Oh, man. And people would be like, "Can you find something?" And you'd be like, "Well, let me just pull this out." Mordy Oberstein: And it made that sound as you opened it up like thump. Crystal Carter: Right, and then also there was always the case where somebody would've ripped out the page that you actually needed. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, see that, yeah, that's classic. Crystal Carter: But also, sorry, we will get to an actual thing, I'm sorry, we've got a guest who's waiting who's fantastic, but the actual thought of just having everyone's phone number and address in a white pages. Mordy Oberstein: That's scary, right? Crystal Carter: That's crazy, right? Mordy Oberstein: And you had to opt out. Crystal Carter: You could find anybody, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's not like they asked you, you had to opt out. Crystal Carter: And you would just see it in like public phone booths, there would just be a public phone booth and there would be a booth that had everyone's first name, last address, phone number available to any person who walked by. Mordy Oberstein: What could go wrong? Crystal Carter: Simpler times. Mordy Oberstein: Right, simpler times. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by simpler times and by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight on wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also up your local SEO game with our Uberall app integration, which means today we're diving into local SEO and in specific the hidden secrets of the Local Pack, the less known but equally awesome features in the Local Pack, things you didn't know helped you appear in the Local Pack, and how the Local Pack functionality has changed relatively recently and what it might mean to help us dig up the secret layers and levels of the Local Pack. Uberall's VP of Solutions, Krystal Taing, will join us in just a jiffy. Plus, we'll help you unlock the gems, offered a nifty little SEO app inside of Wix. And of course, we have your snappies of SEO news, who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So plug in your console or put those weird little goggle things down that everybody has and hop down a pipe with a man eating plant popping out of it as episode 78 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you find the secret levels of the local back like you are a plumber in a 1985 8-bit video game. Oh, by the way, that plumber is near you. Crystal Carter: Great. He also has a great dinosaur. I always like Yoshi. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's great. Yeah, but we're just- Crystal Carter: On Mario Kart, I'm Yoshi, that's me. Mordy Oberstein: I'm pre-dating, I'm going a bit 8-bit, I'm pre-dating Yoshi. It wasn't even a thought yet. Crystal Carter: Oh, come on, Yoshi's iconic. It wasn't really a party until Yoshi showed up. Mordy Oberstein: Truth by the way. So to catch everybody up real, real, real, real, real quick, the Local Pack is that big box that shows up at the way, way, way top of the Google results page when you search for a pizza near me. And it has a big map and it has the listing of these businesses, and you can go to the web, you can get directions, and it appears above the organic results, and it essentially makes the organic results, the actual Google normal results, kind of irrelevant for local queries like pizza near me. And to help us wade through the waters and maybe find the extra life of the Local Pack, please welcome to the show Krystal Taing. How are you? Krystal Taing: Hello, hello. Thank you much so much for having me. I will say, unlike a yellow page book, you cannot rip a page out of the Local Pack, so it's exciting to talk about. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, but maybe we could rip a page out of your Local Pack playbook. Krystal Taing: Yes, yes. I love that. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about this topic that I am just overly passionate about, which is just local. Mordy Oberstein: I wish we still called it the Snack Pack, which was another name for the Local Pack, because Snack Packs are also puddings and pudding is amazing. Krystal Taing: Yes, yes. That's what I think, Snack Pack of pudding. So I think we can still call it, we can bring it back 2024, it's a New Year. Mordy Oberstein: Vanilla Snack Pack or chocolate Snack Pack? Krystal Taing: Chocolate, chocolate. Mordy Oberstein: I was always a vanilla Snack Pack person. I'm generally a chocolate person over vanilla, but not for the Snack Pack. Krystal Taing: Oh, I was actually a tapioca, but that wasn't one of the options. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, you're just a weirdo at that point. Krystal Taing: Yes, I am, I am. Crystal Carter: So snacks aside, so Krystal is the Global Director of Pre-Sale Solutions at Uberall, and you are also a Google Business Profile gold certified absolute... What is it, what's your actual qualification on the things? Krystal Taing: Way too many words, but it's a Platinum Google Business Profile Product Expert. But like I said, way too many words. Crystal Carter: Yeah, but you don't just get that out of nothing. I've been in the Google Business Profile Q&A questions and stuff, and Krystal's answering questions in there. Krystal's deep in the weeds. She's like, "No, you got to do this, you got to do that. You got to do all of this sort of thing." So we're so pleased to have you here. Also, Krystal wrote our introduction to local SEO. She knows all of the things about Local Pack. Mordy Oberstein: And we did a webinar together. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and a fantastic webinar with some great stuff there. So it's super important, and one of the reasons why Local Pack is so important is some of the things that you get from it. So just looking at this quote from your recent discussion about the local SEO ranking factors, one of the quotes you said is that businesses that rank in the 3-pack typically get 88% additional clicks in driving directions, 76 more clicks on call and 76 more clicks to website according to your recent Uberall study. That's mega. Krystal Taing: Yeah, yeah, it's insane. Crystal Carter: Right? Krystal Taing: There's definitely a lot more engagement when you're at the top of that Map Pack or 3-pack or result. I will say there's a lot of changes now. So there's not just the ability to rank in the 3-pack, there's the ability for your photos or videos or posts or other elements to rank so there's more opportunity, but being at the top really makes a difference in the amount of customers that have eyes on you. Crystal Carter: And so when we think about that, I know that there's a few different elements that can affect what puts you at the top for which queries and things, I don't know if you're able to share a couple of your favorite ways to do that. Krystal Taing: Yeah, I'll say my favorite is probably the most boring, but it is what has been the truest since the existence of GBP or GMB or Google Places whenever it started is just complete and accurate detail. Google wants information, they are going to reward businesses that have complete profiles. And the reason why they reward businesses that have all of their information, all of their images, videos, content filled out is because more searchers engage with those types of businesses. So ultimately they want to create a good experience for their customers, they want Google searchers to feel engaged with the content, and so they're going to surface those businesses that have complete data. So it's one of the things that's like if Google gives you a field to promote something about your business, fill them all out, fill it all out to the best of your ability as a business. And really that's one of the most core elements is you can strategize later about content and strategy and promotional material and that kind of stuff, but really getting started is completing your entire profile. Crystal Carter: Right, right. It's like the SATs, it's like answer all the questions. Mordy Oberstein: Right, put your name there, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Make sure you- Krystal Taing: Exactly. Crystal Carter: Answer all the questions, you have to get involved. And I think some of the things people will sometimes go, "Oh, I don't need to add that attribute that says that we have delivery or that we are wheelchair accessible or that we're this set or the other," but that's not true. You absolutely do need to. Mordy Oberstein: Especially if you're selling wheelchairs in which you should probably. Krystal Taing: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, no, I always remind businesses that Google isn't just creating this field for fun, they have access to a ton of data, a ton of user behavior data. So when they roll out something like a small business attribute on Google, they didn't just pluck it from the sky and said, "This is part of our calendar this month, we want to pull it." It's typically because they have a lot of search data that says users want to support small businesses, and so we need to surface this somehow and make it easy for businesses to engage. Same thing with dogs available at restaurants, do you know how many searches there are for that? So that became another attribute that was available in the last couple of months. Yes, I'm sure there's lots of Googlers that love dogs and they just want to show it on profiles, but a lot of this is because users want this information, Mordy Oberstein: And by the way, it also just makes you look more robust and complete. And if you're looking at other profiles and comparing them like, "Well, how come they have all those shiny little icons and emojis and whatever and that one doesn't? That doesn't seem right." Krystal Taing: Exactly, exactly. That's the thing, it's not only do you want to show up, but then once you show up, users need to make a decision and you need to give them all of the information they need to make a decision. So if you've got, to your point, shiny little icons and fun videos and additional content, it's a lot easier to make a decision than one that's missing hours or the photo is super blurry, or it doesn't say, to your point, that they don't accept reservations or those types of things. You're missing potential opportunity by not filling out that data. Crystal Carter: So here's another contentious one that I hear about the GBP things. What about posts? What is your stance on posts? How important do you think that is to helping businesses listing to perform on the Local Pack? Krystal Taing: So I don't know if you were just stalking my LinkedIn, but I did just actually make a post about Google posts because I continue to see more and more prominence of posts throughout the search experience. So these don't just display on your profile, there are different places that they display whenever users are searching on Maps, whenever they're discovering businesses on mobile. There's a lot of different ways that Google is adding these, and I think Google really likes it because it's unique and rich content. It's images, it's videos, it's promotional details, and the fact that the LinkedIn posts that I included, there's an entire section on Maps called nearby events and deals. It's like Google must have information that people want events and deals about businesses, and this is how they're choosing to surface it. Businesses that add posts, the offer posts, the event posts, these are going to now get surfaced in addition to your business data. So there's a lot of opportunity, and from my perspective, if Google is adding posts in different parts of there, that means they're relevant and that they're going to help impact your business from a ranking perspective. So I am all gung ho on posts. Crystal Carter: If people aren't aware of what posts are, if you have a Google Business Profile thing, sometimes they refer to them as updates so it'll say add an update in the backend for your business, and you have an option where you can add text, it's up to 1500 characters, you can add photo to it, and then you can add a link, you can add a button that goes to a link directly to somewhere in your site and you can add for booking or order online or buy or learn more or sign up. And you can schedule these things using other tools to disseminate information and when people look at your business, they show up at the bottom. I'm so glad to hear you say that because I've definitely seen this work for clients to see an uplift to sort of add new life into a sort of existing standard listing. So yeah, I'm glad to see that they were saying this is still a valuable and interesting thing going forward. Mordy Oberstein: Let's backtrack in the funnel just a little bit before you get to the GBP profile, perhaps you're getting to that profile from the Local Pack, and I think we look at the Local Pack and be like, "Okay, pretty straightforward. There's the name of the business, there's reviews there, whatever," but there's a lot more in there and there's sort of these little hidden Easter eggs or tidbits. I wonder if you can maybe talk about what's in the Local Pack that you may not be aware of is actually in the Local Pack? Krystal Taing: Yeah, there's so I would say two things really to pay attention to. So one of the things that we touched on already were attributes. So Google's got all of these, kind of think of them if you're familiar with more organic tags for your business, these are just features and functionalities that you offer. This is, to your point, are you wheelchair accessible? Do you offer delivery? But then there's other things like as a restaurant, do you serve vegetarian food? There's oftentimes these are going to be surfaced based on the search query. So if a user searches like 'vegetarian food near me', if you have that as an attribute, it's going to then be surfaced in the Local Pack on your business when normally it may not show, Google is associating that to the search. So attributes are a huge one. The other thing that is growing in prominence are videos. So Google is really leaning into short form video content and they've started ranking this very, very high. So if you've got a video on your profile, whether a user loaded it or you as a business, it'll start displaying in the Map Pack and position two next to your images. For different industries, not all industries are showing it that prominently, but I would definitely double down on videos on your GBP profile because they really have an impact. And again, to your point, when you're making a decision about a business, if it's a restaurant or you're going to a salon or something, if you are able to see a quick 10, 15 second video of what it looks like inside and you don't have to wonder if this is going to be a good experience, that's huge in terms of impact for customers. Mordy Oberstein: There's so much in there and I think if you're an SEO who's not so in the local space and now you have a client that is in the local space or you're a local business yourself, Google something, Google 'pizza near me', Google 'doctor office near me', Google all sorts of different things, all sorts of things show up if I Google pizza near me, I get Joe's Pizza, which I hear is completely overrated by the way, it's in fact most famous pizza place in New York City. I'm like, "Yeah, New York City style counter slice shop," it gives a description of the business in there and the next one's like counter for slices and pizza and calzones, or if you Google 'doctor office near me', I get all the 'accepts Medicaid'. Krystal Taing: Exactly, there's a lot of additional content there. What I also, to that point, is as an SEO or an agency doing searches on different surfaces is really important. So what do you see on desktop on search, desktop on Maps, mobile search, mobile Maps are all different and they all highlight different elements. And again, Google does that based on user behavior and what they think users want to see on different journeys. So I am a huge advocate for making sure you're doing those searches yourself because they do show you what Google is surfacing to customers during those times. Crystal Carter: So that touches on another point. So in terms of Local Pack, and so in your Uberall study you talked about personalization and I think that that mobile versus desktop thing is going to affect that personalization. So for instance, if Joe's Pizza Shop, if you're in Times Square and Joe's Pizza Shop is also in Times Square, and if you search near me, then literally it's near you, right? Krystal Taing: Exactly, exactly. Crystal Carter: So footfall might potentially affect that. So how important is it that you localize your test searches as well? So if you're an agency and if you're, say, an agency in Philadelphia and your client is in New York and you're testing the 'near me' and they're like, "I'm not seeing I myself on the thing," and you're like, "But I am," how much does the localization affect the Local Pack result? Krystal Taing: Yeah, that's a really great question. So the distance of the business from where the search is taking place is a huge impact and it's a huge ranking factor. So to your point, that happens all the time. It's like, "Hey, I googled my own business and I'm not showing up." The first question is, what was your search and where are you located? Everyone's going to have incredibly different searches, especially if you're on mobile and if your location services are activated, or maybe you're doing a search and you're saying, "I'm planning a trip and I'm going to Chicago, but I'm currently in San Diego." Even if I search for pizza restaurants Chicago, my results are going to be very different from someone that is physically located in Chicago. There's a lot of plugins that allow you to kind of maybe spoof your location where you can say, "Put me in this area," but it's just important to know that that is going to impact your search results unless you are at the exact same place that someone's searching. Google, especially for a near me or local search, they're going to adjust the results based on businesses that are nearby. Crystal Carter: Okay. So I think that in that regard, when people are thinking about maybe, and this is interesting because I always like the sort of intersection of IRL stuff and online stuff, so for instance if you were maybe a business that was outside of Times Square, but you wanted people to Google you or maybe it might be that that's where you put your sign flipper person, is it a place that would drive more searches? I mean, is that something that people should think about, like driving searches from certain places that are nearer them? Am I spit-balling too much there? Krystal Taing: No, no. I mean, I think a lot of businesses think that. It's also one of the challenges Google has with spam is because location is so impactful from a ranking perspective, that's a great example, people want to rank in downtown New York, but they might be located an hour outside, but based on your business, people might be willing to travel an hour outside. So that's where you do have to get unique. You do need to understand how users are searching for you, where they're located, and then understanding how you stretch your visibility. Oftentimes that's where you layer on the on-page elements, that's where you layer on back link strategy and those types of things because you probably are competing with a business that is located in downtown or is located in Times Square and that can be a challenge to businesses. But I think the most important thing is making sure that you're ranking where you're located first really, really well, you're really well optimized, and then you can start expanding that. In some cases, I've seen businesses actually relocate their offices because it can be a big challenge. Mordy Oberstein: It's a real challenge. It could be a really, really big problem. Krystal Taing: Yeah. And especially for service-based businesses. Mordy Oberstein: I was going to say that. Krystal Taing: So again, you think of an attorney where someone is willing to travel quite far or maybe they're doing some of their services virtually, so it's fine that they're an hour outside, but guess what? They want that downtown clientele. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. If I'm looking for a lawyer or an accountant, I'm not going to the accountant's office, I don't care. Krystal Taing: Yeah, exactly. Crystal Carter: So you brought up service level businesses, and I know that particularly on Google Business Profile, let's say you were somebody who was based in Long Island, but you were able to service people who were in Manhattan for your service where you're like, "I'll drive to you, it's fine, it's not a big deal. I will come to collect your dry cleaning," whatever it is. So what are some of the things that affect service area businesses for Local Pack? Krystal Taing: Yeah, I think the biggest thing to understand is that physical address where you originally create your business, which can be hidden, it doesn't have to display, is still from a location perspective where Google's going to rank you. And so I think a lot of times people think they add in these service areas because there are zip code cities, regions you can add to your service area, Google just uses that to draw an outline on the map, but it doesn't mean they're going to start ranking you in those addresses or in those areas. And that's what is a challenge for service-based businesses where you have to kind of really expand. You are a little bit more limited. Of course if you're a business that can show your address, that's always going to be helpful because sometimes hiding your address does limit where you can rank. But I think that's the most important thing to know is you are going to rank from a location perspective where your original business address is and sometimes that's your home even if the address is hidden. Crystal Carter: So I have another one, I have another one because I love Local Pack, I love local. Okay, so the other one is reviews. So I've seen it sometimes, for instance, you mentioned like vegetarian food, I don't do dairy but I do like donuts, so I'm like vegan donuts, where are vegan donuts? And I sometimes see that you get a highlight that says, "Oh, I had great vegan donuts here," that's a review, but isn't necessarily in any of their information. And so to my mind, reviews are very important, certainly as a user I find reviews to be very important. How impactful do you find reviews for Local Pack rankings? Krystal Taing: Yeah, that's another good point. I will say when you're building out a GBP profile, Google is controlling to a point everything you can publish. Reviews are one of the areas where it's kind of like freeform content. And when we talk about this, this is the review content a user leaves. As a business owner, you should respond to all reviews, Google wants to see that and they're going to reward you if you're responding to all reviews. They don't necessarily care what's in that content because you can spam it with whatever you want, you don't need to worry about adding keywords to that. But Google really values user-generated content, they kind of trust it more than what a business says, it's a little bit more unbiased. So as much as you can encourage users to be more specific in their reviews, saying things like, "We'd love to hear your feedback about our vegan donuts," can kind of put that in their mind to leave those keywords in the reviews to be a little bit more specific. If you are a business and you're asking for reviews, whether that's via email, text message, those types of things, if you can prompt it or ask for more detail, that's going to be valuable because Google does, they pull these out, they're called justifications, but it's really Google is justifying to users why they're showing your business for that query. And if you don't have vegan in your category, you don't have it in your image tag, you don't have it on your website or your menu, they need to basically tell users why they're seeing this business and it's because multiple users left a review and they talk about vegan donuts. It is a source of information that Google's mining. So huge, huge impact in terms of content in your reviews. Mordy Oberstein: Let me switch gears a little bit. I want to ask you a question. I don't know if you know, I'm asking you, I don't put you on the spot, but a while back or somewhat a while back... Let me rephrase this, Google's constantly changing how the Local Pack functions. It used to be back in the day it was a map and then a very small rectangle-ish kind of map, or an actual rectangle, not rectangle-ish, and then underneath there were the three listings and it had the reviews and it had directions or whatever it was. Now on desktop at least you have the results on the left-hand side, a much bigger map on the right-hand side, and there's all sorts of functionality. If you hover over the map, the results disappear. If you hover over a pin now, you'll get a little call-out with the reviews and some images from the location. Has that changed anything in terms of what you see happening in the Local Pack? Are businesses affected by that change at all, or is it just business as usual? No pun intended. Krystal Taing: I'll say I haven't seen too much impact from businesses, but what I have seen probably for the last four to five years is a transition in user behavior where a lot more searches are beginning on Maps. If you look back pre-2020, 90% of all business views on Google started on desktop. And I even know for myself, I will just go to Maps and instead of doing a search on Google search, I just zoom in and then I click around and I might put some keywords in or some filters. But I like that from a discovery perspective a lot more. So I think, and this is a complete assumption, I think Google sees that and they're trying to merge these experiences because users like to engage a little bit more and I think Maps gives you that more than a search result. Mordy Oberstein: It makes a lot of sense because you see, by the way, Google started testing out AI or an SGE kind of experience in Maps. And I think by the way, that makes a lot of sense to have there because I find jumping from one query to the next query to the next thing inside of Maps, a pain in the rear end. Krystal Taing: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Crystal Carter: I know that you're a big fan of categories, you've got your categories on Google Business Profile, which effects, which queries you show up with on the Local Pack. And I think that that also is reflected on Google Maps. So I think that that's one of the things I think is so interesting about Local Pack, local et cetera, is that there's a whole ecosystem around it. So for instance, I was recently in Switzerland and we went to one town and literally nothing was open and it was like, "Okay, I want a coffee. How am I going to find a coffee?" And then I looked at this other town and I was just generally hovering for cafes and then open now, and a bunch of them showed up. And so I just headed to this general area because I found that because it has all of these filters. So that goes back to the things that you're thinking of, and that also goes back to people going to Maps first because I don't know what any of the restaurants are called, so I couldn't possibly search for one. And sometimes they might call it a cafe, sometimes they call it a restaurant, but I just want a coffee. So I think that that goes to sort of how people can show up with those. Do you find that people need to make the same optimizations? Are the optimizations exactly the same for Maps as they are for Local Pack? Or do you that people need to make additional specific considerations for Google Maps? Krystal Taing: So there's not necessarily anything different. It's more about understanding how Maps works. I will say Maps is not a separate entry point for businesses, you still create your GBP profile and that's what's reflected on Maps. However, Maps does have different types of integrations. So you think of searching for fuel stations or petrol stations, there's oftentimes when you're going to see the prices, that is not connected to Google Business Profile, that's a complete separate Maps integration. Same thing with movie times. So it's good to be aware, but there's things you can't control. I will say one of the things with Maps in the discovery process is there are different levels at your zoom where businesses will show. And this is one of, I think, the most common questions I see, they're like, "How come my map pin doesn't show when I'm on Maps?" But you have to zoom in maybe two levels closer and you will see a map pin that is a slightly different ranking on Maps than it is on GBP search, on the search result. So that typically is prominent. It's a lot of different elements like reviews. It's similar elements to the search result, but it's not the exact same and there's not an exact science yet really about that. But that is the most common thing I see is businesses will only show at certain zoom levels on Maps. And then Google has come out and they did the branded map pins through ads, which I think a lot of businesses have taken advantage of because they realize how many people are going directly to Maps. So I think Google's offering that to businesses too. Mordy Oberstein: With that, I don't want to put a pin in it, but where can people find you, near where? Krystal Taing: They can search for Krystal Taing near me. But yes, absolutely, feel free to connect with me. I think I've been on LinkedIn a little bit more frequently than on X/Twitter just because my Twitter algorithm these days, I don't know, it's a little bit weird. I'm still on Twitter, feel free to DM me, but definitely LinkedIn, I've been active there. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing, and definitely check out Uberall. Krystal Taing: Yes, please do. Mordy Oberstein: And for the Wix users, check out the Uberall app, which we're going to discuss in just a minute. Thank you so much, Krystal and Crystal. I can't believe I only just made that joke now. Crystal Carter: Yes, thank you. Krystal Taing: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, always a pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: Great. Definitely make sure you give Krystal Taing a follow. I really do feel like disappointed in myself for not making more Crystals jokes because there were so many Crystals on the call. Crystal Carter: I mean, hey, the whole conversation was full of gems, so it's all good. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, you crazy diamonds. Anyway, shine on you crazy diamonds, a little Pink Floyd for you there. Okay, so as you mentioned earlier, we gave a little hint at an app that can help you with local SEO, but it really does a lot more than local SEO stuff, it helps you actually distribute content for a local business. So here is our segment called Tool Time as we dive into, guess what, the Uberall within the Wix app market. So I'm going to say maybe a year ago, I'm not good with time, Uberall added an app into the Wix app market, and if you forgot Krystal, not our Crystal, the other Krystal, Krystal Taing works for Uberall. Okay, so Wix has an integration, a partnership with Google Business Profile, and one of the feature requests that we had was can we upload, as both Crystals were talking about, Google posts from Wix to the Google Business Profile and with our partnership with Google, you can, but with the Uberall app. Crystal Carter: You can. Mordy Oberstein: You can. And not only that, you can also upload posts across social networks like Facebook, X, Instagram, I'm running out of social profiles, all the kind of social profiles you want to share content. So if you're a business that you're working with, as I say, a Facebook page, and you want to upload the same post that you added to Google posts you want to put on the Facebook page, you can use the Uberall app as basically a content distribution app for local businesses, which is cool. Crystal Carter: This is super important I think because with local businesses it's very often the case that local businesses are particularly active on social media. So if you're able to keep those channels going and those channels full of new information in an efficient manner, that's super valuable. So I mean, I don't know about y'all, but we have a local moms group, we have local parent groups for schools. I know that there's people who are like, "They didn't pick up the bins today. What's going on?" There's people who have spotted in Poughkeepsie or whatever, and those local recommendations carry a lot of weight. So if you have presence on there and you are in the local groups, you're able to post into local groups, you're able to post onto local Facebook accounts, local channels there that can give you some incredible, incredible reach and people will vouch for you. People will be like, "Yeah, I used that painter decorator. They were really great, they made my shed look fantastic." I keep talking about sheds these days. But yeah, I think it's a great tool and it's really, really, really useful for- Mordy Oberstein: Distributing content as a local business is super important. So if your clients are a local business, they may not always have the budgets to start running social media ads or Google ads, so having that organic social cadence and social presence can be a big factor for a local business so it definitely makes sense to do that and the Uberall app can help you do that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think like Krystal talked about events for instance, because events take place in a local place that can also help to connect. Mordy Oberstein: Events are local? Crystal Carter: Yes, they're in a place with a geographical location, and so that's really good for connecting your business to that particular geo and things like that. So yeah, I can't recommend enough getting involved with citations and listings. It's also a good way to get back links. Citation links don't necessarily cater the same weight as an organic back link, but they are still links as in they still get crawled and still drive traffic, can drive traffic to your website. Mordy Oberstein: They drive traffic for sure. Crystal Carter: And can still help Google to understand where the important parts are of your website. So absolutely get involved with citations and sometimes those sites will rank higher than your business in other parts of the web so it's worth making sure that you're getting involved with those, particularly in a local space. Mordy Oberstein: Now do you know who we like to cite when we're talking about the SEO news? I'll give you a hint, his name rhymes with Larry and his last name rhymes with Schwartz, well is Schwartz, it's Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Quartz, Quartz. Mordy Oberstein: Quartz, damn. God, how did I know not...? I was spitballing, I was like, "Damn, you don't have a rhyme," but Quartz. Crystal Carter: Crystal knows all about the gems here. We're talking about crystals. Mordy Oberstein: You know why? Because nothing rhymes with Oberstein so I don't have any good last name rhymes. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I don't know, I don't know. I was on the phone and sometimes when I explained my name on the phone they're like, "Oh, can you spell your name?" I'm like, "Yeah, it's Crystal like the glass," and then one time I said, "And Carter like the trolley," which is like- Mordy Oberstein: The trolley? Crystal Carter: They were like, "What are you talking about?" As soon as I said it, you know when you say something and you're like, "That is silly." Mordy Oberstein: You should be like, "Carter like that Stallone movie," which is a remake of another movie. Crystal Carter: Get Carter, Get Carte. Mordy Oberstein: Get Carter, Carter. Crystal Carter: Originally with Michael Caine. Mordy Oberstein: Michael Caine, yeah, yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah, "Blow the fricking doors off," or whatever. "I could blow the bloody doors off," I think that's what he says. Mordy Oberstein: People really don't like the Stallone movie. I liked it, I don't know why people don't like it, I thought it was good. Crystal Carter: It was all right it was kind of like gritty late '90s, early '90s kind of cinematography. But you know who really loves Sylvester Stallone movies? Mordy Oberstein: Barry. And you know who's Gritty? Barry. So here's the Snappy news with Barry and other people who cover the SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Oh, do we have some news for you this week? Oh man, where do I even start? I guess we'll start with Barry Schwartz over on Search Engine Land. Okay, Barry writes, "Google releasing massive search quality enhancements in March 2024, core update and multiple spam updates." At the start on March 5th, Google said that they have released the March 2024 core update and then a bunch of spam updates along with it. It's a lot to parse out and to digest so let's just take it, and I'm going to try to break it down as honestly as I possibly can because there's a lot to this. Okay, so per Barry Schwartz, "Elizabeth Tucker, Director of Product Search at Google told Search Engine Land that the update will help reduce unhelpful content in Google by 40%. We expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts will collectively reduce low quality unoriginal content in search results by 40%." That is a big, big number because this is a big, big update. Google is saying that multiple systems are being updated and tweaked and released during this update, is going to take them weeks upon weeks to actually roll out. Chris Nelson from the search quality team of Google is quoted by saying that it's a more complex update than our usual core updates, and that's why it's going to take so much time with so much rank fluctuations and so forth. Don't be scared, don't be scared. Part of this is the helpful content update is now going to be a part of the core update. Google will no longer announce iterations of the helpful content update being updated, instead, it'll be part of the core algorithm like Panda was pushed into the core algorithm and it'll just be part of the core algorithm updates, which would be part of why this is taking so long and why there'd be so many rain fluctuations. Now, I initially thought, well, if the helpful content update becomes part of the core update, then the helpful content update kind of becomes diluted a bit by the other call it elements within the core update that weigh in and decide what should or should not be impacted in terms of rank. I think I'm wrong, I think I was wrong, I think I'm right now. I think when instead is happening is that the helpful content update is getting a very, very prominent role in the core update itself. If you go back to what Barry wrote earlier in the article, which I quoted before, but I'll quote it again here just to remind you, Barry said, "Elizabeth Tucker, Director of Product Search at Google told Search Engine Land the update will help reduce unhelpful content in Google search by 40%," meaning Google's targeting low quality, unhelpful content trying to reduce it by a massive percentage, 40%, that's an insane percentage. So just let that resonate for a minute. And I think what's happening is not what I originally thought, which was okay, the helpful content update will be integrated into the core algorithm and as a result it'll be a small fish in a large pond and it'll have a diluted effect. I think the opposite. I think Google's trying to make a very massive move here by saying that the helpful content will, unlike let's say Panda, which was out for a while, by the time it got moved into the core, it already kind of did its thing, that's not the case with the helpful content update. The helpful content update is a rather new update and it's not being integrated like, "All right, its impact is already there, we're moving on to other technologies and other parts of the algorithm that'll help us do new things like bird," that's not the case like it was back, in my opinion, with Panda. In this case, the helpful content on that is new and novel and wouldn't be what I would expect to be integrated into the algorithm right now, although Glenn Gabe has predicted it will go into the algorithm way, way, way, way in the past, and he's right obviously because they are integrating into the algorithm, but I'm not surprised that they're integrating it into the core algorithm, I'm surprised that they're doing it now, being that this algorithm update is not old, it's new, or it's new-ish for an update for an algorithm it's pretty new. And I think it's going to have a massive role in the core algorithm and that the other elements of the core algorithm are going to adjust to it, not that the helpful content is going to adjust to the core. And I think that's why it's going to take weeks for this to roll out, like Google is saying, and that's why there's going to be a lot of fluctuations because they're not just putting the helpful content update into the core and letting the helpful content update sort of adjust and integrate in a mesh and become like a stew into the core, they're re-aligning the core to align with the helpful content update. That's my theory. Again, say it very clearly, that's my theory. I don't know for sure that that's happening, but that's what makes the most sense to me, and I'll tell you why. Because Google has a perception problem, it has a real problem with the search results and it also has a perception problem. And Google has to, A, create the impression that is going to be making a seismic shift or a seismic change on the SERP and to what it's showing on the SERP so it's making this announcement. But it can't just make an announcement and not have any backbone to it, any substance to it, they actually have to make it an actual move. What's the actual move? Is the actual move to integrate an algorithm that already exists, the helpful content update, into the core algorithm, in which case the helpful content update would essentially be diluted as it aligns with the other elements in the core algorithm rather. Is that the move? That's not really a move, that's not going to change anything. What would change something would be integrating the helpful content update into the core algorithm and giving it a place of prominence, that would be a seismic shift and a seismic change. And again, what's really interesting about that is that the helpful content is a learning algorithm and it's relatively new, has it learned enough to have such a role? If I am correct, which I think I'm correct, but who knows for sure? Only Google does. Along with this, if that wasn't enough for you and that was a mouthful, Google is releasing a few spam updates. There's the March 2024 spam update, which includes a bunch of things. First off, it includes going after what they call scaled content abuse, basically programmatic content even for example AI content, which you're just building tons and tons of this garbage, thin, unhelpful, ridiculous content to try to rank. Google's saying, "Yeah, we're going to go after that with this update. We're also going to release lots and lots of manual actions to go after the site." And that leads us to Barry's other article from Search Engine Round Table where Barry writes, "Google unleashes manual actions galore after search spam policy updates." Google has gone hog wild releasing manual actions according to some, like Glenn Gabe, there's been at least that we know of around 1400 manual actions sort of enough to maybe train an algorithm in my personal opinion. But okay, Google has gone after these websites, and Glenn, thank you for sharing a couple of examples on this so I can see it where it's just absolute pure AI garbage, it's the entire website, there's really nothing of actual value there, the website is just trying to manipulate Google into ranking the content, it's not actually trying to target users, provide users with anything of value. And Google has killed off these websites with manual actions. So that's one part of this whole spam update bonanza. Going back to Barry's Search Engine Land article, we're just bouncing from Barry to Barry here, there's two other elements of the spam targeting. One is expired domain abuse, which is now going to be considered spam officially. Basically, you have an old domain, you buy the domain, that domain, let's say it was very strong reputation for years and years and years about selling bicycles. You're like, "All right, I'll capitalize on the authority that this domain has, and I will start writing content about all sorts of nonsense that I want to target, not about bicycles at all. And I'll sort of trick Google into thinking that, "Hey, this is still that same old website, that same old domain with all that great authority and money, whatever, whatever, all those back links but I'm writing a bunch of garbage content,"" that's going to be considered spam and Google's going to go after that. Along with parasites or Google calls site reputation abuse. That's basically where I go, "Hey," I don't know, "Sports Illustrated, because you would never do anything like this, let me buy some space rather on your website, and you'll host my articles on your website. So I'll write about the power of whatever, I don't know, magic pill, magic bean that I'm selling, and I'll host it and I'll pay you, Sports Illustrated," just as an example, "To host this on your website, and I will get the authority of Sports Illustrated for my ridiculous content." So that is going to be considered abuse, and Google is going to go after it. Google said, "Such content ranking highly in search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website." Google said that this doesn't include all types of advertorial articles on websites, Google said that, no, sometimes that's actually fine, right? Not all third party content is a violation in this way. It's only when it's hosted with what Google says is, "Without close oversight and is intended to manipulate search ranking." So Google said, "Many publications host advertising content that is intended for their regular readers rather than to primarily manipulate search rankings, sometimes called native advertising or advertorial. This kind of content typically wouldn't confuse readers or regular readers of the publication when they find it on the publisher site directly or when arriving at it from Google search results." So I'll give you an example, Search Engine Journal hosts advertised articles, paid articles, and they're usually from an SEO tool, I think, well, Wix Studio, we've done one-on-one about how you can use Wix Studio to manage clients and manage your SEO team, yada, yada, yada. It's in line with what Search Engine Journal talks about, which is SEO, digital marketing, so those articles align and they clearly say it's an ad announcement, it's paid so you know that it's paid, but topically the content makes total sense. Sure, it makes sense that Semrush would write a paid article on Search Engine Journal because what Search Engine Journal talks about and what Semrush does are pretty much very much the same thing, so that makes sense. It's when you would have, let's say, some kind of medical magical pill having a sponsored article on Search Engine Journal, that wouldn't make any sense, that would be confusing, and that would be basically to manipulate all sorts of stuff. So that's out. So a lot of updates, a lot of things going on. It's going to take weeks for this to roll out. We'll see if my theory is true. Let me know on Twitter, or X, whatever you want to call it, if you think that you like my theory, if you hate my theory, I'd love to hear from you. I think it's a really interesting conversation. I think the stuff is fascinating in the sense that you get to really kind of see and theorize about how Google's functioning. But of course, it's also terrifying because algorithm updates can be just terrifying. But it'll take weeks to roll out, don't freak out, don't change things on your website because you see fluctuations, things go up, things go down, there are reversals within algorithm updates. So wait, it takes time, be patient and don't freak out. That's my best advice for you. And that's this week's snappy news. Boy, is he gritty, huh, that Barry? Crystal Carter: I bet he also likes climbing stairs. I bet that's also a thing that he's into. Mordy Oberstein: Climbing stairs? Yeah, totally, yeah. What's that, true grit? Another movie, Barry's True Grit. Crystal Carter: True Grit, that's not a Stallone movie. Mordy Oberstein: No, not a Stallone movie at all. It was another movie, talking about movies. True Grit was with, I'm pretty sure it's a remake, but it was with- Crystal Carter: Wasn't it originally John Wayne? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know, I'm not that old. I'm old, but I'm not that old. It was with The Big Labowski, Jeff Bridges. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But the first one, I don't remember who was in the first one. I'm pretty sure it was- Crystal Carter: Yeah, no, the original one, yeah, it's John Wayne. Mordy Oberstein: John Wayne? Didn't see it. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I've never seen it. I just know- Mordy Oberstein: Ask me if I've ever seen a John Wayne movie ever. I think I've seen one because my grandfather liked John Wayne a lot. Crystal Carter: I don't particularly remember ever seeing one, but I live on Earth, so I've heard of him. Mordy Oberstein: I'm sure we've seen them, like the Channel 11 Sunday afternoon matinee. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, if we're going westerns, I watched all the spaghetti westerns. Yeah, I watched all them. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah, hands down for me. Womp womp womp. Crystal Carter: Love that. Mordy Oberstein: Which brings us obviously to our follow of the week, literally logical progression of this, which is a local SEO superstar. She does all sorts of studies and they're freaking awesome, I love them, keep doing them. Joy Hawkins from Sterling Sky. You can find Joy on X Twitter, whatever you want to call it at Joyanne, J-O-Y-A-N-N-E-H-A-W-K-I-N-S. Well, that's a long one, JoyanneHawkins on Twitter, on X, whatever it is. She's part of local university. She runs Sterling Sky. She puts out all sorts of amazing content around local SEO. So please, please, follow her and Joy, keep doing those local SEO studies that Barry often covers, because I think they're fascinating. Crystal Carter: Yeah, Joy is fantastic. She's also really active on video platforms as well, so sharing content that way as well. And she's going to be speaking at Mascon this year, so yeah, I'm speaking there, last year I spoke and I referenced one of her studies because it was brilliant, and she was in the audience and she was like, "Yeah, do y'all see that study? It's right here." And I was like, "Yeah, Joy, tell the people, tell them all." Yeah, so she's speaking this year, and I cannot wait to see her speak because she's like wicked smart. It's like- Mordy Oberstein: I didn't know you did a Boston thing. Crystal Carter: That's a local joke because for local people in Boston, they'll know that. I literally only know that from Goodwill Hunting, but I've never actually been to Boston, but she's wicked smart, that's true, that is true. And so, yeah, follow Joy, she's great. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like Boston had a good baseball team. They're the worst, the Red Sox. Crystal Carter: I do not endorse that comment. I have no dog in that fight. Mordy Oberstein: No. Oh, really? I thought you would support me in this. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Sports rivalries get heated. I'm not- Mordy Oberstein: I think they're fun. If you're listening, you're a Boston Red Sox fan, I would say I apologize but as a Yankee fan, I don't, but I still love you. I still love you. Crystal Carter: See, again, that's some local knowledge there. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, see, it's all about local, yeah. There's a lot of local rivalries in sports, particularly New York where I'm from, and Boston. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is absolutely true. I mean, I guess I'm kind of a Raiders fan, and they just have rivalry with everybody. They're just like- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you know who's a Raider fan? Glenn Gabe is a Raider fan. Crystal Carter: Boom. I think they're the only football team I've ever gone to see. I saw them at the Coliseum back in the day. Mordy Oberstein: Back in the day, back in the day when John Madam was the coach? Crystal Carter: I can't remember who was the coach. Mordy Oberstein: He was, I think, before in the '70s. Crystal Carter: Yeah, no, not that. I don't go that far back, damn. Mordy Oberstein: Honestly, I don't know. I don't want to... No. Crystal Carter: We digress. Mordy Oberstein: Well, I think at this point we've gotten all the rails too far, so thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into the practical value of understanding entities for SEO. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub or wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and resources on the Wix SEO learning 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 and love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Krystal Taing Joyanne Hawkins Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Wix Uberall App Introduction to Local SEO Getting Started with Local SEO News: Google releasing massive search quality enhancements in March 2024 core update and multiple spam updates Google Unleashes Manual Actions Galore After Search Spam Policy Updates Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Krystal Taing Joyanne Hawkins Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Wix Uberall App Introduction to Local SEO Getting Started with Local SEO News: Google releasing massive search quality enhancements in March 2024 core update and multiple spam updates Google Unleashes Manual Actions Galore After Search Spam Policy Updates Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It is the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We'll put you on 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 local, the very locally oriented, the very near-me Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, hello, internet people. We are here live and people have looked up directions to how to get to the SERP's Up SEO podcast and they maybe mapped it out, maybe- Mordy Oberstein: SERP's Up podcast near me. Crystal Carter: SERP's Up podcasts near me, also- Mordy Oberstein: Podcast, podcast, SERP's Up New York, New York podcast, podcast. Crystal Carter: And top podcast in your local area, all of those sorts of things. These are important things to think about because you- Mordy Oberstein: Obviously. Crystal Carter: You don't want a podcast that's not in your local area. Mordy Oberstein: My favorite, and obviously we're talking about local SEO today if you haven't figured that out, is when businesses name themselves 'Near Me', their actual business name is Dentists Near Me. Crystal Carter: For people who are not complete SEO nerds, this is something that SEOs are just like, "Oh yes, this is gold dust," when they see that in the strip mall next to the Little Caesars, and there's Dentists Near Me and on the wall that is like, "Oh, I must tell other SEOs about this." Mordy Oberstein: And people are like, "Why are they called Dentists Near Me?" And all the SEOs are like, "We know why." Crystal Carter: We all know why. Mordy Oberstein: For the older people out there, it's the equivalent of naming your business AAAA whatever, so that you show up first in the phonebook. Crystal Carter: It's a real thing. Triple A or AA taxis, Aardvark. Mordy Oberstein: Aardvark. Crystal Carter: How many businesses are called Aardvark? That was a thing. Mordy Oberstein: Why do people love that animal so much? Crystal Carter: Also, I feel sorry for young people who've never felt the weight of a full yellow pages. Mordy Oberstein: And when you got them both delivered, the white pages and you had to schlub those inside, you'd need a wheelbarrow. Crystal Carter: Oh, man. And people would be like, "Can you find something?" And you'd be like, "Well, let me just pull this out." Mordy Oberstein: And it made that sound as you opened it up like thump. Crystal Carter: Right, and then also there was always the case where somebody would've ripped out the page that you actually needed. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, see that, yeah, that's classic. Crystal Carter: But also, sorry, we will get to an actual thing, I'm sorry, we've got a guest who's waiting who's fantastic, but the actual thought of just having everyone's phone number and address in a white pages. Mordy Oberstein: That's scary, right? Crystal Carter: That's crazy, right? Mordy Oberstein: And you had to opt out. Crystal Carter: You could find anybody, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's not like they asked you, you had to opt out. Crystal Carter: And you would just see it in like public phone booths, there would just be a public phone booth and there would be a booth that had everyone's first name, last address, phone number available to any person who walked by. Mordy Oberstein: What could go wrong? Crystal Carter: Simpler times. Mordy Oberstein: Right, simpler times. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by simpler times and by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight on wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also up your local SEO game with our Uberall app integration, which means today we're diving into local SEO and in specific the hidden secrets of the Local Pack, the less known but equally awesome features in the Local Pack, things you didn't know helped you appear in the Local Pack, and how the Local Pack functionality has changed relatively recently and what it might mean to help us dig up the secret layers and levels of the Local Pack. Uberall's VP of Solutions, Krystal Taing, will join us in just a jiffy. Plus, we'll help you unlock the gems, offered a nifty little SEO app inside of Wix. And of course, we have your snappies of SEO news, who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So plug in your console or put those weird little goggle things down that everybody has and hop down a pipe with a man eating plant popping out of it as episode 78 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you find the secret levels of the local back like you are a plumber in a 1985 8-bit video game. Oh, by the way, that plumber is near you. Crystal Carter: Great. He also has a great dinosaur. I always like Yoshi. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's great. Yeah, but we're just- Crystal Carter: On Mario Kart, I'm Yoshi, that's me. Mordy Oberstein: I'm pre-dating, I'm going a bit 8-bit, I'm pre-dating Yoshi. It wasn't even a thought yet. Crystal Carter: Oh, come on, Yoshi's iconic. It wasn't really a party until Yoshi showed up. Mordy Oberstein: Truth by the way. So to catch everybody up real, real, real, real, real quick, the Local Pack is that big box that shows up at the way, way, way top of the Google results page when you search for a pizza near me. And it has a big map and it has the listing of these businesses, and you can go to the web, you can get directions, and it appears above the organic results, and it essentially makes the organic results, the actual Google normal results, kind of irrelevant for local queries like pizza near me. And to help us wade through the waters and maybe find the extra life of the Local Pack, please welcome to the show Krystal Taing. How are you? Krystal Taing: Hello, hello. Thank you much so much for having me. I will say, unlike a yellow page book, you cannot rip a page out of the Local Pack, so it's exciting to talk about. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, but maybe we could rip a page out of your Local Pack playbook. Krystal Taing: Yes, yes. I love that. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about this topic that I am just overly passionate about, which is just local. Mordy Oberstein: I wish we still called it the Snack Pack, which was another name for the Local Pack, because Snack Packs are also puddings and pudding is amazing. Krystal Taing: Yes, yes. That's what I think, Snack Pack of pudding. So I think we can still call it, we can bring it back 2024, it's a New Year. Mordy Oberstein: Vanilla Snack Pack or chocolate Snack Pack? Krystal Taing: Chocolate, chocolate. Mordy Oberstein: I was always a vanilla Snack Pack person. I'm generally a chocolate person over vanilla, but not for the Snack Pack. Krystal Taing: Oh, I was actually a tapioca, but that wasn't one of the options. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, you're just a weirdo at that point. Krystal Taing: Yes, I am, I am. Crystal Carter: So snacks aside, so Krystal is the Global Director of Pre-Sale Solutions at Uberall, and you are also a Google Business Profile gold certified absolute... What is it, what's your actual qualification on the things? Krystal Taing: Way too many words, but it's a Platinum Google Business Profile Product Expert. But like I said, way too many words. Crystal Carter: Yeah, but you don't just get that out of nothing. I've been in the Google Business Profile Q&A questions and stuff, and Krystal's answering questions in there. Krystal's deep in the weeds. She's like, "No, you got to do this, you got to do that. You got to do all of this sort of thing." So we're so pleased to have you here. Also, Krystal wrote our introduction to local SEO. She knows all of the things about Local Pack. Mordy Oberstein: And we did a webinar together. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and a fantastic webinar with some great stuff there. So it's super important, and one of the reasons why Local Pack is so important is some of the things that you get from it. So just looking at this quote from your recent discussion about the local SEO ranking factors, one of the quotes you said is that businesses that rank in the 3-pack typically get 88% additional clicks in driving directions, 76 more clicks on call and 76 more clicks to website according to your recent Uberall study. That's mega. Krystal Taing: Yeah, yeah, it's insane. Crystal Carter: Right? Krystal Taing: There's definitely a lot more engagement when you're at the top of that Map Pack or 3-pack or result. I will say there's a lot of changes now. So there's not just the ability to rank in the 3-pack, there's the ability for your photos or videos or posts or other elements to rank so there's more opportunity, but being at the top really makes a difference in the amount of customers that have eyes on you. Crystal Carter: And so when we think about that, I know that there's a few different elements that can affect what puts you at the top for which queries and things, I don't know if you're able to share a couple of your favorite ways to do that. Krystal Taing: Yeah, I'll say my favorite is probably the most boring, but it is what has been the truest since the existence of GBP or GMB or Google Places whenever it started is just complete and accurate detail. Google wants information, they are going to reward businesses that have complete profiles. And the reason why they reward businesses that have all of their information, all of their images, videos, content filled out is because more searchers engage with those types of businesses. So ultimately they want to create a good experience for their customers, they want Google searchers to feel engaged with the content, and so they're going to surface those businesses that have complete data. So it's one of the things that's like if Google gives you a field to promote something about your business, fill them all out, fill it all out to the best of your ability as a business. And really that's one of the most core elements is you can strategize later about content and strategy and promotional material and that kind of stuff, but really getting started is completing your entire profile. Crystal Carter: Right, right. It's like the SATs, it's like answer all the questions. Mordy Oberstein: Right, put your name there, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Make sure you- Krystal Taing: Exactly. Crystal Carter: Answer all the questions, you have to get involved. And I think some of the things people will sometimes go, "Oh, I don't need to add that attribute that says that we have delivery or that we are wheelchair accessible or that we're this set or the other," but that's not true. You absolutely do need to. Mordy Oberstein: Especially if you're selling wheelchairs in which you should probably. Krystal Taing: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, no, I always remind businesses that Google isn't just creating this field for fun, they have access to a ton of data, a ton of user behavior data. So when they roll out something like a small business attribute on Google, they didn't just pluck it from the sky and said, "This is part of our calendar this month, we want to pull it." It's typically because they have a lot of search data that says users want to support small businesses, and so we need to surface this somehow and make it easy for businesses to engage. Same thing with dogs available at restaurants, do you know how many searches there are for that? So that became another attribute that was available in the last couple of months. Yes, I'm sure there's lots of Googlers that love dogs and they just want to show it on profiles, but a lot of this is because users want this information, Mordy Oberstein: And by the way, it also just makes you look more robust and complete. And if you're looking at other profiles and comparing them like, "Well, how come they have all those shiny little icons and emojis and whatever and that one doesn't? That doesn't seem right." Krystal Taing: Exactly, exactly. That's the thing, it's not only do you want to show up, but then once you show up, users need to make a decision and you need to give them all of the information they need to make a decision. So if you've got, to your point, shiny little icons and fun videos and additional content, it's a lot easier to make a decision than one that's missing hours or the photo is super blurry, or it doesn't say, to your point, that they don't accept reservations or those types of things. You're missing potential opportunity by not filling out that data. Crystal Carter: So here's another contentious one that I hear about the GBP things. What about posts? What is your stance on posts? How important do you think that is to helping businesses listing to perform on the Local Pack? Krystal Taing: So I don't know if you were just stalking my LinkedIn, but I did just actually make a post about Google posts because I continue to see more and more prominence of posts throughout the search experience. So these don't just display on your profile, there are different places that they display whenever users are searching on Maps, whenever they're discovering businesses on mobile. There's a lot of different ways that Google is adding these, and I think Google really likes it because it's unique and rich content. It's images, it's videos, it's promotional details, and the fact that the LinkedIn posts that I included, there's an entire section on Maps called nearby events and deals. It's like Google must have information that people want events and deals about businesses, and this is how they're choosing to surface it. Businesses that add posts, the offer posts, the event posts, these are going to now get surfaced in addition to your business data. So there's a lot of opportunity, and from my perspective, if Google is adding posts in different parts of there, that means they're relevant and that they're going to help impact your business from a ranking perspective. So I am all gung ho on posts. Crystal Carter: If people aren't aware of what posts are, if you have a Google Business Profile thing, sometimes they refer to them as updates so it'll say add an update in the backend for your business, and you have an option where you can add text, it's up to 1500 characters, you can add photo to it, and then you can add a link, you can add a button that goes to a link directly to somewhere in your site and you can add for booking or order online or buy or learn more or sign up. And you can schedule these things using other tools to disseminate information and when people look at your business, they show up at the bottom. I'm so glad to hear you say that because I've definitely seen this work for clients to see an uplift to sort of add new life into a sort of existing standard listing. So yeah, I'm glad to see that they were saying this is still a valuable and interesting thing going forward. Mordy Oberstein: Let's backtrack in the funnel just a little bit before you get to the GBP profile, perhaps you're getting to that profile from the Local Pack, and I think we look at the Local Pack and be like, "Okay, pretty straightforward. There's the name of the business, there's reviews there, whatever," but there's a lot more in there and there's sort of these little hidden Easter eggs or tidbits. I wonder if you can maybe talk about what's in the Local Pack that you may not be aware of is actually in the Local Pack? Krystal Taing: Yeah, there's so I would say two things really to pay attention to. So one of the things that we touched on already were attributes. So Google's got all of these, kind of think of them if you're familiar with more organic tags for your business, these are just features and functionalities that you offer. This is, to your point, are you wheelchair accessible? Do you offer delivery? But then there's other things like as a restaurant, do you serve vegetarian food? There's oftentimes these are going to be surfaced based on the search query. So if a user searches like 'vegetarian food near me', if you have that as an attribute, it's going to then be surfaced in the Local Pack on your business when normally it may not show, Google is associating that to the search. So attributes are a huge one. The other thing that is growing in prominence are videos. So Google is really leaning into short form video content and they've started ranking this very, very high. So if you've got a video on your profile, whether a user loaded it or you as a business, it'll start displaying in the Map Pack and position two next to your images. For different industries, not all industries are showing it that prominently, but I would definitely double down on videos on your GBP profile because they really have an impact. And again, to your point, when you're making a decision about a business, if it's a restaurant or you're going to a salon or something, if you are able to see a quick 10, 15 second video of what it looks like inside and you don't have to wonder if this is going to be a good experience, that's huge in terms of impact for customers. Mordy Oberstein: There's so much in there and I think if you're an SEO who's not so in the local space and now you have a client that is in the local space or you're a local business yourself, Google something, Google 'pizza near me', Google 'doctor office near me', Google all sorts of different things, all sorts of things show up if I Google pizza near me, I get Joe's Pizza, which I hear is completely overrated by the way, it's in fact most famous pizza place in New York City. I'm like, "Yeah, New York City style counter slice shop," it gives a description of the business in there and the next one's like counter for slices and pizza and calzones, or if you Google 'doctor office near me', I get all the 'accepts Medicaid'. Krystal Taing: Exactly, there's a lot of additional content there. What I also, to that point, is as an SEO or an agency doing searches on different surfaces is really important. So what do you see on desktop on search, desktop on Maps, mobile search, mobile Maps are all different and they all highlight different elements. And again, Google does that based on user behavior and what they think users want to see on different journeys. So I am a huge advocate for making sure you're doing those searches yourself because they do show you what Google is surfacing to customers during those times. Crystal Carter: So that touches on another point. So in terms of Local Pack, and so in your Uberall study you talked about personalization and I think that that mobile versus desktop thing is going to affect that personalization. So for instance, if Joe's Pizza Shop, if you're in Times Square and Joe's Pizza Shop is also in Times Square, and if you search near me, then literally it's near you, right? Krystal Taing: Exactly, exactly. Crystal Carter: So footfall might potentially affect that. So how important is it that you localize your test searches as well? So if you're an agency and if you're, say, an agency in Philadelphia and your client is in New York and you're testing the 'near me' and they're like, "I'm not seeing I myself on the thing," and you're like, "But I am," how much does the localization affect the Local Pack result? Krystal Taing: Yeah, that's a really great question. So the distance of the business from where the search is taking place is a huge impact and it's a huge ranking factor. So to your point, that happens all the time. It's like, "Hey, I googled my own business and I'm not showing up." The first question is, what was your search and where are you located? Everyone's going to have incredibly different searches, especially if you're on mobile and if your location services are activated, or maybe you're doing a search and you're saying, "I'm planning a trip and I'm going to Chicago, but I'm currently in San Diego." Even if I search for pizza restaurants Chicago, my results are going to be very different from someone that is physically located in Chicago. There's a lot of plugins that allow you to kind of maybe spoof your location where you can say, "Put me in this area," but it's just important to know that that is going to impact your search results unless you are at the exact same place that someone's searching. Google, especially for a near me or local search, they're going to adjust the results based on businesses that are nearby. Crystal Carter: Okay. So I think that in that regard, when people are thinking about maybe, and this is interesting because I always like the sort of intersection of IRL stuff and online stuff, so for instance if you were maybe a business that was outside of Times Square, but you wanted people to Google you or maybe it might be that that's where you put your sign flipper person, is it a place that would drive more searches? I mean, is that something that people should think about, like driving searches from certain places that are nearer them? Am I spit-balling too much there? Krystal Taing: No, no. I mean, I think a lot of businesses think that. It's also one of the challenges Google has with spam is because location is so impactful from a ranking perspective, that's a great example, people want to rank in downtown New York, but they might be located an hour outside, but based on your business, people might be willing to travel an hour outside. So that's where you do have to get unique. You do need to understand how users are searching for you, where they're located, and then understanding how you stretch your visibility. Oftentimes that's where you layer on the on-page elements, that's where you layer on back link strategy and those types of things because you probably are competing with a business that is located in downtown or is located in Times Square and that can be a challenge to businesses. But I think the most important thing is making sure that you're ranking where you're located first really, really well, you're really well optimized, and then you can start expanding that. In some cases, I've seen businesses actually relocate their offices because it can be a big challenge. Mordy Oberstein: It's a real challenge. It could be a really, really big problem. Krystal Taing: Yeah. And especially for service-based businesses. Mordy Oberstein: I was going to say that. Krystal Taing: So again, you think of an attorney where someone is willing to travel quite far or maybe they're doing some of their services virtually, so it's fine that they're an hour outside, but guess what? They want that downtown clientele. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. If I'm looking for a lawyer or an accountant, I'm not going to the accountant's office, I don't care. Krystal Taing: Yeah, exactly. Crystal Carter: So you brought up service level businesses, and I know that particularly on Google Business Profile, let's say you were somebody who was based in Long Island, but you were able to service people who were in Manhattan for your service where you're like, "I'll drive to you, it's fine, it's not a big deal. I will come to collect your dry cleaning," whatever it is. So what are some of the things that affect service area businesses for Local Pack? Krystal Taing: Yeah, I think the biggest thing to understand is that physical address where you originally create your business, which can be hidden, it doesn't have to display, is still from a location perspective where Google's going to rank you. And so I think a lot of times people think they add in these service areas because there are zip code cities, regions you can add to your service area, Google just uses that to draw an outline on the map, but it doesn't mean they're going to start ranking you in those addresses or in those areas. And that's what is a challenge for service-based businesses where you have to kind of really expand. You are a little bit more limited. Of course if you're a business that can show your address, that's always going to be helpful because sometimes hiding your address does limit where you can rank. But I think that's the most important thing to know is you are going to rank from a location perspective where your original business address is and sometimes that's your home even if the address is hidden. Crystal Carter: So I have another one, I have another one because I love Local Pack, I love local. Okay, so the other one is reviews. So I've seen it sometimes, for instance, you mentioned like vegetarian food, I don't do dairy but I do like donuts, so I'm like vegan donuts, where are vegan donuts? And I sometimes see that you get a highlight that says, "Oh, I had great vegan donuts here," that's a review, but isn't necessarily in any of their information. And so to my mind, reviews are very important, certainly as a user I find reviews to be very important. How impactful do you find reviews for Local Pack rankings? Krystal Taing: Yeah, that's another good point. I will say when you're building out a GBP profile, Google is controlling to a point everything you can publish. Reviews are one of the areas where it's kind of like freeform content. And when we talk about this, this is the review content a user leaves. As a business owner, you should respond to all reviews, Google wants to see that and they're going to reward you if you're responding to all reviews. They don't necessarily care what's in that content because you can spam it with whatever you want, you don't need to worry about adding keywords to that. But Google really values user-generated content, they kind of trust it more than what a business says, it's a little bit more unbiased. So as much as you can encourage users to be more specific in their reviews, saying things like, "We'd love to hear your feedback about our vegan donuts," can kind of put that in their mind to leave those keywords in the reviews to be a little bit more specific. If you are a business and you're asking for reviews, whether that's via email, text message, those types of things, if you can prompt it or ask for more detail, that's going to be valuable because Google does, they pull these out, they're called justifications, but it's really Google is justifying to users why they're showing your business for that query. And if you don't have vegan in your category, you don't have it in your image tag, you don't have it on your website or your menu, they need to basically tell users why they're seeing this business and it's because multiple users left a review and they talk about vegan donuts. It is a source of information that Google's mining. So huge, huge impact in terms of content in your reviews. Mordy Oberstein: Let me switch gears a little bit. I want to ask you a question. I don't know if you know, I'm asking you, I don't put you on the spot, but a while back or somewhat a while back... Let me rephrase this, Google's constantly changing how the Local Pack functions. It used to be back in the day it was a map and then a very small rectangle-ish kind of map, or an actual rectangle, not rectangle-ish, and then underneath there were the three listings and it had the reviews and it had directions or whatever it was. Now on desktop at least you have the results on the left-hand side, a much bigger map on the right-hand side, and there's all sorts of functionality. If you hover over the map, the results disappear. If you hover over a pin now, you'll get a little call-out with the reviews and some images from the location. Has that changed anything in terms of what you see happening in the Local Pack? Are businesses affected by that change at all, or is it just business as usual? No pun intended. Krystal Taing: I'll say I haven't seen too much impact from businesses, but what I have seen probably for the last four to five years is a transition in user behavior where a lot more searches are beginning on Maps. If you look back pre-2020, 90% of all business views on Google started on desktop. And I even know for myself, I will just go to Maps and instead of doing a search on Google search, I just zoom in and then I click around and I might put some keywords in or some filters. But I like that from a discovery perspective a lot more. So I think, and this is a complete assumption, I think Google sees that and they're trying to merge these experiences because users like to engage a little bit more and I think Maps gives you that more than a search result. Mordy Oberstein: It makes a lot of sense because you see, by the way, Google started testing out AI or an SGE kind of experience in Maps. And I think by the way, that makes a lot of sense to have there because I find jumping from one query to the next query to the next thing inside of Maps, a pain in the rear end. Krystal Taing: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Crystal Carter: I know that you're a big fan of categories, you've got your categories on Google Business Profile, which effects, which queries you show up with on the Local Pack. And I think that that also is reflected on Google Maps. So I think that that's one of the things I think is so interesting about Local Pack, local et cetera, is that there's a whole ecosystem around it. So for instance, I was recently in Switzerland and we went to one town and literally nothing was open and it was like, "Okay, I want a coffee. How am I going to find a coffee?" And then I looked at this other town and I was just generally hovering for cafes and then open now, and a bunch of them showed up. And so I just headed to this general area because I found that because it has all of these filters. So that goes back to the things that you're thinking of, and that also goes back to people going to Maps first because I don't know what any of the restaurants are called, so I couldn't possibly search for one. And sometimes they might call it a cafe, sometimes they call it a restaurant, but I just want a coffee. So I think that that goes to sort of how people can show up with those. Do you find that people need to make the same optimizations? Are the optimizations exactly the same for Maps as they are for Local Pack? Or do you that people need to make additional specific considerations for Google Maps? Krystal Taing: So there's not necessarily anything different. It's more about understanding how Maps works. I will say Maps is not a separate entry point for businesses, you still create your GBP profile and that's what's reflected on Maps. However, Maps does have different types of integrations. So you think of searching for fuel stations or petrol stations, there's oftentimes when you're going to see the prices, that is not connected to Google Business Profile, that's a complete separate Maps integration. Same thing with movie times. So it's good to be aware, but there's things you can't control. I will say one of the things with Maps in the discovery process is there are different levels at your zoom where businesses will show. And this is one of, I think, the most common questions I see, they're like, "How come my map pin doesn't show when I'm on Maps?" But you have to zoom in maybe two levels closer and you will see a map pin that is a slightly different ranking on Maps than it is on GBP search, on the search result. So that typically is prominent. It's a lot of different elements like reviews. It's similar elements to the search result, but it's not the exact same and there's not an exact science yet really about that. But that is the most common thing I see is businesses will only show at certain zoom levels on Maps. And then Google has come out and they did the branded map pins through ads, which I think a lot of businesses have taken advantage of because they realize how many people are going directly to Maps. So I think Google's offering that to businesses too. Mordy Oberstein: With that, I don't want to put a pin in it, but where can people find you, near where? Krystal Taing: They can search for Krystal Taing near me. But yes, absolutely, feel free to connect with me. I think I've been on LinkedIn a little bit more frequently than on X/Twitter just because my Twitter algorithm these days, I don't know, it's a little bit weird. I'm still on Twitter, feel free to DM me, but definitely LinkedIn, I've been active there. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing, and definitely check out Uberall. Krystal Taing: Yes, please do. Mordy Oberstein: And for the Wix users, check out the Uberall app, which we're going to discuss in just a minute. Thank you so much, Krystal and Crystal. I can't believe I only just made that joke now. Crystal Carter: Yes, thank you. Krystal Taing: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, always a pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: Great. Definitely make sure you give Krystal Taing a follow. I really do feel like disappointed in myself for not making more Crystals jokes because there were so many Crystals on the call. Crystal Carter: I mean, hey, the whole conversation was full of gems, so it's all good. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, you crazy diamonds. Anyway, shine on you crazy diamonds, a little Pink Floyd for you there. Okay, so as you mentioned earlier, we gave a little hint at an app that can help you with local SEO, but it really does a lot more than local SEO stuff, it helps you actually distribute content for a local business. So here is our segment called Tool Time as we dive into, guess what, the Uberall within the Wix app market. So I'm going to say maybe a year ago, I'm not good with time, Uberall added an app into the Wix app market, and if you forgot Krystal, not our Crystal, the other Krystal, Krystal Taing works for Uberall. Okay, so Wix has an integration, a partnership with Google Business Profile, and one of the feature requests that we had was can we upload, as both Crystals were talking about, Google posts from Wix to the Google Business Profile and with our partnership with Google, you can, but with the Uberall app. Crystal Carter: You can. Mordy Oberstein: You can. And not only that, you can also upload posts across social networks like Facebook, X, Instagram, I'm running out of social profiles, all the kind of social profiles you want to share content. So if you're a business that you're working with, as I say, a Facebook page, and you want to upload the same post that you added to Google posts you want to put on the Facebook page, you can use the Uberall app as basically a content distribution app for local businesses, which is cool. Crystal Carter: This is super important I think because with local businesses it's very often the case that local businesses are particularly active on social media. So if you're able to keep those channels going and those channels full of new information in an efficient manner, that's super valuable. So I mean, I don't know about y'all, but we have a local moms group, we have local parent groups for schools. I know that there's people who are like, "They didn't pick up the bins today. What's going on?" There's people who have spotted in Poughkeepsie or whatever, and those local recommendations carry a lot of weight. So if you have presence on there and you are in the local groups, you're able to post into local groups, you're able to post onto local Facebook accounts, local channels there that can give you some incredible, incredible reach and people will vouch for you. People will be like, "Yeah, I used that painter decorator. They were really great, they made my shed look fantastic." I keep talking about sheds these days. But yeah, I think it's a great tool and it's really, really, really useful for- Mordy Oberstein: Distributing content as a local business is super important. So if your clients are a local business, they may not always have the budgets to start running social media ads or Google ads, so having that organic social cadence and social presence can be a big factor for a local business so it definitely makes sense to do that and the Uberall app can help you do that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think like Krystal talked about events for instance, because events take place in a local place that can also help to connect. Mordy Oberstein: Events are local? Crystal Carter: Yes, they're in a place with a geographical location, and so that's really good for connecting your business to that particular geo and things like that. So yeah, I can't recommend enough getting involved with citations and listings. It's also a good way to get back links. Citation links don't necessarily cater the same weight as an organic back link, but they are still links as in they still get crawled and still drive traffic, can drive traffic to your website. Mordy Oberstein: They drive traffic for sure. Crystal Carter: And can still help Google to understand where the important parts are of your website. So absolutely get involved with citations and sometimes those sites will rank higher than your business in other parts of the web so it's worth making sure that you're getting involved with those, particularly in a local space. Mordy Oberstein: Now do you know who we like to cite when we're talking about the SEO news? I'll give you a hint, his name rhymes with Larry and his last name rhymes with Schwartz, well is Schwartz, it's Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Quartz, Quartz. Mordy Oberstein: Quartz, damn. God, how did I know not...? I was spitballing, I was like, "Damn, you don't have a rhyme," but Quartz. Crystal Carter: Crystal knows all about the gems here. We're talking about crystals. Mordy Oberstein: You know why? Because nothing rhymes with Oberstein so I don't have any good last name rhymes. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I don't know, I don't know. I was on the phone and sometimes when I explained my name on the phone they're like, "Oh, can you spell your name?" I'm like, "Yeah, it's Crystal like the glass," and then one time I said, "And Carter like the trolley," which is like- Mordy Oberstein: The trolley? Crystal Carter: They were like, "What are you talking about?" As soon as I said it, you know when you say something and you're like, "That is silly." Mordy Oberstein: You should be like, "Carter like that Stallone movie," which is a remake of another movie. Crystal Carter: Get Carter, Get Carte. Mordy Oberstein: Get Carter, Carter. Crystal Carter: Originally with Michael Caine. Mordy Oberstein: Michael Caine, yeah, yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah, "Blow the fricking doors off," or whatever. "I could blow the bloody doors off," I think that's what he says. Mordy Oberstein: People really don't like the Stallone movie. I liked it, I don't know why people don't like it, I thought it was good. Crystal Carter: It was all right it was kind of like gritty late '90s, early '90s kind of cinematography. But you know who really loves Sylvester Stallone movies? Mordy Oberstein: Barry. And you know who's Gritty? Barry. So here's the Snappy news with Barry and other people who cover the SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Oh, do we have some news for you this week? Oh man, where do I even start? I guess we'll start with Barry Schwartz over on Search Engine Land. Okay, Barry writes, "Google releasing massive search quality enhancements in March 2024, core update and multiple spam updates." At the start on March 5th, Google said that they have released the March 2024 core update and then a bunch of spam updates along with it. It's a lot to parse out and to digest so let's just take it, and I'm going to try to break it down as honestly as I possibly can because there's a lot to this. Okay, so per Barry Schwartz, "Elizabeth Tucker, Director of Product Search at Google told Search Engine Land that the update will help reduce unhelpful content in Google by 40%. We expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts will collectively reduce low quality unoriginal content in search results by 40%." That is a big, big number because this is a big, big update. Google is saying that multiple systems are being updated and tweaked and released during this update, is going to take them weeks upon weeks to actually roll out. Chris Nelson from the search quality team of Google is quoted by saying that it's a more complex update than our usual core updates, and that's why it's going to take so much time with so much rank fluctuations and so forth. Don't be scared, don't be scared. Part of this is the helpful content update is now going to be a part of the core update. Google will no longer announce iterations of the helpful content update being updated, instead, it'll be part of the core algorithm like Panda was pushed into the core algorithm and it'll just be part of the core algorithm updates, which would be part of why this is taking so long and why there'd be so many rain fluctuations. Now, I initially thought, well, if the helpful content update becomes part of the core update, then the helpful content update kind of becomes diluted a bit by the other call it elements within the core update that weigh in and decide what should or should not be impacted in terms of rank. I think I'm wrong, I think I was wrong, I think I'm right now. I think when instead is happening is that the helpful content update is getting a very, very prominent role in the core update itself. If you go back to what Barry wrote earlier in the article, which I quoted before, but I'll quote it again here just to remind you, Barry said, "Elizabeth Tucker, Director of Product Search at Google told Search Engine Land the update will help reduce unhelpful content in Google search by 40%," meaning Google's targeting low quality, unhelpful content trying to reduce it by a massive percentage, 40%, that's an insane percentage. So just let that resonate for a minute. And I think what's happening is not what I originally thought, which was okay, the helpful content update will be integrated into the core algorithm and as a result it'll be a small fish in a large pond and it'll have a diluted effect. I think the opposite. I think Google's trying to make a very massive move here by saying that the helpful content will, unlike let's say Panda, which was out for a while, by the time it got moved into the core, it already kind of did its thing, that's not the case with the helpful content update. The helpful content update is a rather new update and it's not being integrated like, "All right, its impact is already there, we're moving on to other technologies and other parts of the algorithm that'll help us do new things like bird," that's not the case like it was back, in my opinion, with Panda. In this case, the helpful content on that is new and novel and wouldn't be what I would expect to be integrated into the algorithm right now, although Glenn Gabe has predicted it will go into the algorithm way, way, way, way in the past, and he's right obviously because they are integrating into the algorithm, but I'm not surprised that they're integrating it into the core algorithm, I'm surprised that they're doing it now, being that this algorithm update is not old, it's new, or it's new-ish for an update for an algorithm it's pretty new. And I think it's going to have a massive role in the core algorithm and that the other elements of the core algorithm are going to adjust to it, not that the helpful content is going to adjust to the core. And I think that's why it's going to take weeks for this to roll out, like Google is saying, and that's why there's going to be a lot of fluctuations because they're not just putting the helpful content update into the core and letting the helpful content update sort of adjust and integrate in a mesh and become like a stew into the core, they're re-aligning the core to align with the helpful content update. That's my theory. Again, say it very clearly, that's my theory. I don't know for sure that that's happening, but that's what makes the most sense to me, and I'll tell you why. Because Google has a perception problem, it has a real problem with the search results and it also has a perception problem. And Google has to, A, create the impression that is going to be making a seismic shift or a seismic change on the SERP and to what it's showing on the SERP so it's making this announcement. But it can't just make an announcement and not have any backbone to it, any substance to it, they actually have to make it an actual move. What's the actual move? Is the actual move to integrate an algorithm that already exists, the helpful content update, into the core algorithm, in which case the helpful content update would essentially be diluted as it aligns with the other elements in the core algorithm rather. Is that the move? That's not really a move, that's not going to change anything. What would change something would be integrating the helpful content update into the core algorithm and giving it a place of prominence, that would be a seismic shift and a seismic change. And again, what's really interesting about that is that the helpful content is a learning algorithm and it's relatively new, has it learned enough to have such a role? If I am correct, which I think I'm correct, but who knows for sure? Only Google does. Along with this, if that wasn't enough for you and that was a mouthful, Google is releasing a few spam updates. There's the March 2024 spam update, which includes a bunch of things. First off, it includes going after what they call scaled content abuse, basically programmatic content even for example AI content, which you're just building tons and tons of this garbage, thin, unhelpful, ridiculous content to try to rank. Google's saying, "Yeah, we're going to go after that with this update. We're also going to release lots and lots of manual actions to go after the site." And that leads us to Barry's other article from Search Engine Round Table where Barry writes, "Google unleashes manual actions galore after search spam policy updates." Google has gone hog wild releasing manual actions according to some, like Glenn Gabe, there's been at least that we know of around 1400 manual actions sort of enough to maybe train an algorithm in my personal opinion. But okay, Google has gone after these websites, and Glenn, thank you for sharing a couple of examples on this so I can see it where it's just absolute pure AI garbage, it's the entire website, there's really nothing of actual value there, the website is just trying to manipulate Google into ranking the content, it's not actually trying to target users, provide users with anything of value. And Google has killed off these websites with manual actions. So that's one part of this whole spam update bonanza. Going back to Barry's Search Engine Land article, we're just bouncing from Barry to Barry here, there's two other elements of the spam targeting. One is expired domain abuse, which is now going to be considered spam officially. Basically, you have an old domain, you buy the domain, that domain, let's say it was very strong reputation for years and years and years about selling bicycles. You're like, "All right, I'll capitalize on the authority that this domain has, and I will start writing content about all sorts of nonsense that I want to target, not about bicycles at all. And I'll sort of trick Google into thinking that, "Hey, this is still that same old website, that same old domain with all that great authority and money, whatever, whatever, all those back links but I'm writing a bunch of garbage content,"" that's going to be considered spam and Google's going to go after that. Along with parasites or Google calls site reputation abuse. That's basically where I go, "Hey," I don't know, "Sports Illustrated, because you would never do anything like this, let me buy some space rather on your website, and you'll host my articles on your website. So I'll write about the power of whatever, I don't know, magic pill, magic bean that I'm selling, and I'll host it and I'll pay you, Sports Illustrated," just as an example, "To host this on your website, and I will get the authority of Sports Illustrated for my ridiculous content." So that is going to be considered abuse, and Google is going to go after it. Google said, "Such content ranking highly in search can confuse or mislead visitors who may have vastly different expectations for the content on a given website." Google said that this doesn't include all types of advertorial articles on websites, Google said that, no, sometimes that's actually fine, right? Not all third party content is a violation in this way. It's only when it's hosted with what Google says is, "Without close oversight and is intended to manipulate search ranking." So Google said, "Many publications host advertising content that is intended for their regular readers rather than to primarily manipulate search rankings, sometimes called native advertising or advertorial. This kind of content typically wouldn't confuse readers or regular readers of the publication when they find it on the publisher site directly or when arriving at it from Google search results." So I'll give you an example, Search Engine Journal hosts advertised articles, paid articles, and they're usually from an SEO tool, I think, well, Wix Studio, we've done one-on-one about how you can use Wix Studio to manage clients and manage your SEO team, yada, yada, yada. It's in line with what Search Engine Journal talks about, which is SEO, digital marketing, so those articles align and they clearly say it's an ad announcement, it's paid so you know that it's paid, but topically the content makes total sense. Sure, it makes sense that Semrush would write a paid article on Search Engine Journal because what Search Engine Journal talks about and what Semrush does are pretty much very much the same thing, so that makes sense. It's when you would have, let's say, some kind of medical magical pill having a sponsored article on Search Engine Journal, that wouldn't make any sense, that would be confusing, and that would be basically to manipulate all sorts of stuff. So that's out. So a lot of updates, a lot of things going on. It's going to take weeks for this to roll out. We'll see if my theory is true. Let me know on Twitter, or X, whatever you want to call it, if you think that you like my theory, if you hate my theory, I'd love to hear from you. I think it's a really interesting conversation. I think the stuff is fascinating in the sense that you get to really kind of see and theorize about how Google's functioning. But of course, it's also terrifying because algorithm updates can be just terrifying. But it'll take weeks to roll out, don't freak out, don't change things on your website because you see fluctuations, things go up, things go down, there are reversals within algorithm updates. So wait, it takes time, be patient and don't freak out. That's my best advice for you. And that's this week's snappy news. Boy, is he gritty, huh, that Barry? Crystal Carter: I bet he also likes climbing stairs. I bet that's also a thing that he's into. Mordy Oberstein: Climbing stairs? Yeah, totally, yeah. What's that, true grit? Another movie, Barry's True Grit. Crystal Carter: True Grit, that's not a Stallone movie. Mordy Oberstein: No, not a Stallone movie at all. It was another movie, talking about movies. True Grit was with, I'm pretty sure it's a remake, but it was with- Crystal Carter: Wasn't it originally John Wayne? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know, I'm not that old. I'm old, but I'm not that old. It was with The Big Labowski, Jeff Bridges. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But the first one, I don't remember who was in the first one. I'm pretty sure it was- Crystal Carter: Yeah, no, the original one, yeah, it's John Wayne. Mordy Oberstein: John Wayne? Didn't see it. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I've never seen it. I just know- Mordy Oberstein: Ask me if I've ever seen a John Wayne movie ever. I think I've seen one because my grandfather liked John Wayne a lot. Crystal Carter: I don't particularly remember ever seeing one, but I live on Earth, so I've heard of him. Mordy Oberstein: I'm sure we've seen them, like the Channel 11 Sunday afternoon matinee. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, if we're going westerns, I watched all the spaghetti westerns. Yeah, I watched all them. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah, hands down for me. Womp womp womp. Crystal Carter: Love that. Mordy Oberstein: Which brings us obviously to our follow of the week, literally logical progression of this, which is a local SEO superstar. She does all sorts of studies and they're freaking awesome, I love them, keep doing them. Joy Hawkins from Sterling Sky. You can find Joy on X Twitter, whatever you want to call it at Joyanne, J-O-Y-A-N-N-E-H-A-W-K-I-N-S. Well, that's a long one, JoyanneHawkins on Twitter, on X, whatever it is. She's part of local university. She runs Sterling Sky. She puts out all sorts of amazing content around local SEO. So please, please, follow her and Joy, keep doing those local SEO studies that Barry often covers, because I think they're fascinating. Crystal Carter: Yeah, Joy is fantastic. She's also really active on video platforms as well, so sharing content that way as well. And she's going to be speaking at Mascon this year, so yeah, I'm speaking there, last year I spoke and I referenced one of her studies because it was brilliant, and she was in the audience and she was like, "Yeah, do y'all see that study? It's right here." And I was like, "Yeah, Joy, tell the people, tell them all." Yeah, so she's speaking this year, and I cannot wait to see her speak because she's like wicked smart. It's like- Mordy Oberstein: I didn't know you did a Boston thing. Crystal Carter: That's a local joke because for local people in Boston, they'll know that. I literally only know that from Goodwill Hunting, but I've never actually been to Boston, but she's wicked smart, that's true, that is true. And so, yeah, follow Joy, she's great. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like Boston had a good baseball team. They're the worst, the Red Sox. Crystal Carter: I do not endorse that comment. I have no dog in that fight. Mordy Oberstein: No. Oh, really? I thought you would support me in this. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Sports rivalries get heated. I'm not- Mordy Oberstein: I think they're fun. If you're listening, you're a Boston Red Sox fan, I would say I apologize but as a Yankee fan, I don't, but I still love you. I still love you. Crystal Carter: See, again, that's some local knowledge there. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, see, it's all about local, yeah. There's a lot of local rivalries in sports, particularly New York where I'm from, and Boston. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is absolutely true. I mean, I guess I'm kind of a Raiders fan, and they just have rivalry with everybody. They're just like- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you know who's a Raider fan? Glenn Gabe is a Raider fan. Crystal Carter: Boom. I think they're the only football team I've ever gone to see. I saw them at the Coliseum back in the day. Mordy Oberstein: Back in the day, back in the day when John Madam was the coach? Crystal Carter: I can't remember who was the coach. Mordy Oberstein: He was, I think, before in the '70s. Crystal Carter: Yeah, no, not that. I don't go that far back, damn. Mordy Oberstein: Honestly, I don't know. I don't want to... No. Crystal Carter: We digress. Mordy Oberstein: Well, I think at this point we've gotten all the rails too far, so thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into the practical value of understanding entities for SEO. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub or wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and resources on the Wix SEO learning 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 and love and SEO. 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Are digital marketing conferences right for you? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter alongside Sparktoro’s VP of Marketing, Amanda Natividad, help you decide if you're ready to board the digital marketing conference train. Plus, the founder of Brighton SEO’s international conference series, Kelvin Newman, joins to discuss securing a speaking role at a conference. Still unsure if digital marketing conferences will pay off? Tune in this week as the experts help you decide on episode 101 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Are digital marketing conferences worth it? Are digital marketing conferences right for you? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter alongside Sparktoro’s VP of Marketing, Amanda Natividad, help you decide if you're ready to board the digital marketing conference train. Plus, the founder of Brighton SEO’s international conference series, Kelvin Newman, joins to discuss securing a speaking role at a conference. Still unsure if digital marketing conferences will pay off? Tune in this week as the experts help you decide on episode 101 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 101 | September 11, 2024 | 57 MIN 00:00 / 56:55 This week’s guests Amanda Natividad Amanda Natividad is VP of Marketing for audience research startup, SparkToro. In her spare time, she writes a marketing newsletter called the Menu (with over 15k subscribers) and teaches Content Marketing 201. She’s also a contributor for Adweek, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist. Amanda previously led marketing for Growth Machine, led marketing for Liftopia, built Fitbit’s B2B content program, and led content and communications for NatureBox. Kelvin Newman Kelvin Newman is founder of brightonSEO, one of the best search marketing conferences out there. What started as a tiny meet-up of SEO geeks has exploded into a massive event that draws thousands of attendees from all over the world. With his finger firmly on the pulse of digital marketing, Kelvin’s known for his down-to-earth approach and knack for making SEO both fun and accessible. He also founded Rough Agenda, an events company that puts on marketing & advertising events that people love to attend. Always up for sharing his knowledge (and maybe a few laughs), Kelvin’s a true legend in the SEO scene, inspiring many with his passion and expertise. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who is the keynote to our podcast. The one, the only head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hear ye, hear ye. Here I am on the podcast speaking about things and in a keynote kind of way. That's not what people say. That would be a terrible, terrible way to open a keynote. Hear ye, hear ye, conference attendees. Mordy Oberstein: With a bell from the 1700s. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That sort of thing. People would- Mordy Oberstein: It sounds like the plague is coming. Crystal Carter: I don't think people would be into that, especially like ... Mordy Oberstein: Unless it was a conference about plagues. Crystal Carter: No. Well, I mean, yeah, I guess so. But I think they would be more worried. They'd be like, "No, is it?" They would have the details and they would be more worried. I don't think that if you were speaking to epidemiologists that that would be the way to open your conference. Mordy Oberstein: Probably not. If it's a really niche audience. Well, anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can get all of your events, structured data markup on all of your event pages on both Wix and Wix Studio done for you automatically. It's all automated and it all happens that you haven't got to do anything. That's what makes it great because that's automated. As this week we're talking about, should I even go to a digital marketing or SEO conference or event? How do you even know what conferences to go to and are they even worth it? What should your goals be when going to a live digital marketing event? And so you want to go to an SEO digital marketing conference, but how do you justify the cost? SparkToro's VP of marketing, Amanda Natividad will join us in just a jiffy to help you decide if you should punch your conference ticket or not. Plus, the founder of Brighton SEO's conference series, Kelvin Newman stops by the chat about how to pitch to be a speaker at a digital marketing conference. Plus, we have your Snappies of SEO News and who you should be following a social media for more SEO awesomeness. So join us as we help you summit the mountain that is deciding on the pros and cons of the digital marketing conference world as we expose you to a conference information fest on this, the 101st episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Did I miss any generic conference suffixes there? I got summit, con, world, expo and fest in there. Crystal Carter: I mean, you- Mordy Oberstein: That's a work or art, by the way. Crystal Carter: It was the kind of thing that a pundit on a panel might say. Mordy Oberstein: Well done. Well done. Okay. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much. Mordy Oberstein: So conferences are kind of costly, they can be. There's the trip itself, the flight, the hotel, the ticket for the actual conference, and does it actually make sense to go to a live conference? I don't pay for a webinar. I just kind of show up. What's the value of going to a conference? So please welcome to the show, the VP of Marketing over at SparkToro, which is a fabulous tool. I'm just going to say that I love that tool. Amanda Natividad, welcome to the SERP's Up podcast. Amanda Natividad: Hear ye, hear ye. I am here with my own cowbell of some sort. Crystal Carter: More cowbell. Mordy Oberstein: More cowbell. Crystal Carter: Always. Amanda Natividad: Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we're so happy you're here. Crystal Carter: So pleased to have you on the podcast. Honestly, a great person to talk to about this topic. Mordy Oberstein: Because full pitch, you are about to run your own conference. Amanda Natividad: Yes. Yeah, this is going to be SparkToro's first in-person conference, and we're really pumped about it. I mean, before I was marketing to marketers, I had some experience in running conferences for the HR and benefits space, and then of course my boss, Rand Fishkin, who people here might've heard have ... Obviously had built up MozCon and everything. So we have very strong opinions about conferences and we're really excited about it. I think we're really trying to do something different, something fresh, but we're also trying to figure out how to not market it that way because every conference organizer says, "No, we're different. We're fresh, we're exciting." And everyone is different in their own way. But we're going to try to figure out, well, we'll tell you what's different, and we'll position the conference around that. And then hopefully you will agree that it is different and that you will want to come. Mordy Oberstein: Where can people find it? Amanda Natividad: Oh, people can find it on the SparkToro website, sparktoro.com/sparktogether. This is the day long Spark Together summit. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Link in the show notes. Crystal Carter: And I think the thing that really makes the conference is really the vibe. That's really, really what makes the difference between one conference or another, because people will have ... A lot of conferences will have speakers and they'll have expos, and they'll have exhibitors and they'll have merch, and they'll have things like that. But really the difference is when you get there, how it feels, which is very, very tricky to, I don't know, quantify or whatever, but I certainly know that your team, the team at SparkToro, I don't think I would be wrong in describing you small but mighty. I think you've discussed that your team, you keep it tight for a reason. And I think that one of the things I'm really excited for about the event is I've met you in person. I know you energy. I've met Rand in person, I know his energy, and I know that the kinds of things that you as a team prioritize and I think it's going to be a great event because you'll be able to bring that emphasis, that energy into a real life space. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, that's absolutely the hope. I mean, so I have been toying with the idea of positioning it around, this is like an executive retreat except everyone's invited. Crystal Carter: Right. Amanda Natividad: That's kind of the vibe we want. And so by that, that means, I guess I haven't had a ton of experience with this, but I've gotten to go to a couple of events that were like founders retreats essentially, where various founders have spoken vulnerably about their stories. Like, "Here's where I got to where I am today." Or, "Here's about this time that I sold my business, and it actually went really well. But here are all the steps that we took to make sure that we were giving our employees great compensation." Things like that, that not everyone talks about at a conference. So we wanted to encapsulate that, which is why it's a storytelling conference. That's another thing we say, where each speaker is invited, speakers that we've invited, we've chosen and we've asked them to share a story that they've never told before. Something vulnerable, something really candid that has some kind of really transparent detail that they've never shared. Because our belief is that that's how we best learn. We best learn through stories and we learn through other people sharing their experiences, warts and all. So we have that. And then the other piece is, especially because it's our first event, we're keeping it relatively small. We have a goal of getting to 200 attendees. I think at the time of this recording, we have 30 or 40 tickets left and a couple months to go. So fingers crossed we get there. And the other thing we want to do is because it's going to be small enough, we're also hosting this sort of mini mastermind session where we'll put people into small groups. We'll have facilitators run the hour or so, and invite people to share a business problem that they have, a marketing problem they have, and have the group kind of workshop it together. So that's kind of the retreat sort of aspect. Mordy Oberstein: I really like that storytelling. That sounds really, really interesting because I'll say this, I don't want to sound like a snob when I say this. I've been to a lot of conferences before over the many, many years, and at this point, my conference journey, I don't really enjoy the session so much. That's not why I'm going to a conference at this point. So hearing something like it's someone sharing something they never really told before, it's a little more vulnerable. I would actually be interested in hearing that because I haven't experienced that. And I think that when you're deciding to go to a conference, I think that's one of the things you have to think about is, where are you on the spectrum right now? Because younger me would a million percent want to go do all of the sessions and would gain value from all the sessions. Whereas older me, because I'm an old person ... I'm actually middle age, which is ... My back hurts, which freaks me out. Crystal Carter: You are lucky if it's just your back. I'm just saying. Mordy Oberstein: It's not just my back. Older me doesn't find that same value anymore. So if you think, "Should I go to a conference or should I not go to a conference?" I think that's the wrong question. It's like, where are you right now? What will you get out of a conference at this point in your career? Amanda Natividad: Yeah. You know what, added to that, you also mentioned this at the intro of the show about where we may be as an industry, or maybe not industry, but the average attendee is at is, there's a lot of great content on YouTube, a lot of really good webinars where people are sharing playbooks, tactics, and those are great. But I guess what I as an organizer think about are, well, you can get all that already on YouTube, other webinars, and I don't know if people are going to come to our conference because they want the best tactics. I feel like it's because of the experience as a whole. And the experience as a whole is going to sessions that you wouldn't see otherwise online. So that's the other thing. At Spark Together, we're asking speakers to share a story but only tell that story at our conference. And that's kind of it. And it's not going to be recorded. And we are also going to foster the networking aspects so that it's going to be a little bit easier for people to meet people. We're going to have it at a nice venue. All the things that you can't really do online. So I actually feel like it's more important than ever that conference organizers really try to double down on the experience as a whole or on the networking aspect. Or it could be anything, right? Maybe it's food, maybe it's like this is a luxury kind of conference, you're going to get like multi-course meals. I don't know. But I just made that up obviously. Crystal Carter: I think also one of the things that I really value, I go to a lot of conferences, I speak at a lot of conferences. I volunteer at the Women in Tech SEO conferences. I've spoken at those as well. We've exhibited at Brighton SEO on a few occasions. So I do a lot of conference stuff. The thing that I really enjoy about the in-person aspect of it is being surrounded by your peers I think is super, super important. I went to a conference right after the Content Goblins Verge article came out, and it was so much fun seeing people wearing Content Goblins and somebody with an inflatable alligator and that sort of stuff. That's great. And it makes you feel, I think a lot of times marketers can very often be the only one. They are the head marketer and they're the only marketer at their company. And even in larger companies, you might be the SEO or you might be the one person who's handling that particular aspect in there and you're not able to bounce things off. So even being in the audience and hearing the questions that other people are asking, you can go, "Oh, yes, I have been wondering about that, and I'm not the only, that's great." And so that feeling of connecting with your peers I think is really, really valuable. So I think you mastermind bringing people together for networking, that's a great aspect of it. I think it's really, really important to facilitate and make spaces for that. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, I'm excited about it. And Crystal, now I'm very curious to hear from you, since you go to so many conferences and in different capacities, I imagine you have a top three or five that you really, really like for various reasons. So maybe of three, let's say random, because I don't want to say, hey, force rank all of them, but what are some of the things that you love about some of your favorite conferences? Crystal Carter: So first of all, Amanda, this is my podcast and I asked the questions. Second of all, thank you. So yeah, so one of the things I like, I remember being at Brighton SEO San Diego for the first one and Mordy was there as well, and we had a great time. One of the things that I found that was so much fun was that I literally met people, I was walking by and I looked at somebody's lanyard and we had him on the podcast, Will was on the podcast. And I was like, "You're the SEO from the Mayo Clinic." And it was literally, I had a full fan girl experience because I am fascinated by the SEO of the Mayo Clinic. And I walked by and I was like, "Oh my God, you work on the Mayo Clinic. That's amazing." Similarly, when I was at MozCon last time, I was sharing data from Rick Steve's community blog, and I was like, "Yeah, the Rick Steve community blog, they've seen loads of this massive hockey stick from the discussions and forums feature on Google." And I heard a whoop from the crowd. And then in lunchtime, the community blog SEO from Rick Steve's was like, "That's my blog. That was me whooping." I got a picture with them. Do you know what I mean? Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Crystal Carter: You're making the face that I was making, which was like, "Oh my God." So I think that, and that's what I mean with that peer thing is that you meet people. I met the SEO team from Suzuki, and I have a Suzuki and I love my car. And I was like, "Oh my God." And they were like, "We told our boss that you were so excited about it…" So I think it's really fun to find those moments of connectivity within your industry. And I think that that can really help invigorate how you feel about what you do and help you to keep going with learning. You meet people who you've only met online and things like that. And Mordy, I can see you want to jump in as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You sit here, I work remotely. So you sit here, you think, I am this weirdo who's doing SEO stuff and there's no one else out there. I mean, you see people on social media, whatever, but that connection of like, "Oh, there are other people who are like me," does motivate you, and I wouldn't sell that short. It is a really, really, really important thing. I'm not saying that's going to be the thing that you're going to say to your boss like, "Hey, I'm going to go so I feel like emotionally reinvigorated." That's probably not what's going to sell them on spending all that money to send you. But for yourself, it's really important you come back, you're motivated, you feel connected to a whole community, and that has a lot of psychological value that I wouldn't discount. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you're also able to ask people, like whenever I speak, people come up to me and they're like, "Well, how did you do that? Tell me more about this." Or I have people who are like, "Yeah, I'm running..." So I talked about forums at my last MozCon. The guys from Houzz, which is a design website, they came and talked to me about their thing and what they're experiencing and lots of great stuff. I know people go and talk to Lily Rae about all the different things that she's doing. As a speaker, honestly, I got to chat to Britney Muller for ages at MozCon. Fan girl me was losing her mind, I'm not going to lie. And so I think that there are incredible opportunities to connect with people in a way that you cannot do online when you join an in-person event, and there's plenty of time to do that as well. And you're focused because you're there. You're not being distracted by additional activities and things like that. So yeah, I think that in-person conferences are really, really super valuable. Mordy Oberstein: Amanda, you were just at MozCon, right? Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so- Amanda Natividad: What was it like? Mordy Oberstein: I missed it. A little bit of a FOMO, but we were talking about it before we started recording, it was a great event. What for you made that an event that worked for you? Amanda Natividad: The experience as a whole was great. What were some of the highlights? The food was really good. They had some good treats. They had mochi donuts. I can't say that first. Crystal Carter: The donuts were phenomenal. Amanda Natividad: They were so good. Crystal Carter: I had four of those donuts. They were delicious. Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Oh, they were so good. Honestly, really not just saying this, but the photo booth that you guys had set up for headshots was such a standout for me because I was like, "Oh, I haven't taken a headshot in six years." And it's not something I'm going to pay for just because I don't know, I'm cheap or whatever. I guess personally, I don't think to like, "Oh, I'm going to get a professional photo of myself." I just don't think that way. So when I saw it, I was like, "I need to do this." And then the photographer that you had was so mindful about each person. He took his time with each person. He showed me how to fix my hair, which no one had ever showed me how to do because I get these flyaways, right? He was like, "Smooth them out." He was like, "Smooth out your hair." He's like, "Pull it into two sections, smooth it out, and then smooth it out again." I was like, "Oh, oh, the flyaway is gone." But no one had ever taught me that before. But that's a small thing. Those things matter because I, as an attendee, felt really special for five to 10 minutes. And I'm not a speaker there. I was there to just hang out. I felt so special, got to cross something off my to-do list. But the other thing that was really special for me was, well, meeting a bunch of speakers who I was previously friendly with, who I was finally meeting in person. That was great. But one key moment for me was I met someone who was a big fan of Rand Fishkin, and he was like, "Oh, I'm a fan of you too," or, "I like you," or whatever it was. We had a nice conversation and he mentioned, he was like, "Do you know if Rand is going to stay?" He's like, "It would mean the world to me to meet him, because he's the reason I got into SEO and stayed." And I was like, my heart. I was like, oh. I was like, "He's not staying after. I will make sure that you meet him." And this person was like, "Okay. And I'm like, "No, we'll find him." And then Rand came by eventually, and I was like, "Rand, come here. You have to meet this person." He came over and this guy was so sweet. He was like, "Could you sign my book?" And he came from, I think he traveled from Nicaragua and he brought his book with... His Lost and Founder book. And I was like, "Oh my gosh. He traveled with that for this in case he got to meet Rand." So of course Rand signed it. And then I was like, wait, I got to get into full.... I don't know what this is, like momager mode maybe. But I was like, "You guys should also take a picture." And I saw his soul leave his body. He was like... I think he even made that sound… Mordy Oberstein: Like that aura sound, the heavens have opened. Nice. Amanda Natividad: I took a picture. Let's take a couple. So I took a couple and he was shaking and it was the sweetest thing ever. And then at some point I could sense that he was blacking out and not saying anything. So then I was just like, "Rand, you are the reason he got into SEO and stayed." And then he finally snapped in. He was like, "Yes," and then was able to talk again. But it was the most adorable thing. And I started to cry because, just to see somebody who was also just so influenced by Rand and to finally to see on his face, "Holy crap, one of my professional dreams is coming true right now," to be able to witness that for someone else was incredible. I was crying. I was like, "Don't look at me." It was a whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: So super hard contrast because that's a great story. That person didn't sell their boss on, I really want to get my book signed by Rand because I got inspired by Rand. There's no boss, unfortunately, who's going to say, "You know what? I'm going to fly from Nicaragua to Seattle. I'm going to put you at a hotel, pay for the conference. You got it." How would that person sell the conference? How do you sell it? Because all the things we're talking about are things, unfortunately, and I say unfortunately, that your boss probably doesn't care about. Crystal Carter: Dude, you're killing the buzz. Mordy Oberstein: I told you hard contrast. First off, you're expecting something different from me other than killing the vibe? Crystal Carter: This is our hundredth and one podcast, Mordy. No, I'm not expecting anything different. Amanda Natividad: Well, now, it's like, oh, the rain cloud just came on this beautiful story. But you're right. No, you are right. You can't tell your boss, "Oh, it would mean the world to me to maybe meet this one speaker who's been formative in my career." Sure, any decent boss would be like, "Oh, that's really cool." That's not a reason to expense this. I think that's when people say, right, because we... Rand did this survey several weeks ago maybe about why people choose an event, and the number one reason was the content, because I think it goes back to when you go to your boss and you're like, "Hey, I need to buy a plane ticket, get a hotel, but I can get a discount or I'll stay at a cheap hotel. I need to buy this ticket." Then it's like, okay, why are you going? And then you as an attendee, a person who wants to expense it, ultimately what you have to lean on is, well, the content's going to be really great. And I think it's figuring out what's unique about the content or speakers that you can position to your boss. So for SparkTogether, I might say, look, these are brand new talks of all these... Here's a speaker list. Look, some of these people are agency founders like us, or they are people who've built their audiences from scratch, and I really want to learn from them. But here are the people that are relevant to us and our business needs. Here's why I think they're relevant. They're also going to tell stories or give presentations. If your boss doesn't care about stories, they're going to give presentations they've never given before, and it's only for this audience and it's not going to be recorded, so I have to be there in person to learn all this. And they're going to tell all these stories and here's some examples. Someone once told a story about this multi-million dollar or million dollar content project that failed or near failed, and they had to fix it two days prior. I want to learn from that story. Or I'm going to learn from this person who they are an agency founder who had to meet some ridiculous, lofty revenue goal of, I think going from five figure ARR to going to over... or was it AR... Yeah, no, I think it was five figure ARR because it was small to get it to over 200K in three months. That's a ridiculous goal. So I want to learn from these people, and this is the only way that I can do it. I think that's one case you can make. Crystal Carter: I think also it can be extremely good value for money. If you think about an all day conference and you're going to all the sessions and you're hearing about all those different things, if you go to a good conference with good speakers, every single speaker is going to be giving you resources, links, stuff that you may not have considered. I'm thinking of, I watched Talia Wolf's talk at MozCon this year, for instance, and she was just like resource after resource after resource, link, link, link, link, link. And I was like, oh my God, if you've ever watched Aleyda Solis speak, she's like this one and that one and that one, and she'll give you a full play by play. Similarly, I think people underestimate the value of the exhibitors, but I've been to conferences, like MarTech conferences where I've seen stuff that I didn't even know existed. There were exhibitors there who were... And they're like, "This is my new stuff. This is my best thing." Because they spent money on the booth, they're doing the thing. So they're like, "This is my best thing that I have to show." And I remember seeing heat maps, but this is way, way, way, way, way back in the day. But I was stood there and they were like, "Yeah, we can track your eyeballs." I was like, "You can track my eyeballs?" I remember being blown away by this. I'm dating myself. But the exhibitors are able to show you stuff that you might not have even considered. They'll be giving away discounts on things, they'll be giving away things like that. And I think that if you were to think about how long it would take you to do CPD, that same kind of CPD over the course of a year or something, whereas how much you can get done in two days of all of those resources, all of that learning, all of that knowledge, those mastermind sessions you're talking about, the networking where you can meet other people who are connected to you, it can be very good value for money if you're thinking about it in that way. Mordy Oberstein: And just find that pain point. Every company is dealing with something. I don't know, AI overviews. How do we going to handle AI overviews? Well, so-and-so is speaking at whatever conference, and they wrote a whole bunch of articles about AI overviews. I would like to pick that... Mike King and Rand are going to be at the conference. I would like to pick their brains about AI overviews. So it's the sessions and who's going to be there that can help you solve business problems that you're currently facing because you're always facing some kind of thing. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, as you were saying that, I had an idea for marketing our conference. It's like, oh, I got to put a pin in that for later, because this is a really good idea because you called out Mike King and Rand Fishkin. And Mike King is speaking at SparkTogether. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Amanda Natividad: I was like, "Oh gosh, I need to write specific value props for each session and speaker, and then somehow send them to people." Anyway, sorry. That was weird. Mordy Oberstein: That's what we're here for. This is a brainstorm session. Crystal Carter: Yeah, anytime. Anytime you want to kick the tires. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, this is like a public brainstorm, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We should totally record actual brainstorm sessions. Then we would have the pinata idea for the conference, which is brilliant. Anyway, I'll tell you about that after the recording though. After the recording, Amanda Natividad: What comes out of the pinata? Is it going to be with stickers? Crystal Carter: Moving on. Mordy Oberstein: I think we have to move on. Amanda, where can people find you? Amanda Natividad: Oh, they can find me... Well, let's see. I'm mostly on LinkedIn nowadays. My personal site is amandanat.com, but mostly really go to Sparktoro.com, try out our audio research tool and consider coming to SparkTogether. We would love to have you. And I'll hug you in person if you're the hugging type. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. We'll put all the links in the show notes. Check out Amanda's and Rand's content on social media. It's really, really good. Those videos are great. I really enjoy them, the little ones that Rand's putting on LinkedIn. I even comment sometimes. I never comment on LinkedIn stuff. So big shout out for that, and thank you so much for joining us. Amanda Natividad: Thank you for having me. This so fun. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. So sometimes you don't want to attend a digital marketing conference. No, no, no. You want to speak at a digital marketing conference. But before that happens, you have to pitch to the conference and get that pitch accepted. And there's no one I can think of more qualified than the founder of brightonSEO himself to help you understand the best way to do that. So here's Kelvin Newman as he joins us for a little segment that we call Across the Wixverse. Oh, so before I get to Kelvin's little tips here, why am I calling it across the Wixverse because usually we talk to Wix folks about across the Wixverse? But in case you were wondering, we have been headlining brightonSEO for a good while now, the UK and- Yeah. And San Diego. So I kind feel like we're one big happy family. So it's across the Wixverse. Crystal Carter: There we go. There we go. Yeah, it's such a brilliant experience working with the brightonSEO team. Shout out to Kelvin and shout out to Andrea as well, and everybody there who does great work. Mordy Oberstein: They're really great to work with. So if you want to work with them and sponsor them as well, I'd recommend it. How's that for an endorsement? Okay. Anyway, enough of that. Here's Kelvin Newman on how to pitch to a digital marketing conference. Voiceover: Three, two, one, ignition. Liftoff. Liftoff. Kelvin Newman: Want to become a speaker at one of our events? Well, I wanted to share some practical advice on what we look for in speaker pitches. Now, first up, it's good to know that we get tons of speaker interest in brightonSEO. We could program a hundred tracks and still have more pitches than we have available slots, so it's quite competitive in that selection process. When we're choosing the talks, we tend to focus on speakers with advanced and practical knowledge that they're putting into their pitch. We also love working with new people too, so don't let a lack of experience put you off. In fact, actually sometimes being a first-time speaker can sometimes aid and help your application. We handle all of our pitches via a form that's up at brightonseo.com/pitch. We don't take pitches via LinkedIn or email. And by filling in that form, we get to know you a bit better, your background, your interests, and what we're most interested in, the potential topics for future events. So do spend some time thinking about that topic title as it's one of the key elements that we use when assessing pitches. We don't have a formal pitch timeline. If we like your submission, we'll reach out when we're planning the next event. We normally start planning about six months before the conference and invite people in waves as well. It's worth saying we only get back to successful speakers and we never fully decline a talk. So when we're inviting those speakers in waves, we like to have options if speaking starts to open up because people do and often have to drop out of events. And sometimes we can have people changing topics and all that kind of thing, so we like to have a bit of flexibility there. So we never formally decline a talk because a talk's always in consideration. We may indeed even roll your pitch forward to a future event as well. But if you don't hear back from us at that moment in time, you haven't been selected. Here's some practical advice as well in terms of what we're looking for in the talk topics themselves. We like them to be actionable. Our audience loves practical how-to information. So aim for takeaways like tasks, tools or recommendations that people can go and immediately put on their to-do list. Also try and make you talk specific. So the more specific the topic is the more likely it is to be chosen and reflect that in your pitch as well. So detailed titles and descriptions tend to win us over, so we like those. It's very clear what it's talking about rather than a big, broad topic. And usually the more detail there, the easier it is for us to understand what you're going to be talking about. And we also suggest that you avoid the basics. Our audience generally is not new to digital marketing. It's not new to search marketing measurement, web analytics and paid search and all that kind of thing as well. So generally speaking, aiming your talks at intermediate or maybe even advanced audience members is a good way of getting your talk selected. Yeah, no self-promotion. We avoid pitches that focus too much on your tool or your clients. A case study can occasionally be good, but make it about the audience, not you. Again, if you've done some particular research or it's a new piece of information or a research project, that can often be a nice thing to have in your pitch. And also be authoritative. It is really, really good if you know your subject inside and out. If you can demonstrate that here's a blog post I've written about it, here's a video, here's a previous talk I've done around that, that can often help you as well. And also keep the topic tight. Most of our talks are 20 minutes long. That is not a lot of time. We'll often get many pitches that look very good and potentially could be very, very good talks, but just the scope of what they're intending to cover is too broad for our particular program. So keep it tight, keep it the kind of thing that would definitely work in 10 to 15 minutes. Even though you've probably got 20, that will give you a bit more space to play with. And also, if you've spoken at lots of events before, rather than pitching again, I'd really encourage you to try and find a friend or a colleague, someone you know who's not spoken at an event before and mentor or encourage them to put themselves forward rather than applying for your 25th speaking slot. That's good karma as well. So yeah, if you've got an idea for a pitch, we will very soon be looking at the pitch ideas for our 2025 conferences. Go to brightonseo.com/pitch and get that submission in. Voiceover: 3, 2, 1, ignition, lift off. Crystal Carter: He's got some great insights there on first-time speakers. And I think that brightonSEO in particular, the UK edition is literally the biggest SEO conference in the world, and they are incredibly welcoming to first-time speakers. I remember the first time I spoke at brightonSEO, and they were really friendly. They have a whole program that supports first-time speakers. So not only are they welcoming to people, but also they have a presentation support. So they have a day in London where you can go and you can practice with somebody if you're not used to presenting. They also have a little group chat so that you can talk to other first-time presenters, and they also help you figure out your accommodation, all that sort of stuff. So they're really, really supportive. And I think that it's really, if you're looking to be a first-time speaker, it's good to look at conferences that welcome first-time speakers because they tend to also have that kind of support, which is really, really valuable and can help you move forward if that is a thing that you want to do. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's one of the great things about brightonSEO is their speaker line-up really is diverse and they do really have people you never really heard of before, which is I think unique for a digital marketing conference in general. I found it interesting, by the way, the focus on the title that he mentioned because you would think like, no, I'm going to have a description in there and it's really purposeful and it'll be really impactful and meaningful and yada, yada, and it might be. But I think you have to realize, maybe I'm reading between the lines here, Kelvin, by the way, thank you Kelvin for that submission. We shouldn't thank you yet. I would read between the lines of what he's saying. They're getting probably hundreds, maybe more of pitches and sifting through them as difficult. And having a headline like an article you're writing on your website, having a catchy headline is a way to pull that reader in, in this case the founder or the review board of the conference. You might think don't put such emphasis on the catchy title. I'll catchify it later once I get the pitch accepted, but maybe do it now so that you get their attention, and then have the very meaningful and prolific substantial description of what you want to talk about. Crystal Carter: And I think the other thing is so have a look at the, brightonSEO has their pitch form available all year round. It's really, really useful to give you the kind of idea for what somebody is looking for from any conference speaking pitch. So they ask you to send in your pitch title, the information. They also ask you to send in links to your social media profile. They also ask you to send in links to any talks that you've done or any articles that you've written, which basically helps them to realize how... Because it may be that you're a great SEO, you're a great marketer, you're a great agency owner, but maybe you're not big, maybe you don't have a huge following just yet, for instance. That doesn't mean that you don't have information to give. That doesn't mean that you don't have value to add. But if you've written an article somewhere, if you've done a webinar that you can share, if you've done a podcast that you can share, that's show don't tell, which is really, really, really valuable. And I think that sometimes with people who are like, "Oh, I want to do speaking." I'm like, "Cool. You don't necessarily have to go straight in on stage. You can demonstrate your expertise in a few other ways." And the blog could be on your own blog. The blog could be on LinkedIn. The blog could be wherever. It could even be a really good LinkedIn post. Let's say you write a really good LinkedIn post. Some people write whole essays on LinkedIn and let's say it went viral, or let's say you did one of those little carousel things. I know people who do really well with those as well. You can share those, for instance, to give people the kind of idea of how you do what you do, and that helps people to qualify you as a speaker, even if you haven't done speaking before. And if you can show that people are interested in what you're talking about, let's say a viral post or something that's got a little bit of, not necessarily attitude, but I guess personality can be really, really useful. Mordy Oberstein: I'll say also if you pitch and you don't get accepted, it's a numbers game to a certain extent. It's par for the course to not get accepted to multiple conferences. It's probably expected that you're going to pitch to 100 and get accepted to one kind of thing, so don't be too hard on yourself. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I think also in terms of the numbers game, supply and demand. For SEO for instance, there's a lot of people that are going to be talking about keyword research. How are you talking about it in a different way, for instance? Almost every year, almost every time before brightonSEO Kelvin puts out a shout saying, "We need more technical SEO talks." So for instance, if you are somebody who is able to talk about technical SEO, you're probably more likely to get through than somebody who's talking about say content marketing because there's a lot of content marketing folks. And I think also the personality type of content marketers tends to be more like, "Yeah, let's talk about all the things," and technical SEO folks tend to be more like head down looking at a million spreadsheets, that sort of thing. So I think that when you're thinking about it, and this is I think what he was talking about with the talk title, try to find an angle that's unique. That if there's something that you feel that people aren't talking about, try to find that to talk about. It's certainly something that I try to do when I'm pitching, and it's certainly something that I think I've seen be really effective. Now, you don't want to go too far out in the weeds. You don't want to be pitching, I don't know, a JavaScript deep dive talk to a content marketing thing. If it's not positioned for content marketers, you don't want to be like, "Oh yeah, here's how you do Ruby on Rails." They're not going to care. But you want to make sure that maybe it's a unique angle on something that appeals to that audience, and that'll make a big difference. Mordy Oberstein: And again, build that out beforehand. I think a lot of the work that you're going to do for the pitch is done beforehand. So write an article, not about that exact topic, but adjacent to that topic. Build up that brand, your personal branding around that area in whatever topic you want to talk about so then when you go to pitch it, you have that cache of like, "Okay, I've done this before around this topic. I did an article here. I did an article there. I did an article here. Here's the next evolution of this topic that I'm going to do uniquely for you," but you have something you can kind of grab onto. Crystal Carter: Definitely make sure you have things that are adjace. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, that's my new word, by the way. I use it all the time. Crystal Carter: I noticed this. Mordy Oberstein: It's because there's a podcast that I listen to. This is great. It's going off-topic for a second. There's a sports podcast that I listen to, and it's the announcer for the New York Yankees is a sports nut, okay? And I don't know, 10 years ago, they brought in a guy who does a hip-hop show on another radio station in the morning to do the afternoon show that they do, the sports show, to get the younger audience. And it's a whole big audience fight because the real sports nuts don't like him because he's not a real sports guy. It's great. Sal from Staten Island does not like Peter. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay. Mordy Oberstein: But he uses that word all the time, and I stole it from him. Crystal Carter: Right, okay, okay. So you're picking up the lingo. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, from the cool people who happens to be another forty-year-old Jewish guy, so whatever. Crystal Carter: Hello, fellow kids. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Welcome to our podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Then there was another forty-year-old Jewish guy, Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry has a million years experience or whatever. He started when he was 14. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Crystal Carter: It's crazy. Barry, what? 14 years old, Fourteen-year-old Barry was like, "You need a website." Mordy Oberstein: Can I develop an app for you? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Here's some news about SEO. Crystal Carter: Right, straight in there. Straight in there, no flies on him. Mordy Oberstein: So by the way, in case you're new to our podcast, which, hi and welcome, this is the part we pivot into the SEO news by waxing poetic and/or trolling Barry Schwartz who does all the SEO news. Crystal Carter: And who is our co-host on It's New, which is a daily dose of little tidbits, little snippets of information on the latest SEO News. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. If you love SEO news, if you love this segment of the podcast, check out It's New on the Wix SEO Learning Hub. It's right there. You show up, you see Barry's face, see our faces, Greg Finn. Just click on that, get some daily news. Anyway, it's time for the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, one article for you this week, just one because it is a mouthful. This from Barry Schwartz over on seoroundtable.com, my interview with Google search liaison on the August 2024 core update. My interview not being my interview, but Barry's interview with Google search liaison, Danny Sullivan. I'm going to go into sports radio host announcer mode here with this. I have a bunch of comments to make. It's a great interview. There's a lot in there. There's way more than the true one that I can possibly put into the Snappy News, and I already feel like this section is not going to be so snappy at all. I'll link to the article in the show notes. Have a look at it. I'm pulling out some random quotes from Danny throughout the article. I'm just going to comment on them and try to be as forthright with my thoughts as possible in a productive way. Okay, where do I want to start? Let's see. Okay, Danny said, "Yes, we have increased the amount of social content that appears in search." He's talking about Reddit. "The social content is indeed helpful for many queries. It's not perfect, but we continue to improve on it, but it can be very helpful. It can be very helpful in some cases to hear from other people who are encountering health issues that are looking for support." So this obviously is a response to the whole Reddit's, I'll call it a snafu like Reddit here, Reddit there, Reddit everywhere. Danny said afterwards, "When Reddit is actually outranking the content that actually produced the original thought," which has happened. There's been a whole, I don't know, hoopla about that, and that's not good, but social content is great. I am somewhere in between on this. Yes, there are a lot of things where the social content can be really good. I think it's not diverse enough, meaning you don't have enough diversity in the forums, the diversity type of content. And as you'll see later, Danny does talk about more firsthand experience content that's not actually social. So I think the reality is somewhere in the middle there. So on the whole social thing, Danny was talking about, or Barry asked Danny about the hidden gems update, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and Danny was talking about they want a little bit more content that's not just social, that takes things from a authentic human voice point of view, beyond social. So for example, Danny said, "One of the sites I saw on the feedback, I'm referring to the feedback form they sent out with the March update, it helps you understand if something was in a movie or a TV show that you want to buy, that's amazing," he told me. Sullivan added, "I would like to see us do better by them, and it's where we're trying to find a way to do better surface this kind of authentic human voice type of content." So Google is looking to move past pure social media for human voice, human experience content. I've talked about that a lot. The Reddit is a default. They don't have anything better. They are looking for actual longer form web content that is human voice or human experience-centric. I don't think it exists. Here's my sports radio critic voice coming in, to me, part of the problem with that is Google. I don't think Google is rewarding that kind of content enough. Meaning content creators are just going to follow what Google is rewarding. That's how the incentive cycle works. So if Google's not rewarding that kind of content, what incentive are you creating to produce that kind of content? And on the same front, I don't think Google's doing enough to actually explain what that means. And this is where I feel like there's a little bit too much of a critique about Google and what's going on with the algorithm, yada, yada, yada. I think Google is trying to get it right. I don't think they're trying to mess things over, like Danny said, because our goal is if you're doing good content, we wanted you to be successful. I think it's a hundred percent true. They want the best content to rank. It's in their best interest. It's in their best bottom line interest. So I think a lot of the narrative like Google's just nefarious, they're not. Getting this algorithm right is complicated. I'll get into it in a little bit in a second, because I have another quote that I want to get into. I'm actually going to end on that quote. They're not trying to get this wrong. They are trying to reward the best content. Part of the problem is si that I don't think people really understand what they're talking about. Danny said, as I've said several times on social elsewhere, if you know you're producing great content for your readers, that's your touchstone, your North Star, whatever you want to call it, if you're feeling confused about what to do in terms of rankings. Again, Google has been saying over and over again, do what's good for your readers. Do what's good for your audience. Maybe it's a little bit of a hot take. I don't think the vast majority of the web understands what it means to create good content. What does that mean? As a former teacher, someone with a master's degree in education, the pedagogical approach Google has here is non-existent. It's basically Danny, and I don't think it's Danny's job. Okay, I'm ranting now. I don't think it's Danny's job. Danny's job isn't to be a teacher about content on the web. You need to have some kind of content liaison to basically show you what does it mean to create really good content. Because what you basically have is insanity. You have basically people going through the quality readers guidelines and trying to reverse engineer that to get an understanding of what quality content is. That's not going to be successful. And at a certain point, what happens is when Google goes out there... And I think their intentions are good here. I think Danny is doing a great job with this. I just think it's not his job. But he goes out there and starts talking about create good content for your users, yada, yada, yada, it falls on deaf ears at this point because there's not enough context behind it. What does that mean pedagogically? What does it mean to create good content? And Danny has done, I think, a good job trying to show the best that he can in his limited scope there. He gives a couple of examples of some sites who requested," Hey, here's some feedback on the March update. Why did we lose rankings?" And he's offering, "Hey, well, maybe you should have because you didn't do this," or, "Your content is not as good because of X, Y, and Z." And that's really good stuff, but it's a little bit here, it's a little bit there, and it's just pedagogically you're not creating a knowledge scheme. So I think there needs to be a little bit of a shift. If Google's really serious about getting that content created that really has a human voice to it, they need to, A, incentivize the content by ranking such content, but they also need to actually show you what that actually means and what that actually looks like a little bit more in depth. And I don't think this Danny's job. I don't think it's fair for anybody to think that's Danny's job. That was a mouthful. Okay. One of the things Danny said I wanted to also talk about really, really quick is basically says if you move from first to second on the SERP and you lost traffic because of that, and you can lose traffic because of that, it doesn't mean we don't like you, meaning Google doesn't like you. You're ranking number two. That's great. But you might just not have the ability to earn as much traffic as you did before. I want to touch on that point because I think sometimes as SEOs we're like, "Oh, we'll get you ranking number one and we'll get you the traffic," and Google could just move you to number two and it's impossible to know why they moved you to number two. And it can mean a significant traffic loss and there could be nothing to do about it. So sometimes we think we have control over the system or it's clearly mapped out. It's not always like that. I just wanted to make that point. Okay. The last thing, I have a bunch of other ones. I feel like I've gone on too long a little bit already, but I just wanted to end off on this one. Danny was talking about some of the sites. Obviously the big narrative with this whole update was the recovery from the helpful content update in September 2023, yada, yada, yada. So Danny said, "I do think that some of those sites will continue to see good gains if they're good sites," meaning some of the sites that saw a bit of a rebound will continue to see good gains, if they're good sites and if they're "producing good content for people." "I hope that they continue to go that way," Sullivan told me. So I'm a little bit confused about that. If, and maybe again here, I'm sports analytics talk show host too much of a hot take mode right now, so maybe I'm reading too much into this. I just want to be forthright in saying that. Maybe I am reading too much into this. But if the website Danny is saying is good, they're doing a good job, then why weren't they already rewarded? Now, I do want to say that if Danny would've said, and he does say later on in the interview that it's a constant process. You can't get this right in just one update. We're going to work towards it, make continual improvements and we'll eventually get there. That, I buy. It is really hard to get an algorithm exactly where you want it to go with a super complicated algorithm obviously. And getting it exactly where you want to go is going to be super, super complicated. And I think as hard as it is, and if you lost rankings and you lost business, I don't blame you for feeling angry and I don't even blame you for screaming at me for saying this right now, because I can't imagine what you're going through. But I do think there was a little bit too much anger at Google for not just getting it right. It's not easy to get it right. It is easier said than done. That's said, that wasn't what Danny was really saying here. You're saying, "Yeah, I think they'll continue to get good gains." But look at the quote in the actual full context of the interview. It made me walking away feeling like, and this is again my speculation, Google is trying to do something with the algorithm. That to me is very clear. They have a very purposeful thing that they're trying to do. I don't know what it is, but it seems big. What it seems like to me is that Google realizes the web is undergoing a paradigm shift in ways that I'm not sure we even understand yet. And they're trying to align the algorithm to that shift, or they're trying to engineer the shift. Either one of those two options. Getting these sites that Danny's talking about up and ranking to the levels that they're "supposed to be" perhaps contradicts or is in conflict with the overall shift that Google's trying to make. And what it seemed like to me, and again, I'm really reading into this, what it seemed like to me Danny was saying was he wants those sites to improve. He thinks those sites should improve. He hopes they will improve. But there's something else in the algorithm that's currently going on that would preclude them from getting that full boost right now, because Google's got other goals in mind and it can't just engineer the algorithm to focus on improving these websites. So that I thought was interesting. Again, I thought it was a little bit of an internal contradiction. If you think these websites are great and then they're wonderful and they're writing the content that you're talking about, people should create and they should be ranking, which goes back to my earlier point. If you can't get those websites ranking the way that they should be ranking, you're fundamentally not creating the incentive cycle you need for what Danny was talking about, the hidden gems, that experience-based content, yada, yada, yada. And I see it in the algorithm updates. You'll see a couple of sites that do that kind of thing, and they do get rewarded. There are cases like that. But then you also see a ton of not like that. And it's like, okay, how do I create an SEO strategy, or a content strategy rather, where I don't know what it's going to be? Could be Google gets rewarded, Google doesn't get rewarded. It's hard to create a strategy based on something that's so not concrete. But again, kudos to Danny for talking with Barry. There's a lot of good stuff in there. The truth I think is always somewhere in the middle with all these things. Is Google getting it totally wrong? No. Is Google getting it totally right. No. Are there major problems? Yes. Have a look at the article. I've gone way too long for the Snappy News. I apologize for my speculation, but I'm going to call it the way I see it and offer my take. This is a podcast and that's what we do. And that's this week's Snappy News, or Not So Snappy News. Again, if you're looking for more news, check out It's New. It's not new anymore. It's been around for a little bit, but the news is new, so that's why it's It's New. Crystal Carter: I like it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a good name. Anyway, which brings us to a new follower or rather a new person that you should be following on social media to get some more SEO and marketing awesomeness. This time we have Cheryl Draper for you. She used to be over at Moz and running MozCon, and now it looks like she's partnering up with Noah Lerner on a little SEO conference thingamajigger that's pending and forthcoming. That should be exciting. Crystal Carter: That should be really exciting. And she has so much experience. She recently posted that she's going to be collaborating with Noah Lerner, Sean Huber, Nick Leroy, to bring the SEO community together in San Diego around the Brighton SEO for a fringe event. And it should be really, really good. It's an SEO community bash called Brighton SEO Boardwalk Bash, which should be super cool. Cheryl is such a fantastic person. I was talking about conferences that nurture new speakers, and Cheryl and the team that she had there did some incredible work there. And I think that that's just part of the core of who she is, seeing someone who nurtures new talent and encourages people to do great things. And so I am under no doubt that she will be able to do some incredible things with her next endeavor and that the upcoming event will be really awesome. And it'll be great to see her because she brings such incredible energy to everything she does. Mordy Oberstein: So look for Cheryl on LinkedIn, and on X @CherylDraper. Link in the show notes. Yeah. Okay. So when's our flight to the next SEO conference now that we've clearly advocated that you should be going to SEO conferences? Crystal Carter: I'm just there for the swag. I'll be completely honest. Mordy Oberstein: Can I tell you one, time I showed up to a conference, it was Brighton SEO in the UK, and I didn't have enough room in my suitcase for swag. I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to go buy another bag to put all my swag." Is that wrong and silly? I don't care. Crystal Carter: Honestly. My recent one was the MozCon hat that I have, which a lot of people are like, "Oh my God, I love the hat. Mordy Oberstein: I love that hat. I'm jealous. Crystal Carter: Everybody loves that hat. People are like, "Where'd you get it?" I'm like, "Yeah, I know. It's a good hat." Mordy Oberstein: Yo, Moz people. Send me that hat. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I got it from the stat booth. I was like, "Yo, hook it up. But yeah, and we also have great swag. If you come and see us at Brighton SEO, we will be at Brighton SEO in the UK in Autumn. We will also be at Brighton SEO in San Diego in Autumn, and we will be at a number of other events with incredibly juicy, incredible, fantastic swag. So do come and check that out if you're in the vicinity. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we do a lot of live events, so come find us and take our swag. Crystal Carter: Yes. Yes. Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well that'll do it. Thank you for joining the The SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. Back next week with a new episode as we go into BotLogs, the Transformers Chronicle. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and resource on the Wix Studio Learning up at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Amanda Natividad Kelvin Newman Cheryl Draper Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App Sparktoro BrightonSEO News: My Interview Of Google's Search Liaison On The August 2024 Core Update Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Amanda Natividad Kelvin Newman Cheryl Draper Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App Sparktoro BrightonSEO News: My Interview Of Google's Search Liaison On The August 2024 Core Update Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who is the keynote to our podcast. The one, the only head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hear ye, hear ye. Here I am on the podcast speaking about things and in a keynote kind of way. That's not what people say. That would be a terrible, terrible way to open a keynote. Hear ye, hear ye, conference attendees. Mordy Oberstein: With a bell from the 1700s. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That sort of thing. People would- Mordy Oberstein: It sounds like the plague is coming. Crystal Carter: I don't think people would be into that, especially like ... Mordy Oberstein: Unless it was a conference about plagues. Crystal Carter: No. Well, I mean, yeah, I guess so. But I think they would be more worried. They'd be like, "No, is it?" They would have the details and they would be more worried. I don't think that if you were speaking to epidemiologists that that would be the way to open your conference. Mordy Oberstein: Probably not. If it's a really niche audience. Well, anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can get all of your events, structured data markup on all of your event pages on both Wix and Wix Studio done for you automatically. It's all automated and it all happens that you haven't got to do anything. That's what makes it great because that's automated. As this week we're talking about, should I even go to a digital marketing or SEO conference or event? How do you even know what conferences to go to and are they even worth it? What should your goals be when going to a live digital marketing event? And so you want to go to an SEO digital marketing conference, but how do you justify the cost? SparkToro's VP of marketing, Amanda Natividad will join us in just a jiffy to help you decide if you should punch your conference ticket or not. Plus, the founder of Brighton SEO's conference series, Kelvin Newman stops by the chat about how to pitch to be a speaker at a digital marketing conference. Plus, we have your Snappies of SEO News and who you should be following a social media for more SEO awesomeness. So join us as we help you summit the mountain that is deciding on the pros and cons of the digital marketing conference world as we expose you to a conference information fest on this, the 101st episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Did I miss any generic conference suffixes there? I got summit, con, world, expo and fest in there. Crystal Carter: I mean, you- Mordy Oberstein: That's a work or art, by the way. Crystal Carter: It was the kind of thing that a pundit on a panel might say. Mordy Oberstein: Well done. Well done. Okay. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much. Mordy Oberstein: So conferences are kind of costly, they can be. There's the trip itself, the flight, the hotel, the ticket for the actual conference, and does it actually make sense to go to a live conference? I don't pay for a webinar. I just kind of show up. What's the value of going to a conference? So please welcome to the show, the VP of Marketing over at SparkToro, which is a fabulous tool. I'm just going to say that I love that tool. Amanda Natividad, welcome to the SERP's Up podcast. Amanda Natividad: Hear ye, hear ye. I am here with my own cowbell of some sort. Crystal Carter: More cowbell. Mordy Oberstein: More cowbell. Crystal Carter: Always. Amanda Natividad: Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we're so happy you're here. Crystal Carter: So pleased to have you on the podcast. Honestly, a great person to talk to about this topic. Mordy Oberstein: Because full pitch, you are about to run your own conference. Amanda Natividad: Yes. Yeah, this is going to be SparkToro's first in-person conference, and we're really pumped about it. I mean, before I was marketing to marketers, I had some experience in running conferences for the HR and benefits space, and then of course my boss, Rand Fishkin, who people here might've heard have ... Obviously had built up MozCon and everything. So we have very strong opinions about conferences and we're really excited about it. I think we're really trying to do something different, something fresh, but we're also trying to figure out how to not market it that way because every conference organizer says, "No, we're different. We're fresh, we're exciting." And everyone is different in their own way. But we're going to try to figure out, well, we'll tell you what's different, and we'll position the conference around that. And then hopefully you will agree that it is different and that you will want to come. Mordy Oberstein: Where can people find it? Amanda Natividad: Oh, people can find it on the SparkToro website, sparktoro.com/sparktogether. This is the day long Spark Together summit. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Link in the show notes. Crystal Carter: And I think the thing that really makes the conference is really the vibe. That's really, really what makes the difference between one conference or another, because people will have ... A lot of conferences will have speakers and they'll have expos, and they'll have exhibitors and they'll have merch, and they'll have things like that. But really the difference is when you get there, how it feels, which is very, very tricky to, I don't know, quantify or whatever, but I certainly know that your team, the team at SparkToro, I don't think I would be wrong in describing you small but mighty. I think you've discussed that your team, you keep it tight for a reason. And I think that one of the things I'm really excited for about the event is I've met you in person. I know you energy. I've met Rand in person, I know his energy, and I know that the kinds of things that you as a team prioritize and I think it's going to be a great event because you'll be able to bring that emphasis, that energy into a real life space. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, that's absolutely the hope. I mean, so I have been toying with the idea of positioning it around, this is like an executive retreat except everyone's invited. Crystal Carter: Right. Amanda Natividad: That's kind of the vibe we want. And so by that, that means, I guess I haven't had a ton of experience with this, but I've gotten to go to a couple of events that were like founders retreats essentially, where various founders have spoken vulnerably about their stories. Like, "Here's where I got to where I am today." Or, "Here's about this time that I sold my business, and it actually went really well. But here are all the steps that we took to make sure that we were giving our employees great compensation." Things like that, that not everyone talks about at a conference. So we wanted to encapsulate that, which is why it's a storytelling conference. That's another thing we say, where each speaker is invited, speakers that we've invited, we've chosen and we've asked them to share a story that they've never told before. Something vulnerable, something really candid that has some kind of really transparent detail that they've never shared. Because our belief is that that's how we best learn. We best learn through stories and we learn through other people sharing their experiences, warts and all. So we have that. And then the other piece is, especially because it's our first event, we're keeping it relatively small. We have a goal of getting to 200 attendees. I think at the time of this recording, we have 30 or 40 tickets left and a couple months to go. So fingers crossed we get there. And the other thing we want to do is because it's going to be small enough, we're also hosting this sort of mini mastermind session where we'll put people into small groups. We'll have facilitators run the hour or so, and invite people to share a business problem that they have, a marketing problem they have, and have the group kind of workshop it together. So that's kind of the retreat sort of aspect. Mordy Oberstein: I really like that storytelling. That sounds really, really interesting because I'll say this, I don't want to sound like a snob when I say this. I've been to a lot of conferences before over the many, many years, and at this point, my conference journey, I don't really enjoy the session so much. That's not why I'm going to a conference at this point. So hearing something like it's someone sharing something they never really told before, it's a little more vulnerable. I would actually be interested in hearing that because I haven't experienced that. And I think that when you're deciding to go to a conference, I think that's one of the things you have to think about is, where are you on the spectrum right now? Because younger me would a million percent want to go do all of the sessions and would gain value from all the sessions. Whereas older me, because I'm an old person ... I'm actually middle age, which is ... My back hurts, which freaks me out. Crystal Carter: You are lucky if it's just your back. I'm just saying. Mordy Oberstein: It's not just my back. Older me doesn't find that same value anymore. So if you think, "Should I go to a conference or should I not go to a conference?" I think that's the wrong question. It's like, where are you right now? What will you get out of a conference at this point in your career? Amanda Natividad: Yeah. You know what, added to that, you also mentioned this at the intro of the show about where we may be as an industry, or maybe not industry, but the average attendee is at is, there's a lot of great content on YouTube, a lot of really good webinars where people are sharing playbooks, tactics, and those are great. But I guess what I as an organizer think about are, well, you can get all that already on YouTube, other webinars, and I don't know if people are going to come to our conference because they want the best tactics. I feel like it's because of the experience as a whole. And the experience as a whole is going to sessions that you wouldn't see otherwise online. So that's the other thing. At Spark Together, we're asking speakers to share a story but only tell that story at our conference. And that's kind of it. And it's not going to be recorded. And we are also going to foster the networking aspects so that it's going to be a little bit easier for people to meet people. We're going to have it at a nice venue. All the things that you can't really do online. So I actually feel like it's more important than ever that conference organizers really try to double down on the experience as a whole or on the networking aspect. Or it could be anything, right? Maybe it's food, maybe it's like this is a luxury kind of conference, you're going to get like multi-course meals. I don't know. But I just made that up obviously. Crystal Carter: I think also one of the things that I really value, I go to a lot of conferences, I speak at a lot of conferences. I volunteer at the Women in Tech SEO conferences. I've spoken at those as well. We've exhibited at Brighton SEO on a few occasions. So I do a lot of conference stuff. The thing that I really enjoy about the in-person aspect of it is being surrounded by your peers I think is super, super important. I went to a conference right after the Content Goblins Verge article came out, and it was so much fun seeing people wearing Content Goblins and somebody with an inflatable alligator and that sort of stuff. That's great. And it makes you feel, I think a lot of times marketers can very often be the only one. They are the head marketer and they're the only marketer at their company. And even in larger companies, you might be the SEO or you might be the one person who's handling that particular aspect in there and you're not able to bounce things off. So even being in the audience and hearing the questions that other people are asking, you can go, "Oh, yes, I have been wondering about that, and I'm not the only, that's great." And so that feeling of connecting with your peers I think is really, really valuable. So I think you mastermind bringing people together for networking, that's a great aspect of it. I think it's really, really important to facilitate and make spaces for that. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, I'm excited about it. And Crystal, now I'm very curious to hear from you, since you go to so many conferences and in different capacities, I imagine you have a top three or five that you really, really like for various reasons. So maybe of three, let's say random, because I don't want to say, hey, force rank all of them, but what are some of the things that you love about some of your favorite conferences? Crystal Carter: So first of all, Amanda, this is my podcast and I asked the questions. Second of all, thank you. So yeah, so one of the things I like, I remember being at Brighton SEO San Diego for the first one and Mordy was there as well, and we had a great time. One of the things that I found that was so much fun was that I literally met people, I was walking by and I looked at somebody's lanyard and we had him on the podcast, Will was on the podcast. And I was like, "You're the SEO from the Mayo Clinic." And it was literally, I had a full fan girl experience because I am fascinated by the SEO of the Mayo Clinic. And I walked by and I was like, "Oh my God, you work on the Mayo Clinic. That's amazing." Similarly, when I was at MozCon last time, I was sharing data from Rick Steve's community blog, and I was like, "Yeah, the Rick Steve community blog, they've seen loads of this massive hockey stick from the discussions and forums feature on Google." And I heard a whoop from the crowd. And then in lunchtime, the community blog SEO from Rick Steve's was like, "That's my blog. That was me whooping." I got a picture with them. Do you know what I mean? Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Crystal Carter: You're making the face that I was making, which was like, "Oh my God." So I think that, and that's what I mean with that peer thing is that you meet people. I met the SEO team from Suzuki, and I have a Suzuki and I love my car. And I was like, "Oh my God." And they were like, "We told our boss that you were so excited about it…" So I think it's really fun to find those moments of connectivity within your industry. And I think that that can really help invigorate how you feel about what you do and help you to keep going with learning. You meet people who you've only met online and things like that. And Mordy, I can see you want to jump in as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You sit here, I work remotely. So you sit here, you think, I am this weirdo who's doing SEO stuff and there's no one else out there. I mean, you see people on social media, whatever, but that connection of like, "Oh, there are other people who are like me," does motivate you, and I wouldn't sell that short. It is a really, really, really important thing. I'm not saying that's going to be the thing that you're going to say to your boss like, "Hey, I'm going to go so I feel like emotionally reinvigorated." That's probably not what's going to sell them on spending all that money to send you. But for yourself, it's really important you come back, you're motivated, you feel connected to a whole community, and that has a lot of psychological value that I wouldn't discount. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you're also able to ask people, like whenever I speak, people come up to me and they're like, "Well, how did you do that? Tell me more about this." Or I have people who are like, "Yeah, I'm running..." So I talked about forums at my last MozCon. The guys from Houzz, which is a design website, they came and talked to me about their thing and what they're experiencing and lots of great stuff. I know people go and talk to Lily Rae about all the different things that she's doing. As a speaker, honestly, I got to chat to Britney Muller for ages at MozCon. Fan girl me was losing her mind, I'm not going to lie. And so I think that there are incredible opportunities to connect with people in a way that you cannot do online when you join an in-person event, and there's plenty of time to do that as well. And you're focused because you're there. You're not being distracted by additional activities and things like that. So yeah, I think that in-person conferences are really, really super valuable. Mordy Oberstein: Amanda, you were just at MozCon, right? Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so- Amanda Natividad: What was it like? Mordy Oberstein: I missed it. A little bit of a FOMO, but we were talking about it before we started recording, it was a great event. What for you made that an event that worked for you? Amanda Natividad: The experience as a whole was great. What were some of the highlights? The food was really good. They had some good treats. They had mochi donuts. I can't say that first. Crystal Carter: The donuts were phenomenal. Amanda Natividad: They were so good. Crystal Carter: I had four of those donuts. They were delicious. Amanda Natividad: Yeah. Oh, they were so good. Honestly, really not just saying this, but the photo booth that you guys had set up for headshots was such a standout for me because I was like, "Oh, I haven't taken a headshot in six years." And it's not something I'm going to pay for just because I don't know, I'm cheap or whatever. I guess personally, I don't think to like, "Oh, I'm going to get a professional photo of myself." I just don't think that way. So when I saw it, I was like, "I need to do this." And then the photographer that you had was so mindful about each person. He took his time with each person. He showed me how to fix my hair, which no one had ever showed me how to do because I get these flyaways, right? He was like, "Smooth them out." He was like, "Smooth out your hair." He's like, "Pull it into two sections, smooth it out, and then smooth it out again." I was like, "Oh, oh, the flyaway is gone." But no one had ever taught me that before. But that's a small thing. Those things matter because I, as an attendee, felt really special for five to 10 minutes. And I'm not a speaker there. I was there to just hang out. I felt so special, got to cross something off my to-do list. But the other thing that was really special for me was, well, meeting a bunch of speakers who I was previously friendly with, who I was finally meeting in person. That was great. But one key moment for me was I met someone who was a big fan of Rand Fishkin, and he was like, "Oh, I'm a fan of you too," or, "I like you," or whatever it was. We had a nice conversation and he mentioned, he was like, "Do you know if Rand is going to stay?" He's like, "It would mean the world to me to meet him, because he's the reason I got into SEO and stayed." And I was like, my heart. I was like, oh. I was like, "He's not staying after. I will make sure that you meet him." And this person was like, "Okay. And I'm like, "No, we'll find him." And then Rand came by eventually, and I was like, "Rand, come here. You have to meet this person." He came over and this guy was so sweet. He was like, "Could you sign my book?" And he came from, I think he traveled from Nicaragua and he brought his book with... His Lost and Founder book. And I was like, "Oh my gosh. He traveled with that for this in case he got to meet Rand." So of course Rand signed it. And then I was like, wait, I got to get into full.... I don't know what this is, like momager mode maybe. But I was like, "You guys should also take a picture." And I saw his soul leave his body. He was like... I think he even made that sound… Mordy Oberstein: Like that aura sound, the heavens have opened. Nice. Amanda Natividad: I took a picture. Let's take a couple. So I took a couple and he was shaking and it was the sweetest thing ever. And then at some point I could sense that he was blacking out and not saying anything. So then I was just like, "Rand, you are the reason he got into SEO and stayed." And then he finally snapped in. He was like, "Yes," and then was able to talk again. But it was the most adorable thing. And I started to cry because, just to see somebody who was also just so influenced by Rand and to finally to see on his face, "Holy crap, one of my professional dreams is coming true right now," to be able to witness that for someone else was incredible. I was crying. I was like, "Don't look at me." It was a whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: So super hard contrast because that's a great story. That person didn't sell their boss on, I really want to get my book signed by Rand because I got inspired by Rand. There's no boss, unfortunately, who's going to say, "You know what? I'm going to fly from Nicaragua to Seattle. I'm going to put you at a hotel, pay for the conference. You got it." How would that person sell the conference? How do you sell it? Because all the things we're talking about are things, unfortunately, and I say unfortunately, that your boss probably doesn't care about. Crystal Carter: Dude, you're killing the buzz. Mordy Oberstein: I told you hard contrast. First off, you're expecting something different from me other than killing the vibe? Crystal Carter: This is our hundredth and one podcast, Mordy. No, I'm not expecting anything different. Amanda Natividad: Well, now, it's like, oh, the rain cloud just came on this beautiful story. But you're right. No, you are right. You can't tell your boss, "Oh, it would mean the world to me to maybe meet this one speaker who's been formative in my career." Sure, any decent boss would be like, "Oh, that's really cool." That's not a reason to expense this. I think that's when people say, right, because we... Rand did this survey several weeks ago maybe about why people choose an event, and the number one reason was the content, because I think it goes back to when you go to your boss and you're like, "Hey, I need to buy a plane ticket, get a hotel, but I can get a discount or I'll stay at a cheap hotel. I need to buy this ticket." Then it's like, okay, why are you going? And then you as an attendee, a person who wants to expense it, ultimately what you have to lean on is, well, the content's going to be really great. And I think it's figuring out what's unique about the content or speakers that you can position to your boss. So for SparkTogether, I might say, look, these are brand new talks of all these... Here's a speaker list. Look, some of these people are agency founders like us, or they are people who've built their audiences from scratch, and I really want to learn from them. But here are the people that are relevant to us and our business needs. Here's why I think they're relevant. They're also going to tell stories or give presentations. If your boss doesn't care about stories, they're going to give presentations they've never given before, and it's only for this audience and it's not going to be recorded, so I have to be there in person to learn all this. And they're going to tell all these stories and here's some examples. Someone once told a story about this multi-million dollar or million dollar content project that failed or near failed, and they had to fix it two days prior. I want to learn from that story. Or I'm going to learn from this person who they are an agency founder who had to meet some ridiculous, lofty revenue goal of, I think going from five figure ARR to going to over... or was it AR... Yeah, no, I think it was five figure ARR because it was small to get it to over 200K in three months. That's a ridiculous goal. So I want to learn from these people, and this is the only way that I can do it. I think that's one case you can make. Crystal Carter: I think also it can be extremely good value for money. If you think about an all day conference and you're going to all the sessions and you're hearing about all those different things, if you go to a good conference with good speakers, every single speaker is going to be giving you resources, links, stuff that you may not have considered. I'm thinking of, I watched Talia Wolf's talk at MozCon this year, for instance, and she was just like resource after resource after resource, link, link, link, link, link. And I was like, oh my God, if you've ever watched Aleyda Solis speak, she's like this one and that one and that one, and she'll give you a full play by play. Similarly, I think people underestimate the value of the exhibitors, but I've been to conferences, like MarTech conferences where I've seen stuff that I didn't even know existed. There were exhibitors there who were... And they're like, "This is my new stuff. This is my best thing." Because they spent money on the booth, they're doing the thing. So they're like, "This is my best thing that I have to show." And I remember seeing heat maps, but this is way, way, way, way, way back in the day. But I was stood there and they were like, "Yeah, we can track your eyeballs." I was like, "You can track my eyeballs?" I remember being blown away by this. I'm dating myself. But the exhibitors are able to show you stuff that you might not have even considered. They'll be giving away discounts on things, they'll be giving away things like that. And I think that if you were to think about how long it would take you to do CPD, that same kind of CPD over the course of a year or something, whereas how much you can get done in two days of all of those resources, all of that learning, all of that knowledge, those mastermind sessions you're talking about, the networking where you can meet other people who are connected to you, it can be very good value for money if you're thinking about it in that way. Mordy Oberstein: And just find that pain point. Every company is dealing with something. I don't know, AI overviews. How do we going to handle AI overviews? Well, so-and-so is speaking at whatever conference, and they wrote a whole bunch of articles about AI overviews. I would like to pick that... Mike King and Rand are going to be at the conference. I would like to pick their brains about AI overviews. So it's the sessions and who's going to be there that can help you solve business problems that you're currently facing because you're always facing some kind of thing. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, as you were saying that, I had an idea for marketing our conference. It's like, oh, I got to put a pin in that for later, because this is a really good idea because you called out Mike King and Rand Fishkin. And Mike King is speaking at SparkTogether. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Amanda Natividad: I was like, "Oh gosh, I need to write specific value props for each session and speaker, and then somehow send them to people." Anyway, sorry. That was weird. Mordy Oberstein: That's what we're here for. This is a brainstorm session. Crystal Carter: Yeah, anytime. Anytime you want to kick the tires. Amanda Natividad: Yeah, this is like a public brainstorm, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We should totally record actual brainstorm sessions. Then we would have the pinata idea for the conference, which is brilliant. Anyway, I'll tell you about that after the recording though. After the recording, Amanda Natividad: What comes out of the pinata? Is it going to be with stickers? Crystal Carter: Moving on. Mordy Oberstein: I think we have to move on. Amanda, where can people find you? Amanda Natividad: Oh, they can find me... Well, let's see. I'm mostly on LinkedIn nowadays. My personal site is amandanat.com, but mostly really go to Sparktoro.com, try out our audio research tool and consider coming to SparkTogether. We would love to have you. And I'll hug you in person if you're the hugging type. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. We'll put all the links in the show notes. Check out Amanda's and Rand's content on social media. It's really, really good. Those videos are great. I really enjoy them, the little ones that Rand's putting on LinkedIn. I even comment sometimes. I never comment on LinkedIn stuff. So big shout out for that, and thank you so much for joining us. Amanda Natividad: Thank you for having me. This so fun. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. So sometimes you don't want to attend a digital marketing conference. No, no, no. You want to speak at a digital marketing conference. But before that happens, you have to pitch to the conference and get that pitch accepted. And there's no one I can think of more qualified than the founder of brightonSEO himself to help you understand the best way to do that. So here's Kelvin Newman as he joins us for a little segment that we call Across the Wixverse. Oh, so before I get to Kelvin's little tips here, why am I calling it across the Wixverse because usually we talk to Wix folks about across the Wixverse? But in case you were wondering, we have been headlining brightonSEO for a good while now, the UK and- Yeah. And San Diego. So I kind feel like we're one big happy family. So it's across the Wixverse. Crystal Carter: There we go. There we go. Yeah, it's such a brilliant experience working with the brightonSEO team. Shout out to Kelvin and shout out to Andrea as well, and everybody there who does great work. Mordy Oberstein: They're really great to work with. So if you want to work with them and sponsor them as well, I'd recommend it. How's that for an endorsement? Okay. Anyway, enough of that. Here's Kelvin Newman on how to pitch to a digital marketing conference. Voiceover: Three, two, one, ignition. Liftoff. Liftoff. Kelvin Newman: Want to become a speaker at one of our events? Well, I wanted to share some practical advice on what we look for in speaker pitches. Now, first up, it's good to know that we get tons of speaker interest in brightonSEO. We could program a hundred tracks and still have more pitches than we have available slots, so it's quite competitive in that selection process. When we're choosing the talks, we tend to focus on speakers with advanced and practical knowledge that they're putting into their pitch. We also love working with new people too, so don't let a lack of experience put you off. In fact, actually sometimes being a first-time speaker can sometimes aid and help your application. We handle all of our pitches via a form that's up at brightonseo.com/pitch. We don't take pitches via LinkedIn or email. And by filling in that form, we get to know you a bit better, your background, your interests, and what we're most interested in, the potential topics for future events. So do spend some time thinking about that topic title as it's one of the key elements that we use when assessing pitches. We don't have a formal pitch timeline. If we like your submission, we'll reach out when we're planning the next event. We normally start planning about six months before the conference and invite people in waves as well. It's worth saying we only get back to successful speakers and we never fully decline a talk. So when we're inviting those speakers in waves, we like to have options if speaking starts to open up because people do and often have to drop out of events. And sometimes we can have people changing topics and all that kind of thing, so we like to have a bit of flexibility there. So we never formally decline a talk because a talk's always in consideration. We may indeed even roll your pitch forward to a future event as well. But if you don't hear back from us at that moment in time, you haven't been selected. Here's some practical advice as well in terms of what we're looking for in the talk topics themselves. We like them to be actionable. Our audience loves practical how-to information. So aim for takeaways like tasks, tools or recommendations that people can go and immediately put on their to-do list. Also try and make you talk specific. So the more specific the topic is the more likely it is to be chosen and reflect that in your pitch as well. So detailed titles and descriptions tend to win us over, so we like those. It's very clear what it's talking about rather than a big, broad topic. And usually the more detail there, the easier it is for us to understand what you're going to be talking about. And we also suggest that you avoid the basics. Our audience generally is not new to digital marketing. It's not new to search marketing measurement, web analytics and paid search and all that kind of thing as well. So generally speaking, aiming your talks at intermediate or maybe even advanced audience members is a good way of getting your talk selected. Yeah, no self-promotion. We avoid pitches that focus too much on your tool or your clients. A case study can occasionally be good, but make it about the audience, not you. Again, if you've done some particular research or it's a new piece of information or a research project, that can often be a nice thing to have in your pitch. And also be authoritative. It is really, really good if you know your subject inside and out. If you can demonstrate that here's a blog post I've written about it, here's a video, here's a previous talk I've done around that, that can often help you as well. And also keep the topic tight. Most of our talks are 20 minutes long. That is not a lot of time. We'll often get many pitches that look very good and potentially could be very, very good talks, but just the scope of what they're intending to cover is too broad for our particular program. So keep it tight, keep it the kind of thing that would definitely work in 10 to 15 minutes. Even though you've probably got 20, that will give you a bit more space to play with. And also, if you've spoken at lots of events before, rather than pitching again, I'd really encourage you to try and find a friend or a colleague, someone you know who's not spoken at an event before and mentor or encourage them to put themselves forward rather than applying for your 25th speaking slot. That's good karma as well. So yeah, if you've got an idea for a pitch, we will very soon be looking at the pitch ideas for our 2025 conferences. Go to brightonseo.com/pitch and get that submission in. Voiceover: 3, 2, 1, ignition, lift off. Crystal Carter: He's got some great insights there on first-time speakers. And I think that brightonSEO in particular, the UK edition is literally the biggest SEO conference in the world, and they are incredibly welcoming to first-time speakers. I remember the first time I spoke at brightonSEO, and they were really friendly. They have a whole program that supports first-time speakers. So not only are they welcoming to people, but also they have a presentation support. So they have a day in London where you can go and you can practice with somebody if you're not used to presenting. They also have a little group chat so that you can talk to other first-time presenters, and they also help you figure out your accommodation, all that sort of stuff. So they're really, really supportive. And I think that it's really, if you're looking to be a first-time speaker, it's good to look at conferences that welcome first-time speakers because they tend to also have that kind of support, which is really, really valuable and can help you move forward if that is a thing that you want to do. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's one of the great things about brightonSEO is their speaker line-up really is diverse and they do really have people you never really heard of before, which is I think unique for a digital marketing conference in general. I found it interesting, by the way, the focus on the title that he mentioned because you would think like, no, I'm going to have a description in there and it's really purposeful and it'll be really impactful and meaningful and yada, yada, and it might be. But I think you have to realize, maybe I'm reading between the lines here, Kelvin, by the way, thank you Kelvin for that submission. We shouldn't thank you yet. I would read between the lines of what he's saying. They're getting probably hundreds, maybe more of pitches and sifting through them as difficult. And having a headline like an article you're writing on your website, having a catchy headline is a way to pull that reader in, in this case the founder or the review board of the conference. You might think don't put such emphasis on the catchy title. I'll catchify it later once I get the pitch accepted, but maybe do it now so that you get their attention, and then have the very meaningful and prolific substantial description of what you want to talk about. Crystal Carter: And I think the other thing is so have a look at the, brightonSEO has their pitch form available all year round. It's really, really useful to give you the kind of idea for what somebody is looking for from any conference speaking pitch. So they ask you to send in your pitch title, the information. They also ask you to send in links to your social media profile. They also ask you to send in links to any talks that you've done or any articles that you've written, which basically helps them to realize how... Because it may be that you're a great SEO, you're a great marketer, you're a great agency owner, but maybe you're not big, maybe you don't have a huge following just yet, for instance. That doesn't mean that you don't have information to give. That doesn't mean that you don't have value to add. But if you've written an article somewhere, if you've done a webinar that you can share, if you've done a podcast that you can share, that's show don't tell, which is really, really, really valuable. And I think that sometimes with people who are like, "Oh, I want to do speaking." I'm like, "Cool. You don't necessarily have to go straight in on stage. You can demonstrate your expertise in a few other ways." And the blog could be on your own blog. The blog could be on LinkedIn. The blog could be wherever. It could even be a really good LinkedIn post. Let's say you write a really good LinkedIn post. Some people write whole essays on LinkedIn and let's say it went viral, or let's say you did one of those little carousel things. I know people who do really well with those as well. You can share those, for instance, to give people the kind of idea of how you do what you do, and that helps people to qualify you as a speaker, even if you haven't done speaking before. And if you can show that people are interested in what you're talking about, let's say a viral post or something that's got a little bit of, not necessarily attitude, but I guess personality can be really, really useful. Mordy Oberstein: I'll say also if you pitch and you don't get accepted, it's a numbers game to a certain extent. It's par for the course to not get accepted to multiple conferences. It's probably expected that you're going to pitch to 100 and get accepted to one kind of thing, so don't be too hard on yourself. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I think also in terms of the numbers game, supply and demand. For SEO for instance, there's a lot of people that are going to be talking about keyword research. How are you talking about it in a different way, for instance? Almost every year, almost every time before brightonSEO Kelvin puts out a shout saying, "We need more technical SEO talks." So for instance, if you are somebody who is able to talk about technical SEO, you're probably more likely to get through than somebody who's talking about say content marketing because there's a lot of content marketing folks. And I think also the personality type of content marketers tends to be more like, "Yeah, let's talk about all the things," and technical SEO folks tend to be more like head down looking at a million spreadsheets, that sort of thing. So I think that when you're thinking about it, and this is I think what he was talking about with the talk title, try to find an angle that's unique. That if there's something that you feel that people aren't talking about, try to find that to talk about. It's certainly something that I try to do when I'm pitching, and it's certainly something that I think I've seen be really effective. Now, you don't want to go too far out in the weeds. You don't want to be pitching, I don't know, a JavaScript deep dive talk to a content marketing thing. If it's not positioned for content marketers, you don't want to be like, "Oh yeah, here's how you do Ruby on Rails." They're not going to care. But you want to make sure that maybe it's a unique angle on something that appeals to that audience, and that'll make a big difference. Mordy Oberstein: And again, build that out beforehand. I think a lot of the work that you're going to do for the pitch is done beforehand. So write an article, not about that exact topic, but adjacent to that topic. Build up that brand, your personal branding around that area in whatever topic you want to talk about so then when you go to pitch it, you have that cache of like, "Okay, I've done this before around this topic. I did an article here. I did an article there. I did an article here. Here's the next evolution of this topic that I'm going to do uniquely for you," but you have something you can kind of grab onto. Crystal Carter: Definitely make sure you have things that are adjace. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, that's my new word, by the way. I use it all the time. Crystal Carter: I noticed this. Mordy Oberstein: It's because there's a podcast that I listen to. This is great. It's going off-topic for a second. There's a sports podcast that I listen to, and it's the announcer for the New York Yankees is a sports nut, okay? And I don't know, 10 years ago, they brought in a guy who does a hip-hop show on another radio station in the morning to do the afternoon show that they do, the sports show, to get the younger audience. And it's a whole big audience fight because the real sports nuts don't like him because he's not a real sports guy. It's great. Sal from Staten Island does not like Peter. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay. Mordy Oberstein: But he uses that word all the time, and I stole it from him. Crystal Carter: Right, okay, okay. So you're picking up the lingo. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, from the cool people who happens to be another forty-year-old Jewish guy, so whatever. Crystal Carter: Hello, fellow kids. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Welcome to our podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Then there was another forty-year-old Jewish guy, Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry has a million years experience or whatever. He started when he was 14. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Crystal Carter: It's crazy. Barry, what? 14 years old, Fourteen-year-old Barry was like, "You need a website." Mordy Oberstein: Can I develop an app for you? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Here's some news about SEO. Crystal Carter: Right, straight in there. Straight in there, no flies on him. Mordy Oberstein: So by the way, in case you're new to our podcast, which, hi and welcome, this is the part we pivot into the SEO news by waxing poetic and/or trolling Barry Schwartz who does all the SEO news. Crystal Carter: And who is our co-host on It's New, which is a daily dose of little tidbits, little snippets of information on the latest SEO News. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. If you love SEO news, if you love this segment of the podcast, check out It's New on the Wix SEO Learning Hub. It's right there. You show up, you see Barry's face, see our faces, Greg Finn. Just click on that, get some daily news. Anyway, it's time for the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, one article for you this week, just one because it is a mouthful. This from Barry Schwartz over on seoroundtable.com, my interview with Google search liaison on the August 2024 core update. My interview not being my interview, but Barry's interview with Google search liaison, Danny Sullivan. I'm going to go into sports radio host announcer mode here with this. I have a bunch of comments to make. It's a great interview. There's a lot in there. There's way more than the true one that I can possibly put into the Snappy News, and I already feel like this section is not going to be so snappy at all. I'll link to the article in the show notes. Have a look at it. I'm pulling out some random quotes from Danny throughout the article. I'm just going to comment on them and try to be as forthright with my thoughts as possible in a productive way. Okay, where do I want to start? Let's see. Okay, Danny said, "Yes, we have increased the amount of social content that appears in search." He's talking about Reddit. "The social content is indeed helpful for many queries. It's not perfect, but we continue to improve on it, but it can be very helpful. It can be very helpful in some cases to hear from other people who are encountering health issues that are looking for support." So this obviously is a response to the whole Reddit's, I'll call it a snafu like Reddit here, Reddit there, Reddit everywhere. Danny said afterwards, "When Reddit is actually outranking the content that actually produced the original thought," which has happened. There's been a whole, I don't know, hoopla about that, and that's not good, but social content is great. I am somewhere in between on this. Yes, there are a lot of things where the social content can be really good. I think it's not diverse enough, meaning you don't have enough diversity in the forums, the diversity type of content. And as you'll see later, Danny does talk about more firsthand experience content that's not actually social. So I think the reality is somewhere in the middle there. So on the whole social thing, Danny was talking about, or Barry asked Danny about the hidden gems update, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and Danny was talking about they want a little bit more content that's not just social, that takes things from a authentic human voice point of view, beyond social. So for example, Danny said, "One of the sites I saw on the feedback, I'm referring to the feedback form they sent out with the March update, it helps you understand if something was in a movie or a TV show that you want to buy, that's amazing," he told me. Sullivan added, "I would like to see us do better by them, and it's where we're trying to find a way to do better surface this kind of authentic human voice type of content." So Google is looking to move past pure social media for human voice, human experience content. I've talked about that a lot. The Reddit is a default. They don't have anything better. They are looking for actual longer form web content that is human voice or human experience-centric. I don't think it exists. Here's my sports radio critic voice coming in, to me, part of the problem with that is Google. I don't think Google is rewarding that kind of content enough. Meaning content creators are just going to follow what Google is rewarding. That's how the incentive cycle works. So if Google's not rewarding that kind of content, what incentive are you creating to produce that kind of content? And on the same front, I don't think Google's doing enough to actually explain what that means. And this is where I feel like there's a little bit too much of a critique about Google and what's going on with the algorithm, yada, yada, yada. I think Google is trying to get it right. I don't think they're trying to mess things over, like Danny said, because our goal is if you're doing good content, we wanted you to be successful. I think it's a hundred percent true. They want the best content to rank. It's in their best interest. It's in their best bottom line interest. So I think a lot of the narrative like Google's just nefarious, they're not. Getting this algorithm right is complicated. I'll get into it in a little bit in a second, because I have another quote that I want to get into. I'm actually going to end on that quote. They're not trying to get this wrong. They are trying to reward the best content. Part of the problem is si that I don't think people really understand what they're talking about. Danny said, as I've said several times on social elsewhere, if you know you're producing great content for your readers, that's your touchstone, your North Star, whatever you want to call it, if you're feeling confused about what to do in terms of rankings. Again, Google has been saying over and over again, do what's good for your readers. Do what's good for your audience. Maybe it's a little bit of a hot take. I don't think the vast majority of the web understands what it means to create good content. What does that mean? As a former teacher, someone with a master's degree in education, the pedagogical approach Google has here is non-existent. It's basically Danny, and I don't think it's Danny's job. Okay, I'm ranting now. I don't think it's Danny's job. Danny's job isn't to be a teacher about content on the web. You need to have some kind of content liaison to basically show you what does it mean to create really good content. Because what you basically have is insanity. You have basically people going through the quality readers guidelines and trying to reverse engineer that to get an understanding of what quality content is. That's not going to be successful. And at a certain point, what happens is when Google goes out there... And I think their intentions are good here. I think Danny is doing a great job with this. I just think it's not his job. But he goes out there and starts talking about create good content for your users, yada, yada, yada, it falls on deaf ears at this point because there's not enough context behind it. What does that mean pedagogically? What does it mean to create good content? And Danny has done, I think, a good job trying to show the best that he can in his limited scope there. He gives a couple of examples of some sites who requested," Hey, here's some feedback on the March update. Why did we lose rankings?" And he's offering, "Hey, well, maybe you should have because you didn't do this," or, "Your content is not as good because of X, Y, and Z." And that's really good stuff, but it's a little bit here, it's a little bit there, and it's just pedagogically you're not creating a knowledge scheme. So I think there needs to be a little bit of a shift. If Google's really serious about getting that content created that really has a human voice to it, they need to, A, incentivize the content by ranking such content, but they also need to actually show you what that actually means and what that actually looks like a little bit more in depth. And I don't think this Danny's job. I don't think it's fair for anybody to think that's Danny's job. That was a mouthful. Okay. One of the things Danny said I wanted to also talk about really, really quick is basically says if you move from first to second on the SERP and you lost traffic because of that, and you can lose traffic because of that, it doesn't mean we don't like you, meaning Google doesn't like you. You're ranking number two. That's great. But you might just not have the ability to earn as much traffic as you did before. I want to touch on that point because I think sometimes as SEOs we're like, "Oh, we'll get you ranking number one and we'll get you the traffic," and Google could just move you to number two and it's impossible to know why they moved you to number two. And it can mean a significant traffic loss and there could be nothing to do about it. So sometimes we think we have control over the system or it's clearly mapped out. It's not always like that. I just wanted to make that point. Okay. The last thing, I have a bunch of other ones. I feel like I've gone on too long a little bit already, but I just wanted to end off on this one. Danny was talking about some of the sites. Obviously the big narrative with this whole update was the recovery from the helpful content update in September 2023, yada, yada, yada. So Danny said, "I do think that some of those sites will continue to see good gains if they're good sites," meaning some of the sites that saw a bit of a rebound will continue to see good gains, if they're good sites and if they're "producing good content for people." "I hope that they continue to go that way," Sullivan told me. So I'm a little bit confused about that. If, and maybe again here, I'm sports analytics talk show host too much of a hot take mode right now, so maybe I'm reading too much into this. I just want to be forthright in saying that. Maybe I am reading too much into this. But if the website Danny is saying is good, they're doing a good job, then why weren't they already rewarded? Now, I do want to say that if Danny would've said, and he does say later on in the interview that it's a constant process. You can't get this right in just one update. We're going to work towards it, make continual improvements and we'll eventually get there. That, I buy. It is really hard to get an algorithm exactly where you want it to go with a super complicated algorithm obviously. And getting it exactly where you want to go is going to be super, super complicated. And I think as hard as it is, and if you lost rankings and you lost business, I don't blame you for feeling angry and I don't even blame you for screaming at me for saying this right now, because I can't imagine what you're going through. But I do think there was a little bit too much anger at Google for not just getting it right. It's not easy to get it right. It is easier said than done. That's said, that wasn't what Danny was really saying here. You're saying, "Yeah, I think they'll continue to get good gains." But look at the quote in the actual full context of the interview. It made me walking away feeling like, and this is again my speculation, Google is trying to do something with the algorithm. That to me is very clear. They have a very purposeful thing that they're trying to do. I don't know what it is, but it seems big. What it seems like to me is that Google realizes the web is undergoing a paradigm shift in ways that I'm not sure we even understand yet. And they're trying to align the algorithm to that shift, or they're trying to engineer the shift. Either one of those two options. Getting these sites that Danny's talking about up and ranking to the levels that they're "supposed to be" perhaps contradicts or is in conflict with the overall shift that Google's trying to make. And what it seemed like to me, and again, I'm really reading into this, what it seemed like to me Danny was saying was he wants those sites to improve. He thinks those sites should improve. He hopes they will improve. But there's something else in the algorithm that's currently going on that would preclude them from getting that full boost right now, because Google's got other goals in mind and it can't just engineer the algorithm to focus on improving these websites. So that I thought was interesting. Again, I thought it was a little bit of an internal contradiction. If you think these websites are great and then they're wonderful and they're writing the content that you're talking about, people should create and they should be ranking, which goes back to my earlier point. If you can't get those websites ranking the way that they should be ranking, you're fundamentally not creating the incentive cycle you need for what Danny was talking about, the hidden gems, that experience-based content, yada, yada, yada. And I see it in the algorithm updates. You'll see a couple of sites that do that kind of thing, and they do get rewarded. There are cases like that. But then you also see a ton of not like that. And it's like, okay, how do I create an SEO strategy, or a content strategy rather, where I don't know what it's going to be? Could be Google gets rewarded, Google doesn't get rewarded. It's hard to create a strategy based on something that's so not concrete. But again, kudos to Danny for talking with Barry. There's a lot of good stuff in there. The truth I think is always somewhere in the middle with all these things. Is Google getting it totally wrong? No. Is Google getting it totally right. No. Are there major problems? Yes. Have a look at the article. I've gone way too long for the Snappy News. I apologize for my speculation, but I'm going to call it the way I see it and offer my take. This is a podcast and that's what we do. And that's this week's Snappy News, or Not So Snappy News. Again, if you're looking for more news, check out It's New. It's not new anymore. It's been around for a little bit, but the news is new, so that's why it's It's New. Crystal Carter: I like it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a good name. Anyway, which brings us to a new follower or rather a new person that you should be following on social media to get some more SEO and marketing awesomeness. This time we have Cheryl Draper for you. She used to be over at Moz and running MozCon, and now it looks like she's partnering up with Noah Lerner on a little SEO conference thingamajigger that's pending and forthcoming. That should be exciting. Crystal Carter: That should be really exciting. And she has so much experience. She recently posted that she's going to be collaborating with Noah Lerner, Sean Huber, Nick Leroy, to bring the SEO community together in San Diego around the Brighton SEO for a fringe event. And it should be really, really good. It's an SEO community bash called Brighton SEO Boardwalk Bash, which should be super cool. Cheryl is such a fantastic person. I was talking about conferences that nurture new speakers, and Cheryl and the team that she had there did some incredible work there. And I think that that's just part of the core of who she is, seeing someone who nurtures new talent and encourages people to do great things. And so I am under no doubt that she will be able to do some incredible things with her next endeavor and that the upcoming event will be really awesome. And it'll be great to see her because she brings such incredible energy to everything she does. Mordy Oberstein: So look for Cheryl on LinkedIn, and on X @CherylDraper. Link in the show notes. Yeah. Okay. So when's our flight to the next SEO conference now that we've clearly advocated that you should be going to SEO conferences? Crystal Carter: I'm just there for the swag. I'll be completely honest. Mordy Oberstein: Can I tell you one, time I showed up to a conference, it was Brighton SEO in the UK, and I didn't have enough room in my suitcase for swag. I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to go buy another bag to put all my swag." Is that wrong and silly? I don't care. Crystal Carter: Honestly. My recent one was the MozCon hat that I have, which a lot of people are like, "Oh my God, I love the hat. Mordy Oberstein: I love that hat. I'm jealous. Crystal Carter: Everybody loves that hat. People are like, "Where'd you get it?" I'm like, "Yeah, I know. It's a good hat." Mordy Oberstein: Yo, Moz people. Send me that hat. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I got it from the stat booth. I was like, "Yo, hook it up. But yeah, and we also have great swag. If you come and see us at Brighton SEO, we will be at Brighton SEO in the UK in Autumn. We will also be at Brighton SEO in San Diego in Autumn, and we will be at a number of other events with incredibly juicy, incredible, fantastic swag. So do come and check that out if you're in the vicinity. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we do a lot of live events, so come find us and take our swag. Crystal Carter: Yes. Yes. Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well that'll do it. Thank you for joining the The SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. Back next week with a new episode as we go into BotLogs, the Transformers Chronicle. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and resource on the Wix Studio Learning up at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO