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Learn from the best in SEO at Wix Studio. Our team of in-house experts and industry leaders share insights and strategies to improve your rankings. Meet our top SEO experts Learn SEO from today’s thought leaders. Our search marketing experts team up with the world’s top SEOs to help you upskill with confidence. The SEO Learning Hub editorial team Get to know our in-house SEO experts. We keep the Hub updated with industry best practices and strategies you can trust. George Nguyen Director of SEO Editorial, Wix Start Now Crystal Carter Head of SEO Communications, Wix Start Now SEO expert contributors Learn the ins and outs of SEO from the industry’s top experts. Our contributors bring deep subject matter expertise to help you get better rankings. Constance Chen Director of Search Marketing at Moving Traffic Media Dale Bertrand Founder & CEO, Fire&Spark Einat Hoobian-Seybold Head of Product SEO & Accessibility at Wix Stéphane Durand Senior Partner Manager at Uberall Jennifer Long Lead SEO Manager at SolarWinds Zoe Ashbridge SEO strategist and co-founder of Forank Adel Raslan Product Marketing Manager at Google Karla Walsh Karla Walsh Simon Schnieders Founder of Blue Array Andy Crestodina Co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media Mordy Oberstein Head of SEO Branding, Wix James Clark Web Analyst Chima Mmeje Senior Content Marketing Manager at Moz Maddy Osman Founder, The Blogsmith Matthew Kaminsky Wix SEO Expert and Online Instructor Michel Fortin VP of Digital Marketin, Musora Media Krystal Taing Global Director of Pre-Sales Solutions, Uberall Celeste Gonzalez Director of RooLabs at RicketyRoo Chris Green Senior SEO Consultant, Torque Partnership Luke Carthy eCommerce Consultant Marcus Tober Head of Enterprise, Semrush Debbie Chew Global SEO Manager Anastasia Kotsiubynska Head of SEO at SE Ranking Colt Sliva Senior Technical SEO Analyst Jonas Sickler Digital Marketing Analyst Darren Shaw Founder and President, Whitespark Lazarina Stoy SEO and Data Science Consultant Ashwin Balakrishnan Head of Marketing, Optmyzr Myriam Jessier SEO Trainer, PRAGM Marie Haynes Owner, Marie Haynes Consulting Inc. Simon Cox Technical SEO Consultant, Cox and Co Creative Adriana Stein CEO and Founder, AS Marketing Crystal Ortiz SEO Consultant Veruska Anconitano International and Multilingual SEO Consultant Eli Schwartz Growth Advisor and SEO Consultant Lidia Infante SEO Consultant Mark Williams-Cook Digital Marketing Director, Candour Sophie Brannon SEO Specialist Jeremy Rivera Founder of SEO Arcade Yagmur Simsek SEO Strategist, Philip Morris International Claire Carlile Local Search Expert, BrightLocal Ann Smarty Co-founder of Smarty Marketing Jamar Ramos Content Marketer Cari O'Brien Chief Word Nerd and Founder, Custom Content Solutions Olga Zarr SEO Consultant and CEO, SEOSLY Amanda Milligan Head of Marketing, Stacker Geoff Kennedy SEO and Digital Marketing Consultant Yana Arad Raduzky Senior SEO expert, Wix Nati Elimelech Head of SEO, Wix Dan Taylor Head of Technical SEO, SALT.agency Miriam Ellis Local SEO Subject Matter Expert, Moz Abby Gleason Senior SEO Product Manager at Upwork Vinnie Wong Founder and Chief Strategist, Content Cartography Jamie Indigo 100% Human Technical SEO Aaron Anderson Founder and Lead Link Builder, Linkpitch.io Goodness Azubuogu SEO Analyst at Trek Marketing Petra Kis-Herczegh SEO Consultant Kyle Place SEO Specialist, Wix.com Alan Kent Technology Leader and Advisor Joshua George Founder of ClickSlice Grace Frohlich SEO Consultant at Brainlabs Jack Treseler CEO at Crescendo Consulting Itamar Blauer SEO & Growth Marketing Leader Manick Bhan Founder/CTO at LinkGraph Rejoice Ojiaku Co-founder at B-DigitalUK Lily Ugbaja Fractional Content & Growth Manager Ryan Jones Marketing Manager at SEOTesting Giuseppe Caltabiano VP of Marketing at Rock Content Bengü Sarıca Dinçer SEO Team Lead at Popupsmart Gus Pelogia SEO Product Manager Thomas Haynes Director of Strategy, Optix Solutions Jandira Neto SEO Testing Consultant at SearchPilot Nick LeRoy Freelance SEO Consultant, Nick LeRoy Consulting Duane Brown Founder & Head of Strategy at Take Some Risk Inc. Aleyda Solis SEO Consultant and Founder at Orainti Naomi Francis-Parker SEO Manager Ross Simmonds CEO of Foundation Marketing Barry Schwartz CEO, RustyBrick Erika Varangouli Head of Search, Riverside.fm Aoife McIlraith Managing Director, Luminosity Digital Akvile DeFazio President at AKvertise Greg Finn Partner at Cypress North Christine Zirnheld Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Cypress North Judith Lewis Founder CEO at Decabbit Consultancy Maeva Cifuentes CEO & Founder, Flying Cat Michael Patten Analytics Manager at PMG Menachem Ani Founder of JXT Group Gemma Fontané Co-founder and Director at Orvit Digital Michelle Goodall Community and Marketing Expert Yossi Fest Technical SEO Specialist at Wix Alla Avgustinov Product Manager, Wix Solomon Thimothy Co-founder at Clickx Rob Peck Performance Digital Marketer Lorcan Fearon Senior SEO Specialist & Operations Lead - StudioHawk UK Tomás Nápoles SaaS Growth and Digital Marketing Consultant Eyal Aftabi Founder and CEO of Pro Rank Tracker Ray Martinez VP, SEO at Archer Education Ola King UX & SEO Consultant Andrew Cock-Starkey SEO Consultant at Optimisey Ashley Segura Director of Marketing, SearchLab FAQ How are top SEO contributors chosen for the SEO Learning Hub? Our editorial team hand-selects the world’s best SEOs, both from within our own in-house team and the wider SEO community. These expert contributors are matched up with SEO topics that highlight their unique expertise. We’re conscious of the industry’s need for more diversity and inclusion and so we make it our mission to partner with top SEO experts from diverse backgrounds. What areas of expertise do the SEO contributors come from? Contributors to the Wix SEO Learning Hub are all top SEO experts in their field. The Hub covers a vast range of SEO topics which means we collaborate with the most respected voices in technical SEO, on-page SEO, link building, local SEO, Google’s algorithm, content SEO, and more. How do I become a Wix author? Contributions to the SEO Learning Hub are by invite only. To ensure that we offer our readers top-quality SEO education, our editorial team carefully selects contributors based on their long-standing reputation of creating expert level SEO content. What topics do the SEO experts cover? Our SEO Learning Hub aims to cover all areas of SEO, from SEO for beginners to keyword research, link building, international SEO, and beyond. Our editorial team matches SEO experts with the areas of focus that have the most impact for our readers. The result is a high-quality learning experience for SEOs of all levels. 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

Learn SEO with an expert-led course featuring 10 comprehensive modules. Learn technical SEO, keyword research, link building, and more from industry leaders. Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO SEO COURSE Your expert-led roadmap for learning SEO Advance your career by building in-demand skills, on-demand—under the guidance of 11 industry-leading SEOs. Start the course YOUR COURSE INSTRUCTORS Aleyda Solis, Andrew Cock-Starkey, Celeste Gonzalez, Crystal Carter, Debbie Chew, Itamar Blauer, James Clark, Jill Quick, Judith Lewis, Mike Stepney, Mordy Oberstein THIS COURSE INCLUDES 10 topics Record of completion Useful resources Explore course topics Jump straight in or start with your knowledge gaps—the flexible course structure lets you learn at your own pace and build a broad knowledge of SEO. 1h 7m Get up to speed on SEO fundamentals, including HTTP status codes, URL optimization, XML sitemaps, structured data and more. Start course 1h 43m Discover effective keyword research methods, powerful tools, and strategies to engage your target audience. Start course 39m Delve into on-page SEO optimization techniques, including website audits, content design, internal linking and building a hub structure. Start course 1h 20m Learn all about link building from competitor research to email outreach to creating linkable assets. Start course 1h 14m Explore local SEO on Wix Studio, from increasing visibility to creating SEO-friendly content and avoiding common mistakes. Start course 48m Learn how to navigate Google Search Console and use it to monitor, analyze and optimize site performance. Start course 1h 46m Explore Google Analytics 4 to enhance SEO strategies with site tracking, session metrics, event categorization, reporting tools and more. Start course 53m Enhance your SEO content strategy with essential tools like Semrush, Screaming Frog, and Keyword Insights for comprehensive site audits and content clusters. Start course 51m Learn to demonstrate the value of SEO efforts through stakeholder communication, metric selection and comprehensive reporting. Start course 1h 39m Find out how to use Wix Studio’s built-in tools and integrations to boost SEO while applying everything you've learnt so far. Start course 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

Learn search engine optimization from SEO experts, tune into webinars, podcasts and more. Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO The Wix SEO Learning Hub Learn SEO with in-depth guides original articles, tutorials, webinars and podcast episodes—the most up to date SEO knowledge brought to you by industry leaders. SEO ARTICLES & STRATEGIES Connect Wix Websites to Bing Learn more LEARN SEO SKILLS Take Wix Studio SEO Course to learn SEO Learn SEO SERP's Up SEO Podcast Beginner's Guide to SEO Videos & More UPCOMING WEBINAR Deep dive into AdSense on Wix Save Your Spot UPCOMING WEBINAR What gets cited in AI search? Learn more Blog categories Latest blog posts Find detailed digital marketing and SEO articles to grow your skills and learn SEO from leading experts. All Posts SEO Basics SEO Strategies Topic Research On Site Optimization Analytics & Reporting Wix SEO Tools Advanced SEO Local SEO Ray Martinez 20 Jul 2026 Ray Martinez SEO for higher education Karla Walsh 15 Jul 2026 Karla Walsh An SEO guide for pizzerias Einat Hoobian-Seybold 2 Jun 2026 Einat Hoobian-Seybold Your guide to SEO on Wix Harmony Stéphane Durand 15 May 2026 Stéphane Durand Local SEO 101: An introduction James Clark 12 May 2026 James Clark How to get started with Google Analytics 4 Zoe Ashbridge 16 Apr 2026 Zoe Ashbridge An SEO guide for B2B marketers All Blog Posts Editor’s picks A curated selection of the latest and most relevant blog articles. Subscribe The complete SEO guide Mordy Oberstein Krystal Taing An introduction to local SEO George Nguyen Rich results: What they are and why you need them Ashwin Balakrishnan Backlinks 101: What they are and why they matter SEO resource center Download free customizable SEO checklists, templates and toolkits to speed up SEO implementation—on any project. All Resources SEO agency project proposal template Joshua George Go to Resource SEO cheat sheet for web designers Thomas Haynes Go to Resource Backlink tracking template Ashwin Balakrishnan Go to Resource SEO webinars Tune into our monthly webinars to get live insights and gain SEO knowledge from industry experts. All Webinars 17 Jun 2026 Optimizations for Personalization in AI 24 Apr 2026 7 ways to use AI agents to optimize websites and workflows 16 Dec 2025 Webinar: SEO & GEO on Wix in 2026 SERP’s Up SEO podcast A unique podcast with an unconventional take on SEO, complete with insights from expert guests, quick tips, and hot takes. All Episodes Making marketing metrics meaningful How to make marketing data meaningful - SERP's Up SEO Podcast Site focus? Should SEOs stay in their lane? Building & maintaining SEO site focus - SERP's Up SEO Podcast Hey SEOs, here's how to grab your bag (of $) How to negotiate your next SEO salary - SERP's Up SEO Podcast Wix SEO case studies Get a play-by-play of how agencies and businesses are driving record growth on Wix. All Case Studies How Wix Blog and Bookings drive consistent business through organic search How Wix Blog and Bookings drive consistent business through organic search SEO agency migrates to Wix for major improvement in CWV SEO agency migrates to Wix for major improvement in CWV Blog-turned-business ranks for thousands of keywords Blog-turned-business ranks for thousands of keywords SEO GUIDE The complete SEO Guide Everything you need to know about SEO on Wix. Read Now Meet the experts Learning SEO starts with getting good advice from the right people. Get to Know Them George Nguyen George Nguyen Founder of George Edits Crystal Carter Crystal Carter Head of AI Search & SEO Communications, Wix Mordy Oberstein Mordy Oberstein Head of SEO Branding, Wix Aleyda Solis Aleyda Solis SEO Consultant and Founder at Orainti SEO video library Sharpen your skills and deepen your SEO knowledge with our video library. All videos Intro to SEO What are keywords and how to choose the right ones How to optimize your website’s title tags Product updates Get the latest Wix SEO , & accessibility, and AI search updates, releases. Recent Updates AI Visibility Overview The AI Visibility Overview tracks your website's traffic, mentions and perception on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude AI search. SEO Assistant AI powered SEO assistant to identify and resolve issues from your SEO Panel. With integrated insights from Semrush, AI meta tags, and dynamic checklist. SEO Dashboard Get Google Search Console data in your dashboard, access SEO tools, keyword insights and tips to guide your SEO. FAQ What is the Wix SEO Learning hub? The SEO Learning Hub is a carefully curated resource designed to help you learn SEO or expand on what you already know. Frequently updated, the SEO Learning Hub hosts in-depth, original articles , live webinars , videos , and even a podcast so you’re able to learn on your terms. Who is the SEO hub for? Whether you’re new to SEO or are a seasoned veteran, the SEO Learning Hub is an up to date resource that’s designed to help you level up your SEO skills. Beginner-friendly SEO guides and video tutorials are available alongside expert-led SEO webinars . The SEO Learning Hub is designed to be a one-stop resource for all-levels of SEO education. What kind of resources are found on the hub? The Hub provides SEO materials of all kinds, including various media formats, to all levels of SEOs and site owners. Is the hub meant to learn about SEO in general or just Wix SEO? The SEO Learning Hub is a place to learn all about SEO, spanning from the basics to in-depth topics to recent trends—regardless of which platform you use to build your site. There are also sections specifically about doing SEO on Wix with step-by-step guides and tutorials on how to collectively use and get the most out of Wix’s SEO tools. What is the best way to learn SEO using the hub? Plus icon The SEO Learning Hub is designed to be accessible to every type of learner–peruse the latest resources on the Hub’s main page, find specific information by using the search bar, and browse the categories to dive deep into an aspect of SEO. We also have webinars, a podcast, and video content for those who prefer multimedia learning. Who contributes to the Wix SEO Learning Hub? Plus icon Alongside our in-house team of SEO experts, we invite industry thought leaders and expert practitioners from the SEO community to share their insight and knowledge across mediums on the Wix SEO Learning Hub. Together we are able to provide, what we believe, is the best information and guidance to our audience. Meet the pros and learn more about their unique backgrounds Who is in charge of the Hub’s editorial? Plus icon The Hub’s content is managed by our Director of SEO Editorial, George Nguyen. George commissions, fact checks, and edits all the articles on the Hub with input from our Head of SEO Branding, Mordy Oberstein, and our Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Learn more about our SEO team . Looking for more? Find detailed articles and guides on how to get the most out of our SEO tools in the Help Center. Go to Help Center Hire an SEO professional Promote your online presence with the help of one of our Partners. Find a Wix Partner 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

Ray Martinez is the VP of SEO at Archer Education, where he leads a dedicated team comprised of senior analysts, specialists, and project managers. Together, they craft, implement, oversee, and evaluate SEO strategies for prestigious higher education institutions across the globe. Ray Martinez VP, SEO at Archer Education Ray Martinez is the VP of SEO at Archer Education, where he leads a dedicated team comprised of senior analysts, specialists, and project managers. Together, they craft, implement, oversee, and evaluate SEO strategies for prestigious higher education institutions across the globe. Articles & Resources 20 Jul 2026 SEO for higher education 7 May 2025 Data storytelling: 6 steps to highlighting value for digital marketers 28 Mar 2024 SEO agency pricing blueprint: Define your pricing and protect your margins 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

Karla Walsh is a full-time freelance writer who specializes in how-to food and drink content, insider travel guides, and trend coverage. Karla is a 17-year magazine industry veteran, with experience in SEO, print, video strategy, social media and more. Karla Walsh Karla Walsh Karla Walsh is a full-time freelance writer who specializes in how-to food and drink content, insider travel guides, and trend coverage. Karla is a 17-year magazine industry veteran, with experience in SEO, print, video strategy, social media and more. She's currently a regular contributor to BHG, Food Network, Allrecipes, Southern Living, EatingWell, VERANDA and Travel + Leisure. She's also a WSET Level 2 sommelier who consults with restaurants on content strategy. Articles & Resources 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

Sign up for free SEO webinars or watch previous recordings to learn new skills and grow your business. Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO SEO webinars Get insights from experts on how to improve your SEO capabilities. Sign up to one of our future webinars or watch a past event at any time. UPCOMING WEBINAR SEO & GEO for personalization in search Tuesday, July 7 | 1 PM ET Learn tools for to optimize for personalized search in Google, Gemini & ChatGPT Learn more Watch past webinars 20 May 2026 GEO & SEO Tools in Wix Harmony Join this webinar to discover how Wix Harmony's built-in GEO and SEO tools can help you build a site that's ready for how people search today and tomorrow. From the AI Visibility Overview to NLWeb and LLMs.txt, we will walk you through the features that matter most for visibility in both traditional and AI-powered search. What you'll learn how to use: Wix Harmony's SEO and GEO tools to optimise your site for AI and traditional search The AI Visibility Overview to track and improve your AI... 9 Apr 2026 Which content types get cited by LLMs? Watch this webinar on which content types get citations in of content ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI chatbots. 9 Apr 2026 Structured data and AI in 2026 In this webinar you'll learn how structured data supports your visibility in AI and search in 2026. 29 Jan 2026 Webinar: SEO & GEO on Wix in 2026 Check out the latest Wix Studio SEO and GEO features for 2026. 16 Dec 2025 The State of AI Search (And What It Means for Your Website) Wix and Statista experts dive into the data around AI search in 2026. 22 Oct 2025 Driving Local SEO Growth in the AI Age Is your local SEO strategy ready for AI? Join this webinar with Amanda Jordan to learn more! 22 Oct 2025 Optimizing for AI Visibility on Wix How to grow and manage AI visibility on Wix & Wix Studio websites 11 Aug 2025 Conversion-First SEO in the AI Era Andy Crestodina shares tactics to convert traffic into leads in the AI era. 7 Jul 2025 AI Tools for SEO: From LLM Workflows to MCP Watch this webinar on AI Tools for SEO: From LLM Workflows to MCP Generative AI is opening up powerful new workflows for SEOs—and knowing... 1 Jul 2025 An SEO's Guide to Website Accessibility in 2025 Prepare Your Website for the European Accessibility Act Watch this webinar for insights as SEO professionals and site owners gear up for... 1 Jul 2025 How to Win in the Age of Conversational Search SEO Webinar on Conversational Search with Mike King Is your website ready for the rise of conversational search in the era of AI-powered... 18 Apr 2025 Content Optimization Strategies After Google's HCU Watch the replay of the March 2025 webinar Google's Helpful Content Update (HCU) was an algorithm update that demanded a new approach to... 18 Feb 2025 SEO tips and trends for 2025 Tuesday, January 28, 2025 | 1PM ET Get ready for 2025! Join 10 SEO experts for a panel discussion on top trends to watch for in the... 8 Dec 2024 SEO on Wix Studio: 2024 highlights and 2025 preview Tuesday, December 3, 2024 | 1PM ET Join E inat Hobbian-Seybold and Paz Dekel for a roundup of 2024s standout SEO releases , from the... 18 Nov 2024 Live SEO site audit: eCommerce Tuesday, October 29, 2024 Join our panel of SEO content experts for an eComm specific, live-auditing session. Submit your site upon... 18 Dec 2024 Deep dive into Google AdSense on Wix Get started by: Creating a website → September 24, 2024 Join us for an interactive workshop where we'll deep dive into optimizing Google... 16 Sept 2024 SERP’s Up goes live: 100th episode special SERP’s Up goes live: 100th episode special 16 Sept 2024 Live webinar: Real talk on the Google algorithm July 16, 2024 Google leaks, AI overviews, new Google algorithm ranking systems —2024 has been a year. It’s time to ask some real... 16 Sept 2024 GA4 lessons and tactics one year later June 25, 2024 Get up to speed with the latest strategies for GA4. How has this new era of analytics transformed how we think about... 16 Sept 2024 Live webinar: What ranks in Google SGE Tuesday, May 28, 2024 | 1PM ET The rollout of Google Search Generative Experience has seismic implications for SEO. Join this expert-led... FAQ When do Wix’s SEO webinars take place? Wix’s SEO webinars typically take place once a month. Who are Wix’s SEO webinars for? Do I need to be an SEO expert? Wix’s SEO webinars are designed for SEOs of all levels. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, you’ll gain a practical understanding of whatever SEO topic our hosts are delving into. Our webinars aim to bring anyone new to SEO up to speed in a quick and natural way. SEO concepts and terminology are explained so that someone new to SEO will have all the relevant context. Are there guest interviews on the show? Each podcast episode includes a guest contribution from a top SEO expert who shares their take on the episode’s topic. Questions are tailored to highlight the guest’s unique area of expertise so as to provide maximum value to our audience. Past guests have included SEO thought leaders like Barry Schwartz, Cindy Krum, Kevin Indig, Barry Adams, Lily Ray, Marcus Tober, Claire Carlile, and many more. At the same time, more seasoned SEOs will benefit from an in-depth dissection of each SEO topic. So whatever your level of SEO knowledge, you’ll walk away with expert nuance, tips, and cutting-edge strategies. How do I register for a webinar? You can find out about upcoming SEO webinars here . Alternatively, you can subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, and get webinar invites sent straight to your inbox every month. What topics do the webinars cover? Plus icon Wix’s SEO webinars cover the full gamut of SEO topics, from keyword research and technical SEO to emerging trends and issues facing the SEO industry. As SEO professionals who are on the pulse of what’s happening in SEO, we factor in the latest search news and build webinars around the most important topics and updates—all with the goal of helping you improve your SEO skills the right way. Who hosts the webinars? Plus icon Our SEO webinars are hosted by Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Branding at Wix, and Crystal Carter, Head of SEO Communications at Wix. Each webinar sees our hosts welcome top SEO experts who share valuable insights into the topic at hand. 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

Itamar Blauer is an SEO trainer, speaker, author, and host of the "SEO Unplugged" podcast, sharing tips and case studies across various SEO topics. Itamar Blauer SEO & Growth Marketing Leader Itamar Blauer is an SEO trainer, speaker, author, and host of the SEO Unplugged podcast, sharing tips and case studies across various SEO topics. He boosts rankings for SMEs and large enterprises with UX-focused, data-backed, and creative SEO strategies across B2B and B2C sectors. Articles & Resources 11 Jul 2023 Evergreen SEO tactics for SMBs: From setup to maintenance 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

Stay in the know about SEO with the Searchlight newsletter. 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 Close Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Learn SEO with an expert-led course featuring 10 comprehensive modules. Learn technical SEO, keyword research, link building, and more from industry leaders. Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO SEO COURSE Your expert-led roadmap for learning SEO Advance your career by building in-demand skills, on-demand—under the guidance of 11 industry-leading SEOs. Start the course YOUR COURSE INSTRUCTORS Aleyda Solis, Andrew Cock-Starkey, Celeste Gonzalez, Crystal Carter, Debbie Chew, Itamar Blauer, James Clark, Jill Quick, Judith Lewis, Mike Stepney, Mordy Oberstein THIS COURSE INCLUDES 10 topics Record of completion Useful resources Explore course topics Jump straight in or start with your knowledge gaps—the flexible course structure lets you learn at your own pace and build a broad knowledge of SEO. 1h 7m Get up to speed on SEO fundamentals, including HTTP status codes, URL optimization, XML sitemaps, structured data and more. Start course 1h 43m Discover effective keyword research methods, powerful tools, and strategies to engage your target audience. Start course 39m Delve into on-page SEO optimization techniques, including website audits, content design, internal linking and building a hub structure. Start course 1h 20m Learn all about link building from competitor research to email outreach to creating linkable assets. Start course 1h 14m Explore local SEO on Wix Studio, from increasing visibility to creating SEO-friendly content and avoiding common mistakes. Start course 48m Learn how to navigate Google Search Console and use it to monitor, analyze and optimize site performance. Start course 1h 46m Explore Google Analytics 4 to enhance SEO strategies with site tracking, session metrics, event categorization, reporting tools and more. Start course 53m Enhance your SEO content strategy with essential tools like Semrush, Screaming Frog, and Keyword Insights for comprehensive site audits and content clusters. Start course 51m Learn to demonstrate the value of SEO efforts through stakeholder communication, metric selection and comprehensive reporting. Start course 1h 39m Find out how to use Wix Studio’s built-in tools and integrations to boost SEO while applying everything you've learnt so far. Start course 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

Read the complete Wix SEO guide to find everything you need to know about our SEO features and capabilities, along with how you can use them. The complete Wix SEO guide: Everything you need to know Author: Mordy Oberstein Last updated: January 22, 2024 1. A word on Wix’s SEO outlook 2. Crawling and indexing Toggle sub menu 2.1 Connecting to Google Search Console 2.2 Verifying your site 2.2 Sitemaps 2.4 Robots.txt files 2.5 Noindex and nofollow tags 2.6 Additional robots meta tags 2.7 Applying robots meta tags at scale 3. Performance and infrastructure Toggle sub menu 3.1 Rendering 3.2 Image optimization 3.2.1. Alt-text 3.3. Caching 3.4. Mobile-friendliness 3.5. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) 3.6. Core Web Vitals 4. Structured data Toggle sub menu 4.1 Out-of-the-box structured data 4.2 Customizing Wix’s out-of-the-box structured data 4.3 Setting custom structured data on static pages 4.4 Multiple instances of markup on a Wix page 5. Metadata and canonical tags 5.1 Title tags and meta descriptions 5.2 Custom meta tags 5.3 Canonical tags 5.3.1 Nofollow Links 5.4 Editing metadata at scale 5.5 Editing metadata at the page level 5.6 Social sharing Toggle sub menu 6. URLs and redirects Toggle sub menu 6.1 URL customization 6.2 Managing redirects 7. Technical and on-page SEO audits Toggle sub menu 7.1 Site inspection tool 7.2 Bot log analytics 7.2.1 Bot Traffic over Time 7.2.2 Bot Traffic by Page 7.2.3 Response Status over Time 8. Local and international SEO Toggle sub menu 8.1. Local SEO 8.2. International SEO 9. Advanced customization Toggle sub menu 9.1. Velo: Wix’s full-stack developer tool 10. Analytics Toggle sub menu 10.1. Wix Analytics 10.1.1. Traffic by Entry Page 10.1.2. Traffic by Time of Day 10.2. Blog analytics 10.2.1. Blog Activity over Time 10.2.2. Top Blog Posts 10.2.3. Blog Activity by Time of Day 10.3. Wix eCommerce data 10.4. Site Speed dashboard 10.5. Google Search Console 10.5.1. Third-party analytics 10.5.2. Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) 10.5.3. Google Analytics 4 11. Apps and third-party integrations Toggle sub menu 11.1. IndexNow with Microsoft Bing 11.2. Keyword research with Semrush 11.3. Site audits with Deepcrawl 12. Wix is built with SEO in mind Wix SEO Guide content The initial trends chart within the Marketing Overview lets you compare traffic from five sources. A word on Wix’s SEO outlook SEO is a far-reaching topic that applies to most sites on the web. Having a well-optimized site with strong content is the foundation of acquiring organic traffic from search engines. Wix does an incredible amount to offer you the optimal defaults and infrastructure needed to perform well organically. At the same time, we present you with the option to customize your site’s optimizations. While there have been many articles written about Wix SEO, both on the Wix site and by third-parties, there has not been one definitive guide to doing SEO on a Wix site—this is that guide. Here is our complete Wix SEO guide with everything you need to know about our SEO features and capabilities, along with how you can use them to optimize your site. Read Now Send to Inbox Getting familiar with the technical details of doing SEO on the Wix platform will help you work more efficiently and effectively, but understanding our overall “SEO philosophy” can also help orient you. Our goal is to offer you the best SEO defaults possible while opening up the platform to as much customization as possible. In addition, we aim to foster the users that are not extensively familiar with SEO and provide them with a strong technical foundation so they can focus on running their business and creating useful content. At the same time, we seek to offer SEO professionals and experienced site managers as much control over their optimizations as possible. For those reasons, you’ll notice that we often create various out-of-the-box options but tend to offer a way for you to customise the defaults we’ve established. This is important to know as you may encounter the default initially. In these cases, know that there is, more often than not, a path towards customization. Getting started with SEO on Wix To help you organize and get started with the initial SEO tasks that every website owner should take care of, we have developed the site-level SEO Assistant (there’s also a page-level SEO assistant as well, which we’ll discuss later on in this guide). The site-level SEO Assistant within the SEO Dashboard. The site-level SEO Assistant helps to ensure that you properly address your site’s most vital SEO tasks. To that end, it indicates tasks that (when left unattended) could be considered an “SEO liability.” This includes, for example, not connecting the site to Google Search Console (which we’ll explore more below). An essential SEO tasks as marked by the Wix SEO Assistant. The SEO Assistant presents you with SEO recommendations to help increase the chances of your site attracting visitors from search engines (such as by adding a blog to the site, etc). Completed SEO tasks shown in the SEO Assistant. Lastly, the SEO Assistant is an entry point into the Wix SEO Setup Checklist , where you can manage the essential SEO tasks for your site’s main pages (for example, adding a title tag to your homepage and so forth). You can complete SEO tasks, such as creating a custom title tag for your site’s homepage directly, within the SEO Setup Checklist. Crawling and indexing In this section, we’ll explain how Wix handles your sitemap, the ability to prevent Google (and other search engines) from crawling specific pages, and the unique ability to connect to Google Search Console via Wix (among other things). Connecting to Google Search Console Wix offers a one-click connection to Google Search Console , a free tool that can help you monitor and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search. A minimal amount of SEO setup (such as adding a title tag to the homepage, etc.) is required before you can connect your site to Google Search Console . This direct connection to Search Console is part of a formal partnership between Wix and Google that was announced at Google I/O 2018. The partnership not only streamlines your connection to Search Console but offers instant indexing of all Wix homepages that have a custom domain. After connecting to Search Console, Wix will automatically offer you GSC trends and insights within the SEO Dashboard . You can customize this data to show trends and insights over a specific period of time and filtered according to impressions and clicks. Google Search Console trends and insights as seen in the Wix SEO Dashboard. Verifying your site Clearly, there are other search engines aside from Google. While Wix does not offer the same immediate indexation and connection to other search engines, we do make verification a straightforward process. In the SEO Tools section of your Wix dashboard (in the left-hand navigation, within the Marketing & SEO tab), there is a verification center where you can paste the verification tags you have acquired from various search engines. Wix will immediately tell you if there is an error with the verification tag. So if, for example, you copied the verification tag incorrectly, as soon as you paste and save the tag, you will see an error. We currently offer this process for Google Search Console, Pinterest, Bing, Naver, and Yandex. If you want to connect to another search engine, just use the Custom Code option located at the bottom of the main panel. Sitemaps Wix sitemaps are automatically submitted to Google once you connect the site to Search Console. Wix sitemaps are broken up by page type. This means that we automatically create a separate sitemap for your product pages, blog posts, etc. We don’t include URLs that have been noindexed, that are canonicalized to other URLs, or that reflect gated content. Also, once a sitemap reaches 10,000 URLs, a new one is created automatically. At the same time, we create an image sitemap for the images found on Wix product, event, booking, online programs, and forum pages. Note that while Wix does make finding and viewing sitemaps accessible, they cannot be edited. You can view your sitemaps within the Wix dashboard. Robots.txt files Wix enables you to edit your robots.txt file. To do so, head to the SEO Tools section (in the left-hand navigation, within the Marketing & SEO tab) of your Wix dashboard. The field where you can edit a site’s robots.txt file, as it appears in the Wix dashboard. By default, Wix allows all bots to crawl all of a site’s pages. Should you accidentally make changes to the file, you can return to the default setting by clicking on Reset to Default below the editor. Noindex and nofollow tags There are a variety of ways you can keep your pages out of Google’s index when using Wix. The most straightforward way is to use the Wix SEO Panel . The SEO Panel is available wherever you can edit a page or post. For your site’s static pages, that panel is found within the Wix Editor itself when bringing up the setting options for each page (as shown below). For vertical pages (like blog posts or product pages), the SEO Panel can be accessed where each specific type of dynamic page is managed within the Wix dashboard. For example, the SEO Panel for your products is accessible when editing a product page within the Wix dashboard (as shown below). Within the SEO Panel ’s SEO tab is a toggle labeled “Let search engines index this page.” This option allows you to stop the page from showing in Google’s search results. Disabling this toggle will apply a noindex tag to the page. A toggle switch within the Wix Editor allows you to apply a noindex tag to a page. You can accompany the noindex tag with a nofollow tag, which instructs search engines not to follow the links on a given page, via the Advanced SEO tab within the SEO Panel , found in either the Editor or dashboard (depending on the page type). To do so, expand the Robots Meta Tag section and check off the nofollow box (the option to add the noindex tag exists here as well). Additional robots meta tags Along with the noindex and nofollow tags, you can also use the Advanced SEO settings to add a variety of meta tags to a page in a single click. Here are the tags you can add and a brief explanation of what they tell search engines: noindex - Do not list this page in search results. nofollow - Do not follow links on this page. nosnippet - Do not show a text snippet or video preview for this page in search results. noarchive - Do not show a cached link for this page in search results. noimageindex - Do not index images on this page. max-image-preview - The maximum size of an image preview for this page in a search result. max-snippet - The maximum number of characters for search engines to use in a text snippet for this page in search results. max-video-preview - The maximum number of seconds for a video snippet for videos on this page in a search result. Lastly, if the need arises, you can add custom meta tags to a Wix page via the Additional Tags section of the Advanced SEO tab. There, you will see the Add New Tag option. Applying robots meta tags at scale If there is a specific page type (such as all your blog posts, for example) that you don’t want Google to index, you can use the SEO Settings within the dashboard to prevent indexing of all of these pages with a single action. For example, if you wanted to prevent Google from indexing all of your forum pages, you could do so by toggling the switch labeled Let search engines index your forum’s posts within your SEO Settings , as shown below. Additionally, you can set any of the meta tags mentioned above to apply at the page-type level as well. The SEO Settings contain the option to set meta tags at the page-type level (in this case, for all of the site’s blog pages). Performance and infrastructure As a closed CMS, there is much that Wix does foundationally to ensure sites function and perform optimally. This ranges from how Wix handles image optimization all the way to how Wix pages are rendered. In fact, rendering is where we’ll start here. Rendering There is a lot of misinformation around how Wix renders its pages. Much of this is due to Wix originally being based on Flash when the platform first launched, over a decade and a half ago. Today, Wix uses server-side rendering so that bots are served with the fully rendered page. Along these lines, Wix employs its own network of CDNs that are optimized to ensure that your files are served as quickly as possible. For example, we automatically select the best performing server for the site visitor based on their location at the time they access the site. Image optimization Wix handles a lot of the image optimization process for you. For example, we automatically compress all images without sacrificing image quality. Of course, the original file type plays a significant role here: A large PNG image will not be compressed to the same size as the exact same image in JPEG form. So, select your image file type accordingly for the best results, and if you’re unsure, stick to JPEGs for better performance. Wix also automatically converts images to WebP when the browser supports the format. Additionally, we implement lazy loading, which works hand-in-hand with our implementation of low-quality image placeholders (LQIP). It’s worth noting that images are hosted on Wix’s servers. There are advantages as well as disadvantages to this: On the positive side, Wix has a world-class CDN that allows for images to be delivered quickly. However, as images are hosted on Wix’s servers, the URLs of our images contain parameters that cannot be fully controlled by the site owner. Alt-text You can add alt text to your images on Wix. Once an image is added to a page, access the settings for the image and enter the desired text. Selecting the image settings will bring up an alt text field. In this particular situation, running an accessibility audit can be very helpful. In doing so, Wix will scan your site for a variety of accessibility issues, one of which will be missing alt text. You can add missing alt text within the accessibility audit results as well. An accessibility scan showing an image without alt text while providing the opportunity for alt text to be added to the image. There are instances where Wix will automatically create alt text for you. For example, when you have multiple product image thumbnails, we automatically create the alt-text for the thumbnail. An example of Wix automatically generating alt text for an image thumbnail on a product page. Caching To improve page load performance, Wix automatically caches all pages on a site. Moreover, Wix tracks when a page has been updated and subsequently clears that page’s cache in order to re-cache the current version. This is done for both static and vertical pages. That said, there are cases where we don’t automatically cache a page. When we detect custom code and are unsure of its logic, we don’t cache the page. This is done to prevent the caching of pages where doing so would be detrimental to the purpose of the page and the content on it (imagine a page with a weather widget for the current weather in various locations, for example). As such, a page that utilizes Velo (Wix’s dev tool) is not automatically cached. There are instances where a page with a trivial amount of Velo code on it will be automatically cached. As a best practice we recommend manual caching on all pages where you have added Velo code. In cases where custom code is present on the page but you feel caching does not present a problem, you can set caching up manually in most instances. This is done via the Wix Editor by accessing the advanced page settings. Manually set a page’s caching regiment via the Wix Editor. Mobile-friendliness Wix pages, by default, meet the threshold of Google’s mobile-friendliness standards. And, sites created with Wix Studio support a fully responsive design. The Wix Editor, however, uses an adaptive design. This means that image and text size are automatically adjusted to fit the confines of a mobile device. However, as the main Editor is not fully responsive, you may need to make formatting adjustments in some instances. Making changes to the mobile version of a Wix site is very straightforward as all you need to do is click on the mobile device icon at the top of the editor. Here you can drag and drop elements of the page, move entire sections up or down, or even hide certain sections of a page. Changes made to the mobile version of the page are not applied to the desktop version. As we’re on the topic of setting your site up for mobile devices, Wix also enables you to add a favicon so that your site appears with one when presented on the mobile SERP. You can create or update your site’s favicon within the website settings found in the Wix dashboard. Use the website settings to add a favicon to your site. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) In accordance with the overall direction of the web, as of May 2024 we no longer support AMP. The AMP toggle within your SEO Settings for Blog Posts. Activating AMP is a relatively easy way to improve the speed of your blog pages. That said, AMP is not for all, and there are some considerations to take into account before enabling AMP. The PageSpeed Insights score for an AMP-enabled Wix blog page. Core Web Vitals Optimizing a Wix site for Core Web Vitals (CWV) requires a combination of efforts by the platform and its users. With the aforementioned infrastructure related to images, rendering, caching, along with a high performance cloud infrastructure, Wix provides the foundation for strong CWV performance. In fact, since 2020, Wix has increased the ratio of its sites in the Google CrUX report with good CWV scores by tenfold without users having to do a thing. At the same time, how you approach everything from image file types to fonts can impact performance. Accordingly, Wix enables you to decide when and how to implement things like font types, animations, video placement, image galleries (as opposed to the entire set of images being displayed). The ability to produce a page that passes Core Web Vitals, while dependent on the Wix infrastructure, relies heavily on how you decide to construct your pages. Structured data The way Wix handles structured data epitomizes our SEO philosophy, as there is a substantial amount of out-of-the-box implementation while still offering a large degree of customizability. Out-of-the-box structured data In order to help all you become eligible to have your content appear as rich results, Wix adds various types of structured data markup right out of the box. The out-of-the-box markup we create applies to many of our vertical pages. This includes: Product pages Blog posts Local business homepages Event pages Booking pages Forum posts Wix also automatically adds Sitelinks Search Box structured data markup to your homepage when you have installed the Wix Site Search app. This does not mean that every possible variable and option within each type of markup is implemented. For example, the product markup Wix automatically generates for every product includes schema properties for: Page type Name Page Description SKU Image Thumbnail Brand Offer Type Offer URL Price Currency Price Availability Seller Name There may be specific variables that you would like to include beyond these—we’ll cover that in the next section. Additionally, as of January 2024, we offer automated: CourseInstance structured data markup for online program pages. DiscussionForumPosting structured data for forum pages. In May 2024 we began supporting automated Image structured data markup for the following page types: Forums, Groups, Bookings, Online Programs. This isn’t the only way Wix saves you time when it comes to structured data. For example, when Google updated the requirements for event rich results to include offers.priceCurrency markup, Wix users didn’t have to do anything as the out-of-the-box markup already included it. Similarly, if new requirements were to be established to add attributes currently not included, Wix would update the markup it creates. As such, you may not have to update what could be thousands of pages—it would be done for you. Customizing Wix’s out-of-the-box structured data The out-of-the-box markup Wix adds to pages is fully customizable. Moreover, the changes you can make are scalable—specifically, you can customize the out-of-the-box markup created as well as update all existing pages of a specific type (e.g., all product pages) in one fell swoop. To do this, select the page type you wish to customize within your Wix dashboard’s SEO Settings. Next, select the option to edit structured data markup: Here, you can convert the default markup to custom markup. Once selected, you’ll be able to edit and add any code you would like. What’s more, Wix will immediately indicate if there are any errors in the custom markup you implemented. It is also possible to set custom markup on individual vertical pages. To do so, go to your Wix dashboard and select the desired vertical. Then, navigate to the specific page and go to the Advanced tab within the page’s SEO Settings . Next, access the markup settings and select Exclude from page to exclude automated markup for that particular page. Finally, select Add New Markup and add your structured data to the field that pops up. You can use this method to add more than one instance of structured data markup to a page. Setting custom structured data on static pages You can add custom structured data markup to all of your static pages via the Wix Editor. Inside the SEO Panel ’s Advanced SEO tab is a field for you to add your JSON-LD formatted markup (Wix does not support microdata for implementing schema markup). Add structured data markup to a Wix static page by copying and pasting the JSON-LD code within the Editor. Multiple instances of markup on a Wix page Wix enables you to add multiple instances of structured data markup to site pages. This can be done via the Wix Editor for the site’s main pages. All you need to do is open the Advanced SEO tab within the Page Settings and expand the Structured Data Markup section. Next, you will see an option to Add New Markup , where you can add multiple instances of markup to a single page. The settings to add multiple instances of structured data markup within the Wix Editor. Adding multiple markups can be done at the page-type level as well via the SEO Settings. Simply select the page type you would like to add markup to and you'll see the option to add new markup. You can also use this method to add custom markup to all static pages at once, too. To that end, you can customize the markup on specific pages without having to bounce between the Wix Editor and Wix Dashboard by using the Edit by Page feature to edit existing markup or create new custom code. Structured data markup settings as seen within the Edit by Page feature This feature is currently available for main pages, event pages, blog pages, online programs, portfolio collections, and product pages. To find a specific set of pages within a page type, utilize the search bar to search for pages according to keywords in the URL, title tag, etc. In the example below, you can see the search functionality pulling up all of the product pages that contain the word “jeans” within a given field: For your site’s main pages, the Edit by Page feature allows for bulk editing. This means that you can set sitewide patterns for meta tags, structured data, and set indexation status at scale. The Edit by Page feature allows for bulk updates to a site’s main pages. So for example, if you have a pattern set to include the name of the site on each individual main page’s title tag, you can remove multiple pages from this pattern at once. Similarly, if you wanted to apply a noindex tag to multiple main pages at once, you could so. Metadata and canonical tags Getting your site’s metadata “right” is one of the most basic and foundational aspects of SEO. Let’s explore how you can update your metadata using Wix (both at the page and page-type level), as well as how Wix handles canonical tags. Title tags and meta descriptions To update your title tags and meta descriptions at the page level, you’ll need to access the SEO Basics tab . (As mentioned earlier, the SEO Basics tab is accessible from wherever you can edit a page, be it the Editor or within the Wix dashboard). Within the tab, you’ll see fields to enter the page’s title tag and meta description. Above the fields is a preview of what your page might appear like in search results. Add or edit title tags and meta descriptions from the SEO Basics tab. Currently, you can add up to 200 characters to the title field and 500 to the description field. AI-generated title tags and meta descriptions Wix premium site owners can cut down on the time and effort involved with optimizing their title tags and meta descriptions by using our AI meta tag creator . Select “Create AI text” within the Basics tab of the SEO Panel to get started with AI-generated title tags and meta descriptions. You can even tweak the tone of voice of the suggested title tags/meta descriptions by selecting “Refine suggestions.” To optimize your title tags/meta descriptions at scale with our AI meta tag generator, head to the Edit by Page section for a given page type. Here, you can update these fields without having to open up each page individually, enabling you to save time. Custom meta tags As briefly discussed earlier, you can add custom meta tags to your Wix pages. For any given page, you can add up to 10 custom tags. This means you can add tags to specify the viewpost of a page on mobile or indicate that the page should not be indexed nor followed, for example. Canonical tags Wix automatically adds a self-referential canonical tag to every page. You can use the Advanced SEO tab to edit the canonical and point to another URL. However, you cannot have multiple canonical tags for one URL. This is a good thing as having canoncials that point to multiple URLs can confuse search engines. Editing a canonical tag inside the Wix Editor. When filters are employed, as they often are on a product page, and parameters are added to the URL, Wix automatically canonicalizes back to the original URL. For URLs that fall within a collection, Wix automatically directs the user back to the original product page when clicking on an item within a collection. This product page, like all other Wix pages, is self-canonicalized. Nofollow Links Since we’re talking about links and tags, this is a good time to discuss nofollow links on Wix. When working with the blog and adding your link, you will see an option to designate that link as a nofollow link. The link attributes available on Wix. This also applies when adding links to any of your site’s main pages in the Wix Editor. Here, as with the blog, you can apply the following link attributes: noopener noreferrer nofollow sponsored For other vertical pages (i.e., product pages) it is possible to add any and all link attributes by using Wix’s dev tool, Velo. Note that, while it is possible, it would require some significant coding knowledge. Editing metadata at scale Optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, etc. one-by-one can be tedious (that’s an understatement). While a bulk upload option is currently in development, there is another way to create and update a site’s meta data at scale. The SEO Settings section lets you add variables to your metadata according to page type. Meaning, you can add variables (i.e., the name of the site, business location, etc.) to the metadata of various pages types on your site (main pages, blog pages, product pages, event pages, and so forth). The SEO Settings section shows editing options according to page type. From a purely SEO point of view, the most common application relates to your title tags and meta descriptions. You can tack on your site’s name, for example, to every title tag on your site in a matter of a few clicks. Below, I’ve set all of my title tags for my blog to include both the post’s title and the site’s name. Also, I pulled the post excerpt in to function as the meta description for all my blog posts. As such, I would not need to create a custom title tag or meta description for any of my blog posts. The SEO Settings is where you can set a post’s title tag to include the blog post’s title and the site name. Of course, it’s possible that a specific post would need a title tag that doesn’t follow this formula. In that case, you can go to the blog page itself and update the title tag within the SEO Panel . Even though there is a page-type-level pattern in effect, as soon as I create a unique title tag, on a specific page, that page is removed from the pattern. Editing the metadata for a single page where a pattern has been applied at the page-type level will override the pattern. Where this feature really comes into focus is for pages that would require constant updates to the title tag and/or meta description. Product pages would be a good example—if you put the price of the product into the title tag and then changed the price on the product page itself, you would have to go back and update the title tag. However, Wix offers a slew of dynamic variables for such page types. For products, in particular, you can add the product price as a variable. Doing this will add the price of a product (as listed on the page) to that pages’ title tag. If you subsequently change that price on the page itself, the title tag will dynamically update. So, if you updated the pricing on 500 products, there would be no additional work to update the price in the corresponding title tags. Adding dynamic variables, such as the price of a product, to the title tag saves you from having to make manual updates as certain page content elements change. Editing metadata at the page level While applying changes to a site’s metadata at the folder level is a scalable solution, there is often the need to remove specific pages from the folder-level pattern. To make this process as efficient as possible, we created the Edit by Page feature . The feature is accessed via the SEO Settings once you select a specific page type. Here, you’ll see a Customize Defaults (i.e., folder-level settings) tab as well as a tab to Edit by Page. Select the Edit by Page tab to see a breakdown of all the pages within the grouping or folder. This data includes: Page name URL Title tag Meta description Indexation status The SEO Panel is accessible from the Edit by Page table by selecting the desired row. Select a row to open the corresponding page’s SEO Panel, including (but not limited to): URL slug Title tag Meta description Robots meta tags Structured data markup Og tags The SEO Panel is accessible from the Edit by Page table by selecting the desired row. As such, the Edit By Page feature eliminates the need to jump back and forth between the Wix Editor and Wix Dashboard to manage the SEO settings of any given page. Currently, this feature applies to a site’s main pages and product pages—support for more page types will roll out over time. Social sharing Like a title tag, you can set up og tags on a per-page basis via the Settings and/or SEO Panel seen wherever page editing occurs. The social share editing options as seen in the Wix Editor. Below the og tags is the Twitter sharing settings , where you can designate your Twitter title and description, image, and card size. You can use these settings to establish a pattern (much like you would a title tag), via the SEO basics & social share section of your SEO Settings . In your SEO Settings, you can apply a systemized logic to your og tags and the content you share on social. Below, I simply pulled in my title tag and meta description to serve as my title and description for social sharing. Again, you can do this on a per-vertical basis as well. An example showing the title tag being applied to all og tags for a site’s event pages. URLs and redirects Here’s what you need to know about Wix in regard to URL customization and redirects. URL customization You can customize the URL slug for all Wix pages. This is done in the SEO Panel that is available when managing pages within the Editor and/or dashboard (depending on the page type). Within the SEO Basics tab is a field for you to update the URL slug. The option to customize URL slugs as it appears within the Wix Editor’s SEO Panel for the homepage. Beyond the slug, you can change the folder names for blog and product pages. For example, the Wix blog automatically creates a folder entitled “/posts.” You can change that to whatever naming you would like. The blog folder “post” was changed to “resource” for the Wix SEO Hub using Wix’s URL customization capabilities. It’s also possible to create site hierarchy for your static pages on Wix (i.e., a “parent/child” page relationship). You can do this within the SEO Panel in the Wix Editor. To create a hierarchical page relationship, simply select the desired parent page from the drop-down menu shown. Create site hierarchy for Wix static pages by utiilzing the SEO settings within the SEO Panel. Beyond the site’s main static pages, the auto-redirect feature is currently also found on the following pages types: Product pages Booking pages Online program pages Event pages Managing redirects Wix offers a redirect manager to help you manage your 301 redirects . The URL Redirect Manager (found within the dashboard’s SEO Tools ) gives you the option to: Set up individual 301 redirects Create group 301 redirects for URLs that share the same path Bulk upload up to 500 redirects at a time (we provide a template as well) Wix also checks for URL formatting errors before implementing redirects: The URL Redirect Manager detects incorrectly formatted URLs. The Redirect Manager also automatically catches redirect loops, even when you upload a CSV for bulk redirecting. The Redirect Manager supports importing up to 500 redirects at a time and also checks for errors and loops. There is a hard cap of 5,000 redirects per site, but that amount should cover most use cases. Also, it’s worth noting that you can establish a redirect from a Wix domain to a non-Wix domain. Technical and on-page SEO audits Wix enables you to dive deep into the technical health of your site through built-in features and integrations from our app market. At the same time, we offer the ability to audit your on-page SEO for blog posts, bookings pages, and product pages. Using these tools enables you to create an all-around healthy site that allows for strong search rankings. Site inspection tool Understanding what pages on a site have (or have not) been indexed by Google is an essential aspect of website auditing. By pulling in Google’s URL Inspection API , Wix became the first CMS to give you the ability to automatically see the indexing status of your site’s pages (once you run the inspection, Wix automatically pulls the data on up to 2,000 of your site’s pages without you having to specify specific URLs). The tool leads with a highlights section that gives you an aggregate view of the site’s index status along with a breakdown of the status details. The Wix Site Inspection dashboard highlights section. We also pull in data on mobile usability, which means you can identify the percentage of your site’s pages that are mobile friendly. The highlights section is followed by a per-page breakdown that includes the index status along with the status details (such as “Submitted and indexed” or “Discovered - not currently indexed”). Along with the page’s index status, you can see if that particular page is mobile-friendly and if it is eligible to be shown as rich result on the SERP. The per-page breakdown as seen in the Wix Site Inspection Tool. One thing to note is that we also include the page type in the full report breakdown (i.e., blog post, event, main page, etc). This can make using the dashboard more efficient as you can generally ignore things like an archive page being excluded from Google’s index (as it should be excluded from Google’s index). Drilling down into a specific page will bring up a panel where you can see the status information along with when the page was last crawled and by which crawler type. Here, you can access more information about index status and status details (which can help you implement fixes to try to get the index status changed). Additionally, when possible, the panel will point to specific issues discovered on the page. In the screenshot below, the panel lets us know that the page in question is not mobile-friendly (mobile-friendliness is a confirmed Google ranking factor ) and indicates that there are clickable elements that are too close together: The per-page breakdown as seen in the Wix Site Inspection Tool. In such a case, reformatting these elements is highly recommended. You can refine your inspection results by either using the search box to discover specific pages or according to indexation status. The search functionality within the Site Inspection tool being used to find URLs on the site that contain the phrase ‘google-’. Additionally, you can use the tool’s filter feature to refine the results according to page type, index status, mobile usability, and rich result status (or any combination of the aforementioned options). The filters on the Site Inspection tool set to show a specific page type and the pages of that type that are currently excluded from Google’s index See our full write-up to see how the Wix Site Inspection Tool can help you audit a site . Bot log analytics Server log analysis plays an important part in identifying crawl inefficiencies and errors. While accessing, analyzing, and visualizing server logs is often one of the more cumbersome processes in the world of SEO reporting, Wix makes it incredibly easy. The bot log reports within Wix help you to understand bot interaction with your site and its implications. The bot log reports found in the Wix dashboard present you with information on: How often bots are visiting a domain over time Which pages are being crawled most frequently The response codes bots are receiving Bot Traffic over Time The Bot Traffic over Time report presents a visual representation of all the server calls made by a variety of bots over a period of time (which can be custom set). The filters on the Site Inspection tool set to show a specific page type and the pages of that type that are currently excluded from Google’s index The full set of bots tracked on the Bot Traffic over Time report. This report allows you to keep track of bot activity as it relates to the major search engines (and their various user agents). It also includes a large variety of bots representing SEO tools (such as Semrush and Ahrefs) along with social media bots and beyond. You can set filters to show only those calls that produced a given status code or filter to only include particular pages in the visualization. Bot Traffic by Page You can use the Bot Traffic by Page report to see how often pages are crawled, which can help you identify crawl budget inefficiencies. You can set a custom period to pull data from and filter by bot and status code here as well. Along with the bar chart shown above, the Bot Traffic by Page report can be viewed as a table. Apply status code filters to the table to quickly see which pages are returning 5XX or 4XX status codes so that you can take appropriate action. You can also select which bots to include in the report as well as toggle columns to show the number of hits, entry page, etc. Response Status over Time To check on the progress you have made in terms of fixing errors on your pages, use the Response Status over Time report to see how bots are interacting with said pages. In addition to filtering by status code, you can also designate which bots you would like to see data from and filter by page. This report can be viewed as a table, which can make monitoring pages and their status codes easier. The table view also offers additional information, such as the number of hits along with the first and last hit date. Lastly, you can schedule the reports to be sent to you automatically so that you can stay up to date on how your site is being crawled. Built-in on-page SEO auditing To help you optimize the fundamental on-page elements of Wix blog posts, bookings services, and product pages (and to better organize these tasks) we’ve developed the Wix SEO Assistant . Available in the Wix Editor SEO panel for associated page types (listed above), the SEO Assistant works hand-in-hand with the focus keyword you have designated for the page. (Note: You can use our Semrush integration to do keyword research without ever leaving the Wix ecosystem in order to determine what keyword you want the page to rank for.) The filters on the Site Inspection tool set to show a specific page type and the pages of that type that are currently excluded from Google’s index After designating the focus keyword (which is optional), you’ll see a set of SEO tasks that relate to the page’s on-page optimization: Title tag Meta description H1 H2 or H3 Body text URL Alt text Open tasks (that reflect elements that should be optimized) will appear inside the SEO Assistant with a red marker next to each item: As you optimize each element to include your focus keyword, the task will automatically change to green to indicate completion. As tasks are complete, the SEO Assistant will automatically change its status to a green checkmark. You can complete certain SEO tasks, such as optimizing the title tag and URL, within the SEO Assistant itself. Other tasks, like optimizing headers, must be done within the structure of the page itself. It’s worth noting that tasks are assigned a priority that reflects their overall importance for SEO. For example, URLs, which Google has stated keyword placement is not of great SEO importance , are labeled as a “low” priority task. (At any rate, changing a URL once a page is already live should really only be done when absolutely necessary, and in such cases, a redirect should be implemented). You can see an aggregate list of on-page tasks atop of the SEO Assistant. Here, the total number of open tasks per priority level are listed. As the number of open SEO tasks decreases, the color of the task section will change from red to yellow and ultimately to green once certain thresholds are reached. The top section of the SEO Assistant lists the total number of tasks by priority and changes background color as tasks are completed. Lastly, and perhaps most novel of all, the SEO Assistant will tell you the indexation status of the page (assuming the site is connected to Google Search Console via Wix). See the indexation status of your blog pages right inside of the Wix SEO Assistant. Local and international SEO Both local and international SEO have their own unique characteristics and understanding them with respect to Wix’s capabilities is important. There are things Wix does on the back end as well as integrations that can help you with your SEO efforts when optimizing for local or international search. Local SEO Wix has a direct partnership with Google Business Profile that allows you to manage your GBP listings on Wix. This means that you can import existing business listings as well as create new listings from the Wix dashboard. An example of a Google Business Profile, as it appears in the Google Maps app. Through this integration, you can do things like update your business hours, establish service areas, add business attributes, etc. You can also manage your reviews from the Wix dashboard. In particular, you can reply to reviews and get notified of new reviews. An example of a Google Business Profile, as it appears in the Google Maps app. The Wix GBP integration places GBP data within the Wix dashboard. Our integration also includes the Reserve with Google program, thereby giving a listing the ability to book appointments/reservations directly from your GBP listing. This, of course, requires your site and GBP listing to support Reserve with Google . We are currently in the process of partnering with Google on direct verification, which would provide an alternative to potentially waiting weeks to receive a postcard in order to verify a listing. Beyond the GBP listing, you can easily add a Google Map to your pages and include multiple locations on the map as well. You can add a Google Map to a page via the Wix Editor. Further, and to support a GBP listing, Wix offers a free logo maker . This means that you can create a custom logo to upload to your GBP listing so that it appears within the local panel (as shown below). The Wix GBP integration places GBP data within the Wix dashboard. The logo maker will walk you through a setup process to establish what kind of logo works best, then it will design a logo to fit whatever property you would like to use it on. Although it’s not a must-have from an SEO point of view, the logo is part of the local listing and can aid your branding efforts. International SEO Wix supports multilingual sites . You have the option to translate the site manually or automatically via Google Translate. Keep in mind that you will have to translate your meta data separately. As with any translation, you’ll want to make sure that all forms of content, including visual media, are culturally aligned to the region you wish to serve. With various languages implemented on a site, Wix will give each its own subdirectory . And, for sites that have multiple languages, Wix automatically adds hreflang tags to your pages. Advanced customization There’s a lot you can do to customize a Wix site from a technical/SEO perspective. In addition to the options and features described above, Wix offers a robust developer tool called Velo . Velo is an open development platform that works hand-in-hand with the Wix site builder to bring a new level of customization to Wix sites. As such, it has a very wide scope of operations—far too wide to capture even from a purely SEO perspective as there are so many cases and circumstances that Velo can be applied to. Here’s a brief rundown on Velo and some of the ways it can be applied to SEO. Velo: Wix’s full-stack developer tool To get started, here’s bit of what you can generally do with Velo: Add custom JavaScript to your Wix site Add custom functionality via Velo’s APIs Utilize Wix’s internal database abilities and connect to external databases There’s a lot more that you can do with Velo , what I’ve listed here just scratches the surface. That said, one use case that immediately comes to mind is uploading dynamic content from a dataset. Since you can utilize custom JavaScript with Velo, it’s not a far stretch to dynamically update content to a page itself or to a page’s metadata. With a bit of coding, you can pull content from a dataset to dynamically load it to pages on the site or as metadata at set intervals. To that end, Velo gives you full customization over a site’s meta tags, allowing you to dynamically insert content into them. There is also a slew of marketing and CRO applications for Velo as well: Integrate with Salesforce Implement infinite scroll functionality Add interactive elements, such as currency convertors , to a page Indicate that a product is almost out of stock and/or back in stock Create custom filters and search inputs Integrate Google Sheets with a Wix site Again, there are potentially endless applications as Velo is open and highly flexible. Analytics Measuring and analyzing a site’s performance and behavior is a vital part of the optimization process. Here’s a look at the site data and analytics Wix offers, as well as how Wix interacts with third-party data sources such as Google Analytics, etc. Wix Analytics Wix’s built-in reporting tools can be found within the dashboard. Firstly, be aware that there will be some discrepancies between the data shown here and the data shown in Google Analytics—this is because Wix and Google have different algorithms for filtering out things like bot traffic, etc. That said, analytics data is often more about the trends and relationships than the specific numbers, per se. In either case, Wix Analytics is a very convenient way to get a sense of your site’s performance. There are two main dashboards to reference when diving into your site’s traffic trends: Marketing Overview dashboard For a top-level, multi-channel understanding of your site’s traffic, I recommend the Marketing Overview (Wix dashboard > Analytics & Reports > Marketing Overview). Here you can see traffic from the following sources: Organic search Organic social Email marketing Paid social Paid search Direct Referral Look at your period-over-period data to get a better understanding of your site’s performance across multiple channels. You can dive deeper into certain channels, such as organic social, by filtering for a specific platform (i.e., Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, etc.). You can also review the specific performance of various email blasts (when run though Wix). If your site is connected to Google Search Console, you’ll see GSC data and insights without leaving the Marketing Overview dashboard. The Marketing Overview shows your Google Search Console data for top growing search queries. Lastly, the Marketing Overview will give you a bird’s eye view of your paid channels (such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.): Track paid campaigns within the Marketing Overview’s trends chart Traffic Overview dashboard The second dashboard that offers traffic insights is the Traffic Overview itself (Wix dashboard > Analytics & Reports > Traffic Overview ). To start, the Traffic Overview presents you with the site’s: Total sessions Unique visitors Average session duration The data is presented with a period-over-period comparison and is followed by: Traffic referral sources A user type breakdown Traffic by location You can custom set the data reporting period as well. The initial traffic report within Wix Analytics. Once you move past the overview, there is an abundance of traffic and user data to dive into, both for the site overall as well as for the site’s blog in particular (should the site have a blog). Wix Analytics traffic reports Traffic by Entry Page Here, you can see which of your pages visitors first view, broken down by traffic source. This is an easy way to see where your visitors are landing and via which medium. You can filter to organize the data according to unique visitors, page views, or site sessions, as well as designate which traffic sources to include. While it’s not a full user path report, it is a very accessible way to get an understanding of visitors and how they arrive on your site. Wix Analytics includes a variety of reports to help you understand your site’s performance. Diving into each report would be a guide of its own but some highlights from the traffic analytics are: You can analyze all of the aforementioned metrics within the report’s table view. As we’re discussing the data tables within Wix Analytics, know that there is an extensive list of metrics that you can use to create all sorts of data comparisons. Traffic by Time of Day The Traffic by the Time of Day report lets you see what days of the week and what times of day people visit your site. You can apply filters to show data that meets specific thresholds: You can also see this data as a heat map, which may make it easier to digest. Blog analytics The blog page-specific analytics Wix offers makes understanding a blog’s performance incredibly accessible. Blog Activity over Time To help you assess visitor behavior trends, the Blog Activity over Time report shows post views, unique visitors, reactions, site sessions, comments, likes, and shares over time. Top Blog Posts Use this report to track your top-performing posts from a variety of perspectives, including post views, unique visitors, number of comments, likes, etc. You can compare the data to previous periods and filter by post title and publish date, among other criteria. To get more granular with the data, use the Blog Activity over Time report’s table view to show additional relevant data columns. Toggle the time period to drill into a specific timeframe or to get a broader overview. Doing so can help you evaluate, for example, whether updating a blog post has impacted views. Blog Activity by Time of Day You can even track which day and time of day your blog is most interacted with. Interactions can be viewed as average post views, average visitors, average sessions and more. This information can help you decide the best time of the week to publish new content. Again, this is really just the tip of the iceberg. From tracking usage by device to traffic relative to sales orders, there’s a lot more data that Wix Analytics offers you. Wix eCommerce data For those running an eCommerce site, there is a separate set of analytics to track how well the site is performing from a sales perspective. Wix Stores Analytics includes a strong series of reports to track your sales progress. With these analytics, you can monitor, among other things, the site’s: Total sales Number of orders Average order value Revenue over time Top-selling items The Sales over Time report in Wix Stores Analytics. You can utilize Wix Store Analytics data as part of your SEO efforts. One example might be to track the performance of various eCommerce campaigns according to coupon code. The Sales by Coupon report in Wix Stores Analytics. A store owner could apply various SEO techniques and strategies to different coupon campaigns in order to track the impact of those tactics directly on sales. In addition, Wix Stores Analytics gives you a nice set of insights on your audience, including data on the site’s: Top paying customers The number of new customers gained Performance per location The Customers over Time report within Wix Stores Analytics. Site Speed dashboard Page speed remains a prominent part of the SEO equation. To that end, Wix has created its own internal Site Speed dashboard to give you a comprehensive overview of your site’s performance from multiple vantage points. Access the Site Speed dashboard by heading to Analytics & Reports > Site Speed within the Wix dashboard’s left-hand navigation menu. The Site Speed dashboard presents you with data from Google’s PageSpeed Insights as well as data Wix tracks on its own. The dashboard is a blend of both lab and field data. To the latter, Wix’s Site Speed dashboard offers field data on Core Web Vitals collected from multiple browsers (not just Chrome) and does not require the typical traffic thresholds in order to be accessed. This makes the Site Speed dashboard one of the only ways on the web to access actual field data for CWV without having to meet Google’s traffic thresholds (obviously, and by definition, the site needs to have some traffic in order for Wix to show field data). This can take a lot of the guesswork out of analyizng your site’s performance. The CWV field data offers the aggregate scores for LCP, FID, and CLS. Selecting one of these three scores enables you to drill down into the data over the past 30 days, or view per-page analysis and percentage breakdown according to the experience level users received for the selected metrics (“poor,” “fair,” or “good”). This data can be seen for both mobile and desktop. Note: The data displayed is a sample, focusing on the 75th percentiles of all measured first pages in site sessions. Beneath the section for field data, the dashboard also presents you with simulated data (i.e., lab data). Here, you can see the site’s desktop and mobile scores for: First Contentful Paint Speed index Largest Contentful Paint Time to Interactive Total Blocking Time Cumulative Layout Shift The Google PageSpeed simulation within Wix’s Site Speed dashboard Google Search Console As part of your site’s direct connection to Google Search Console via the Wix platform, Wix Analytics presents you with an array of Search Console reports: Google Search Queries Over Time Top Search Queries on Google Top Pages in Google Search Results Average Position in Google over Time Wix Analytics Google Search Console reports make GSC data more accessible via intuitive filters. The reports also serve as a way to easily communicate performance data to clients, as they can be sent via email automatically. In terms of performance insights, the GSC reports in Wix Analytics enable you to see a variety of data trends related to clicks, impressions, and average rank. And, you can view this data by page or query, which is useful for assessing your SEO efforts. The various tables allow you to take a more granular look at Search Console data by setting custom comparisons and filtering the data according to device, country, metric, query, page, and so forth. Third-party analytics As mentioned earlier, Wix supports an easy and direct connection to Search Console via a partnership with Google. However, there is a good deal more that Wix does in order to ensure its users have easy access to data and analytics supplied by third-parties. Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) Wix makes it easy to connect to Google Analytics . To do so, navigate to the Marketing Integrations section of the Wix dashboard. From here, you can start the process of obtaining your site’s tracking ID and adding it to your site. Note that you must first connect a custom domain to your site before you can connect to Google Analytics. In addition, Wix automatically sends events to Google Analytics for you in a variety of instances. This is convenient because it means you don’t need to use Google Tag Manager to fire the events to Analytics. Wix does it for you (assuming you have activated Enhanced eCommerce analytics inside of GA). This specifically applies to the following events from Wix Stores: Product Impression Product Click View Content Initiate Checkout Add To Cart Remove From Cart Start Payment Add Payment Info Purchase The same applies to tracking leads that come via interactions with the Wix Chat tool. With regard to chat box interactions, Wix sends GA event information when: A visitor submits a form via the chat A visitor opens or closes the chat window Wix supports Google Tag Manager (also within the Marketing Integrations section) as well. And, it’s also possible to send other events directly to Google by using Velo . Google Analytics 4 You can set up a GA4 property for your Wix site using the method above. You can even set up your GA4 property at the same time as you set up your Universal Analytics property. To do so, click “Show advanced options” during the property setup phase in Google Analytics. A new field labeled “Create a Universal Analytics property” should appear—toggle the button next to this label to reveal the option to “Create both a Google Analytics 4 and a Universal Analytics property.” To do so, click “Show advanced options” during the property setup phase in Google Analytics. A new field labeled “Create a Universal Analytics property” should appear—toggle the button next to this label to reveal the option to “Create both a Google Analytics 4 and a Universal Analytics property.” In addition, it is possible to run both GA4 and Universal Analytics concurrently by using Google Tag Manager. Apps and third-party integrations In addition to Google Analytics, you can easily connect your Wix site to Yandex Metrica, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and more. There are also apps that help you with your email marketing, shipping, etc. Moreover, you can embed custom code onto your site so that you can integrate with all sorts of traffic and analytic tools (such as Hotjar, for example). At the same time, Wix comes equipped with the ability to perform many marketing functions without third-party apps. For example, Wix includes a native email marketing platform , the ability to design visuals for social media (and schedule Facebook and Instagram posts), as well as a video maker. IndexNow with Microsoft Bing For premium website owners, Wix automatically pushes all newly published and updated content to IndexNow , meaning near-instant indexation on participating search engines (e.g., Microsoft Bing, Yandex, Naver, Seznam.cz, etc). The benefits of IndexNow The latest content for site visitors Since you’re actively informing search engines of page changes, potential site visitors will be able to access the freshest, most relevant information at the time of their search. Greater indexing efficiency You can “tell” participating search engines exactly what URLs you changed, so that they don’t waste resources crawling pages that haven’t changed. This can potentially help your business’s revenue, as your landing pages can start appearing in search results sooner (than waiting for a search engine to crawl your site). Near real-time notifications to search engines The faster you get your pages indexed, the sooner they can start attracting visitors from search engines. Keyword research with Semrush Wix users have free, built-in access to Semrush ’s basic keyword research capabilities, thanks to a direct integration with the industry-leading tool provider. Accessible as part of the SEO Setup Checklist , the Wix Semrush integration is designed to help you select focus keywords for your most important pages. It can also be used as a keyword research tool that is applicable to any content you create on your site. Initially, the integration will ask you to connect to Semrush. You can either create a new Semrush account or connect Wix to your existing account. Connect an existing Semrush account or create a new account from the Wix Dashboard. If you’re using an existing Semrush account, you can pull as many keyword requests as is allotted by your Semrush subscription. For non-Semrush subscribers, connecting with Wix will allow you to run 10 keyword research requests within a 24-hour period. It will also enable you to use any of the tools within Semrush that are available at its free tier. The keyword research data found within Wix’s Semrush integration is geo-specific, so ensure you have the correct country selected before you start. The Semrush keyword research integration provides keyword data according to country When you search a keyword, you will be presented with that keyword’s: Search volume Search volume trends Keyword difficulty Search intent Data returned by Wix’s Semrush keyword research integration From here, users can directly add a keyword to their Wix SEO setup plan as part of the overall checklist (or you can simply use the tool for research independent of the SEO Setup Checklist). Learn more about how to use Wix’s Semrush keyword research integration SEO competitor analysis with SE Ranking Wix site owners can take advantage of SE Ranking’s competitive analysis insights directly within the Wix platform. Our SE Ranking app (which allows for 10 free data extractions) helps you analyze your competitors on Google by giving you insight into their: Organic traffic trends Keywords they rank for Top-performing pages on Google Referring links Etc. Competitor keyword ranking trends as seen within Wix’s SE Ranking app. You can use the app to identify your competitors on the Google SERP according to location, with the ability to dive into regional performance trends as well as conduct a keyword gap analysis and dive into specific competitor keyword performance. Competitor keyword breakdowns as seen in the SE Ranking app. The app also enables you to analyze your competitor’s paid performance on the Google SERP and to conduct keyword research as well. The keyword research metrics presented by the SE Ranking app. Learn more about how to use the SE Ranking app in Wix . Site audits with Deepcrawl Along with the various bot log reports, Wix offers the ability to perform technical audits without leaving the platform via an integration with Lumar (formerly known as Deepcrawl). Found within the Wix App Market, the Deepcrawl app conducts automated, weekly crawls to detect a range of issues. The audit is broken into two components: technical errors and content inefficiencies. With regard to the former, the Deepcrawl app analyzes the site in order to determine if there are pages returning anything other than 2XX status codes. The Deepcrawl app categorizes pages according to status code and includes corresponding trends data. Additionally, the audit will list all of the redirects found on the site as well as any links to broken pages. The app’s content report shows a breakdown of the site’s pages that contain: Missing titles Missing descriptions Long tiles Short titles Long descriptions Short descriptions Duplicate titles and descriptions Duplicate body content Thin pages Empty pages The Deepcrawl app showing pages with “long” meta descriptions A sample template from Wix’s native email marketing platform. Wix is built with SEO in mind When optimizing a Wix site, it’s important to be aware of the defaults that Wix provides as well as the many opportunities to customize and work at scale. Site owners looking to add even more capabilities can open up a world of possibilities with Velo and/or third-party integrations. However, even without coding knowledge or third-party apps, there’s a lot that Wix empowers site owners to do so that they can rank well in organic search. Mordy Oberstein - Head of SEO Branding, Wix Mordy is the Head of SEO Branding at Wix. Concurrently he also serves as a communications advisor for Semrush. Dedicated to SEO education, Mordy is one of the organizers of SEOchat and a popular industry author and speaker. Twitter LinkedIn An example of an auto-redirect being applied upon changing the URL for one of the site’s main static pages. Should you decide to edit the URL for your site’s main pages via the Wix Editor, Wix will automatically create a 301 redirect for you. Should you not wish to implement the redirect, simply uncheck the box that appears below the URL upon editing it. Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Google has been pushing the web hard to create “helpful content”... but what exactly is “helpful” when it comes to content? Wouldn’t it be… helpful to know? What does the future hold for helpful content in light of the constantly evolving algorithms? What are the potential implications of the Google helpful content update? Wix’s Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter, and Head of SEO Branding, Mordy Oberstein, are joined today by Semush’s Head of SEO, Kyle Byers, to address how one should create and gauge quality content. Get your content hats on as we explore E-E-A-T, algorithms, helpful content, Google, and more on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back What exactly is "helpful content"? Google has been pushing the web hard to create “helpful content”... but what exactly is “helpful” when it comes to content? Wouldn’t it be… helpful to know? What does the future hold for helpful content in light of the constantly evolving algorithms? What are the potential implications of the Google helpful content update? Wix’s Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter, and Head of SEO Branding, Mordy Oberstein, are joined today by Semush’s Head of SEO, Kyle Byers, to address how one should create and gauge quality content. Get your content hats on as we explore E-E-A-T, algorithms, helpful content, Google, and more on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 42 | June 14, 2023 | 46 MIN 00:00 / 46:27 This week’s guests Kyle Byers Kyle Byers has led successful growth marketing teams agency-side and in-house for startups, Fortune 500 companies, and everything in between for over 15 years. His work has also been featured and cited in major industry publications and "best of" lists. Kyle is currently the Director of Organic Search at Semrush, where he oversees Semrush’s global SEO, CRO, Organic Content, and International Blogs teams. 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 put you guys some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO I am Mordy overseeing the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the helpful, the always ready to help be very helpful, super helpful. Nothing is more helpful in SEO than our head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Help, I need somebody. Not just anybody. Help. I don't know any other... Mordy Oberstein: I can't sing I have a cold. Wait a second. I can't sing anyway. Crystal Carter: I don't know, any other songs about... Oh no, I get by with a little help from my friends those are both Beatles songs, maybe The Beatles are the most helpful. Mordy Oberstein: There's not a lot of songs with the word help. I'm looking at this the other day, actually. Crystal Carter: "Won't you please help me?" That's one. That's one. Here we go. Mordy Oberstein: That's still Help by the Beatles. Crystal Carter: Is is? Oh gosh. Oh yeah, you're right. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we've gone full circle from the two Beatles songs that talk about help. Crystal Carter: Literally. Although to be fair, the help from my friends when I don't really count them, when I count the Joe Cocker one. Mordy Oberstein: The Joe Cocker version is fabulous. Also Wonder Years, so. Crystal Carter: The Wonder Years, when the Wonder Years kicks in and it's like that, I'm like, yeah, Kevin, let's do this. Middle school is difficult. Mordy Oberstein: My association's always in the beginning intro, he puts on a Jets helmet. That old school Jets logo like Joe Namath Jets logo, that just sticks out to me. That's the way my brain works. I don't know. Crystal Carter: I just feel, I remember relating to him dealing with stress. He had so much stress. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders. And I was like, "Kevin I feel you." Mordy Oberstein: It's true though. Crystal Carter: The struggle is real. Mordy Oberstein: I got to re watch that. I haven't watched that in years. Crystal Carter: They rebooted it. It's pretty cool as well. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I did see they reboot. I watched one episode. I'm like, "I can't. It's too..." Crystal Carter: I've had a lot of associations with the original. You got to settle into it. I think that they kept a lot of the good aesthetic. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, I got to go back into it. Fine. Anyway. Crystal Carter: We digress. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. And where if Arby's has the meets, we have ADI. Not only can you use our ADI to literally leverage AI to create a website for you, but you can use GPTthree right inside the Wix editor, create AI generated content with the click of a mouse inside of the Wix editor. Warning, AI content should be done with supervision and may result in the loss of rank, loss of clicks, loss of conversions, and loss of appetite for your audience. Always consult with the content provider or SEO before taking AI content. Do not generate AI content on an empty stomach since nothing should ever be done on an empty stomach. That was a mouthful, but we have a lot of AI inside of Wix. You should definitely leverage it. Crystal Carter: You should absolutely check it out. It's pretty cool. I think that, yeah, you definitely have to find out what you can do, what you can't do because it doesn't do everything. It can save you some time and it's pretty rad. So check it out. Mordy Oberstein: Use responsibly. Crystal Carter: Use responsibly. Mordy Oberstein: All seriousness by the way, you should make sure your AI content is helpful 'cause it's super cool. Crystal Carter: Helpful. Mordy Oberstein: Cutting edge stuff from Wix. But you need to know how to use this stuff to make sure that, again, it's helpful. Which brings us to today's episode of What the Heck is Helpful anymore on the internet. Crystal Carter: What is helpful content? We keep getting lots of things about the less information, about the helpful content update and that your content should be helpful for people, but what exactly... Mordy Oberstein: Is helpful? We're taking a hard look at Google's passion for helpful content and asking what exactly does that mean? We'll discuss the clues Google leaves, so we may define what is helpful content where page experience now fits into helpful content and what is the future of helpful content in the algorithm ? Plus Sam Rush's own head of SEO Kyle Byers will tell us how he gauges content quality and will explore nifty little Google feature that may help us better understand how Google thinks of helpful. Of course we have your snappy SEO news who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. Throw your site and its content a lifeline because we're here to help as episode 42 of the SERP's Up podcast is the call button to content that has fallen and can't get up. Crystal Carter: There's so many nineties references in this. Mordy Oberstein: I love that. I know it's so many nineties. Crystal Carter: I feel like we should get a clapper before we get going. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, clap on, clap off. Here's some helpful content for you. Crystal Carter: Let's pop into the introduction then Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Just for a little bit of background, in August of 2022, Google released a new update called the Helpful Content Update. Ever since then, all SEOs can talk about is AI and also helpful content. But what exactly does helpful content look like, sound like, feel like? Exactly and that's kind of been a little bit of an elusive question. A little bit of background about the Helpful Content Update. It looks at the domain, the entire site. Yes, I said site and not pages. Hopefully that myth around "Google only looks at pages." Which I know Glen Gabe hates that myth. Is now fully gone because Google has officially said that the Helpful Content Update looks at the site overall, which makes a great deal of sense because it's really important for the user to understand that the site offers a good content quality experience because after looking at one page, you may decide to go to the next page. Content quality applies to all pages. Anyway in any regard the Helpful Content Update looks at the site to see how helpful the content is and if it passes a certain threshold and is deemed quality, which is good and that's what you want. If it doesn't pass that threshold, you might not rank as well. To put this in Google's own words, "content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines rather than to help or inform people is what we're talking about." This threshold, by the way, is constantly being evaluated. Google says, "the Helpful Content Update is also live and continuous. It's not that Google needs to press a button and then recalibrate is what I'm trying to say. Sites identified by this updat according Google may find this signal applied to them over a period of months. Our classifier for this update runs continuously allowing it to modern, newly launched sites and existing ones as it determines that the unhelpful content has not returned in the long term, the classification will no longer apply." By the way, Google's Gary ish at Pubcon in February 2023 made it sound like recovering from this is really, really, really hard. Which brings us to getting it right the first time. Crystal thoughts? Crystal Carter: My first thoughts is, I remember when they were like, "we're releasing the helpful content update." And people were like, "oh snap. It's on!" Mordy Oberstein: Armageddon 2023. Crystal Carter: People are like, "people have been making junk content. You better watch out because here it comes." Everybody sat around going, "what? I'm not seeing, I didn't see, I'm not sure if I see anything straight away." I think I remember Danny having to come out and be like, "no, it's slowly rolling through. It's a bit of a slow burn." I think it's interesting that we started with a little help from my friends because the way that they describe it is a bit like a relationship with a friend or something. You'll give your friend a little bit of slack if maybe they didn't return your call one time, but if every time you ask them to help you, they don't, then you're going to be like, "okay, maybe this person isn't actually helpful." If you have a lot of signals for that particular friend that maybe they're not helpful or maybe they're not engaging or whatever, then maybe you're going to think, "okay, so it's interesting that they're saying they're continuously rolling and it's continuously rolling out. And so I think it's something that might not immediately see a sharp change straight away as these updates happen." But you might see a gradual... Mordy Oberstein: Over time. By the way, it's constantly evolving. First of it's a machine learning property and in my mind, these things learn slowly, develop slowly, we calibrate slowly. They evolve over time. You've seen them with the product review updates, which are now review updates. They expand, they get more prolific. Even at Google IO, we actually covered this on our Google IO podcast . Google announced that the helpful content update is now going to be looking for the hidden gems of the web. Which by the way, Glen Gabe asked Danny Sullivan of Google is that new and it was new. It's a new ability of the helpful content that the way Barry Schwartz phrased it I thought was quite well, "Instead of looking at this from a negative point of view, is this site not offering a quality experience? The helpful content update will be looking in the positive sense. Is this a hidden gem of the web?" It's a new way of the algorithm functioning with the ranking system functioning. And by the way, I think we talked about this back when we did that podcast on Google IO. The fact that they announced it at Google IO, as part of their official materials around Google IO tells you it's for real. Crystal Carter: Yeah, indeed. Also, I think it's an evolution of the passage ranking thing that they were talking about 'cause they used the word hidden gem to describe that as well. At search on, I think it was either 2022 or 2021, I can't remember. But at search on, they described the passive ranking thing and they said specifically we're looking for hidden gems and I remember that Martin Schlitt was explaining this in an interview on SEJ and he was talking about with the hidden gems' thing, it's essentially about people who have created good content, helpful content, but maybe it hasn't been overly optimized or significantly keyword optimized. Their systems, you said it's machine learning and it's learning the machines are learning to understand our language and we are seeing that with some of these LLMs, how they can understand my terrible prompts, I give them terrible prompts, misspellings and everything. And yet they're able to come back with something that makes sense. They're able to understand language better, therefore they can understand a piece of content that might not be fully optimized for that. I remember there was one recently that I found and I was looking up... Not to give too much, I was looking up like Aura costumes 'cause I was like, oh, I think I might get a Aura costume" Mordy Oberstein: We're back to Star Trek. Star Trek. Crystal Carter: I was looking up Uhuracostume thing and the top ranking post had a YouTube video that was good but the page in terms of SEO, like terrible formatting, no headers, like that sort of thing. But the actual content of the page was good quality content. I think that they're trying to do is make sure that if you have something that's good quality and it's worth saying that you're not so impeded for getting in front of users by some of the sort of structural things that people have required previously. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I think for some context, my personal theory around this whole thing is that Google realize there's a content gap. I don't mean in terms of the number of pages available to, but the number of good pages or helpful pages available to it. And realizes that while you might have gone to a content marketing agency or a content agency to spin up some content for you, they're not the actual experts on whatever it is that you were talking about. So changing tires. I always go back to tires. Let's go to Star Trek costumes, a content marketing agency can help you, but they're not the actual experts on Star Trek costumes. You who are manufacturer Star Trek costumes or a Star Trek nerd, you are the expert, the business owner, whatever it is, they're the actual expert and they need to create an incentive for the actual experts to create content. In order to create that incentive, they have to rank, which means that they have to be able to pull up those hidden gems of the web. I think what's super interesting, and we're going to get into it, what is helpful content actually look like in our opinion? But it's one really super interesting point. I was just watching Google Marketing live recently, we're recording this a few weeks before we actually released this. And one of the stats they talked about was the propensity of people to do more conversational searches, meaning they're looking less for, I forget the example they gave, I think it was pajamas, less for men's pajamas. They're looking more for things like super comfortable men's pajamas that match. Whatever that... Much more specific. And I think that leans into what is helpful content. Crystal Carter: Again, I think it's important to know the history of some of SEO stuff. Like Barry Schwartzis our resident SEO historian and it's worth following along with the evolution of that because the conversational tone of queries is something that has evolved. Featured snippets enable that voice search enables that, SEO Assistantsor Google assistants enable that. And it facilitates you writing out more so that you can get different results. And as we move into search generative experience as we move into that, you're going to see more of that as well. When I'm speaking on Bing chat for instance, when I'm speaking to that, I'll say, "my plant has brown leaves and I don't know why. How can I fix my plant?" And it will say, "oh, this is..." Mordy Oberstein: Because you didn't water it, did you water it? Crystal Carter: No, I did water it. We discussed this. Mordy Oberstein: Did you stick it in the closet? Because it needs light. Crystal Carter: I watered the plant... Mordy Oberstein: And you gave it light and it's soil? Crystal Carter: I have it light, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, I'm just covering the basics. Crystal Carter: Yeah, thank you very much. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry. Crystal Carter: But to be fair, it doesn't have any drainage. Maybe it needs drainage's. That's the thing the plants need sometime, this is what the bot suggested. Mordy Oberstein: We all need drainage. But it's a really good point that not about the plants needing drainage, that is a good point. Now the way people search tells you a lot because what Google's trying to do is align with what people are looking for and it's going to align the kind of content that people are looking for, what they're looking for. If people are looking for something more targeted, more specific, that gives you a clue as to what Google thinks is helpful, which is TLDR in my opinion. Helpful content is targeted specific content with purpose. Crystal Carter: And based on some actual relevant experience. You've talked about this before when you were saying about Google's changing your title tags and you said that Google is changing your title tags because they're flexing, it's a flex. You're like, Google's able to do this because they're flexing on your title tags. They're like, you wrote a title tag, we could write one better. And that's essentially brightness. Yeah, that's what you explained to. There's a great article on it on the Wix SEO hub . What Google is able to do, and they've done this with featured snippets for years, they're able to do this. They add that kind of ability into meta description sometimes. Sometimes if I'm looking up a list of best Star Trek costumes to wear or whatever, sometimes the meta description will actually be the bullets from the article so they can pull out things like that. Essentially what they're saying is that, "you wrote some content, cool, we can serve it on search in a way that's useful. We can send people directly to the section of the website that is most useful for them. We can pull out the images from your website." They have more skills and because they have more skills, they have more capabilities, now they're able to deliver search in a way. They're helping you and you need to help them and that's essentially what I see. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, reverse engineering that goes into I think what always reverse engineer the SERP, what Google thinks is helpful, meaning if it's reformatting content, it means to me that the format of the kind we'll call the usability of that content is part of what's helpful. Actually in the helpful content update guidance, it talks about how easy is it to access the main content on the page, meaning you have to go to a bunch of popups and ads. So usability is part of helpful content. Imagine you had two pieces of content and they're both the exact same content, but one is formatted with bullets and tables, which one is better? Crystal Carter: I say this all the time, if I said to you, "Hey, I'm going to give you a copy of everything that Miles Davis ever recorded." You'd be like, "cool, thanks." Then I said, "they're all eight tracks." Mordy Oberstein: Unhelpful. Crystal Carter: That's not helpful. Now I just have a bunch eight, I don't even know where I would put them. Mordy Oberstein: Let me go to my 1970 Chevy station wagon and pop that eight track in. Crystal Carter: Then if you said here it is on an iPod. That would be better if you said here it is on your Spotify account. That would be fantastic. They're like format matters and this is where I think that when we're thinking about helpful content, I think when they first announced it, they said something about, it shouldn't have too much SEO on it. I think people reacted to that a little bit. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I mean they said if it's written for search, trying to get search engines to rank it, that's not we want. Crystal Carter: SEOs are like, excuse me? Mordy Oberstein: Reasonably offended, let's be honest with you. Crystal Carter: But I think that what you need is you need a marriage of the two things. I remember I worked with a lawyer for a while and lawyers write letters, they write prolifically and this team of lawyers would just write and write and write and they were publishing articles all the time about various questions that clients have asked them and stuff like that. I just go back in and I just hit it with the like, "okay, well this needs a header, this needs a this, this needs a that." But I wasn't doing heavy, "let's rewrite this and open a guide..." I was just making sure that it was all supported and that sort of thing rather than rewriting it for them. They always rank really, really well. I think that when you get the combination of the form and the function of good quality experience and somebody's like, "oh yeah, I wrote this great thing." And some of the formatting skills, some of the support for things like schema markups, some of the support for making sure that the page flows properly, et cetera, et cetera. That's where you hit the sweet spot. Mordy Oberstein: That's kind of how I think about when I'm creating content I kind of look at much more pedagogically than I do SEO, it's when I'm initially writing it. I think about who am I targeting? Is this targeting them? Is this structured in a way, for example, and this I think is very helpful. Is this structured in a way where I'm really developing the topic so that they clearly understand step one to step two to step three, I'm not missing any steps. Am I throwing in resources to help them along the way? For example, one of the ways I look at links from a helpful content point of view is if I'm making a point and I don't want to dive into that point because I don't have the time, it's not the appropriate place, then a link might be a great way to send them off so they can go learn about that and then better understand what it is that I'm talking about. Setting up content in a very pedagogical way, in a very structured way, I think is helpful by the way, in order to do that, you have to have topical expertise and or experience, which is where the whole EEAT, I can't believe we haven't brought that acronym in a minute yet, comes in. You can't do what I'm telling you to do right now unless you have some kind of expertise and experience in it. Then I go back and look at my headers, "okay, do I need to be a little bit more explicit for the bots?" Kind of thing. Crystal Carter: I think that this is really important and I think that also what's core to that, they say helpful content is written for people. I have an article on how to do user first topic and keyword research for SEO. The reason why I wrote this article is because when they say that it's about audience, it's about audience. In that article I talk about talk to your salespeople, ask your salespeople, what are people asking them about your products? Where are the gaps that they're experiencing? Where someone's going, "oh, but can I use it on a bicycle?" And they're going, "I don't know." If you have content for that, you can help your sales team, you can help the users, you can help your website things, you can help your customer service team because they don't have to answer that question all the time because they can refer someone to a link. I think that it's really important to understand your audience and also when you're creating content and you want it to be helpful write with an audience in mind. You were talking about your pedagogical. Mordy Oberstein: It's a crazy word, isn't it? Pedagogical. It took me forever. I was in grad school, pedagogy, pedagogy, pedagogy, pedagogy. Crystal Carter: Pedagogy. When you're talking about your approach, really you're thinking about the person reading it. The person reading this is going to want to know what that acronym means, I don't have time to fully explain it, but here's the acronym, here's the spell out of the acronym, here's the link to the page that explains to you what that acronym is if you need to go off and understand what that is. You're not leaving them hanging and that's really important. And nobody likes that when they're like... Mordy Oberstein: I've always said this, that the best way to create helpful content or good quality content is by predicting the needs of the user, while you're writing. Are they going to understand this point? No, I got to do something to help them here. Crystal Carter: Right, precisely. So when you think about the eight track thing, if that person doesn't have an eight track player, that's not going to help. Mordy Oberstein: Not going to. By the way, I think again, that goes back to in my mind that helpful content is specific. For example, if I were to ask, "who's the best baseball player?" That's a very nuanced question. What I really might mean is who is the best pitcher? Because you can't compare pitchers to position players or two totally different things. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: You need to be a little bit more specific. I think that the world, the content world, the web content world is getting a wee bit more specific. People are looking for things that are more specific. I think search engines are asking you to be a little more specific, they're trying to filter out what they user actually wants when they ask something very general. Google has all sorts of filtering features there to help you get a little more specific. Crystal Carter: They've also been doing things where for SERP's that have giant search results. For instance, if you look at something like a big, big head term like Yankees or Apple or something like that. If you look at a search tool, they'll tell you that there are 4 billion pages on the web all about Apple or the Yankees or whatever. But if you go to Google, they'll tell you they're showing 72 pages. These are the 72 pages that we're giving you for this. We're giving you the Yankees website, we're giving you the major League baseball website. We're going to give you a couple of those things if you need to find out some more things, here's some disambiguation bubbles. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there's a lot of disambiguation, a lot of refinement. Crystal Carter: You can dive into those, but we know that most people are going to click on this or this, so we're going to keep it short and if you want to go into deep dive, then you need to deep dive. Here's some fins, get out there. I think that it's important to think about that when you're thinking about the content you want to make. Can we please talk about page experience? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. I just want to make one last really, really, really real quick point and let's talk about page experience. Then we'll get into what Kyle Byers had to say. I think again, in being specific, which I think is what the core of helpful content is, because you're answering a specific question or you're fulfilling a specific user need, I think that really plays well into creating content with EEAT because you can't write something specific. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Unless you actually understand what the heck you're talking about. That's all I wanted to say. Let's go into page experience. Crystal Carter: Good facts. Page experience things, so basically in 2023, they updated their guidance designating security consideration as part of the helpful content ranking system . Essentially they explained that the secure websites generally align with success in search ranking and those creating and maintaining websites should ask if pages are served in a secure fashion. And they also said this about page experience as well. They said, oh, it's part of the helpful content thing, but after spending all that time working on page experience things and all of that sort of stuff, they didn't specifically say that it impacts ranking anymore. They said they just removed it from the ranking systems and added it as part of their helpful content thing. I think this comes back to the formatting discussion that we... Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I'm just thinking that. Crystal Carter: ...We've been having, but I think it's interesting that they've pivoted in this way that they're maybe less concerned about technical impediments for accessing content. As I said, maybe they have more abilities as a search engine in order to surface content that is valuable and maybe that's what this is a reflection of. Mordy Oberstein: That's interesting. Conversely, I do think at the same time, the fact that they put the more technical experience elements into the helpful content update sort of contextualizes the value of page experience and that it helps the content be more usable. It comes down to usability, which is a part of helpfulness and usability can be anything from format or the stuff not shifting around as you're trying to read it. Crystal Carter: Things like schema for instance, makes it more visible in the SERP, makes it more easy for people to find it, makes all of those different things. The form and the function again, they should work together seamlessly and I think that it's still the case. When they first announced that they were moving this to the page experience thing and it wasn't a direct ranking signal, essentially those people were like, "oh, I'm not going to do it anymore." People were like, "yeah, because everybody loves a website that takes three days to load. Yeah, cool." Mordy Oberstein: I always thought that that is more relevant for not saying more relevant, but it's really about usability, conversions, those kind of things than it is about, "I got more ranking juice out of it." Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think also you talk a bit about security and page experience and things and security is also a consideration in this. With security, it's also about making sure that users feel secure about giving you their details because your website is secure and encrypted. Also, that link, when you get those back links, when people click on the back link, that CloudFlare doesn't roll up a big old sign that says, "nah, don't do it, man, don't do it." Because you don't want that and CloudFlare will tell you, cloud CloudFlare will snitch on you. They'll just put you completely on blast and go, they didn't sort out their SSL, y'all don't go. Make sure that you've got your security and things because that will affect your page experience and that will affect whether or not it's helpful because if you've got a great t-shirt, it's not helpful for me when I give you my details, somebody else can get my details and then it's all... Mordy Oberstein: Unhelpful. Crystal Carter: That's unhelpful, I don't want that spam, I don't want that drama. Keep it clean people. Mordy Oberstein: What you do want though, you do want is to check out SEMRush's own director of organic search, Kyle Byers as he joins us to help us understand, how do you actually gauge? What is quality content? How do you know? How do you analyze it? Here's Kyle, Kyle Byers: This is a great question because. I could talk about this all day, but I know some listeners are driving and I don't want to put them to sleep, so I'll try to keep it short. There are three angles I like to think about when it comes to gauging content quality, the business perspective, the user's perspective, and Google's perspective. From the business perspective there's one major question. Is the content achieving your business goals? Leading indicators can be really helpful here, like rankings and visits and dwell time. But how about revenue, customer acquisitions, leads, attracting links or press coverage? What are your goals for this piece of content and is it achieving them? Then you have the user's perspective. Is it genuinely great content? The most important thing to get right is really nailing the search intent. People make searches on Google when they have an itch to scratch. They have a goal in mind, whether it's getting a simple fact or learning something more in depth and it's your job to make sure that your content scratches that itch. And you have to make it very obvious very quickly that it's going to scratch that itch, especially in your title tag, meta description, headings and introduction. Otherwise, people just won't read it. But then how can you make sure that the content actually scratches their itch? Well, the easiest way is to look at the pages that are already ranking well for that query and take inspiration from them. what format is working well? Are they how to guides, review videos, listicles, case studies, product pages? What subtopics are being covered by those pages and how in depth do they go and so on. To get a little more advanced a lot of queries have multiple search intents behind them. For example, queries like the best X, Y, Z product, you'll often see a mixed SERP with product comparison lists in the top maybe five or six positions. And then e-commerce category pages or product pages or something else after that, you can almost think of those as two separate SERPs when that happens and plan accordingly. Then last, we have to pay attention of course to how Google defines great content. Google's given us some pretty good information about this, especially in their quality rater guidelines and helpful content system updates. Here are some of the most important things Google has said that they care about. First up, there's EEAT experience, expertise, authoritative and trustworthiness. Each of those could actually be its own entire podcast episode. Then some more specific points Google looks for are, Is it accurate and error free? Does it contain original non-obvious valuable information? Is it comprehensive content? Does it avoid click bait or exaggerated claims in the H1 and title tag? And so on. Then there are also some less obvious ones like having a site with a primary purpose or focus and not having content that's mass-produced or outsourced to two large, a number of different creators. Then ultimately Google's biggest question is, does the content satisfy the user's needs? Which comes back in large part to search intent. Again, if someone lands on your page from a Google search, is your content going to scratch their itch? If it is, it's probably pretty high quality. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much Kyle, make sure you follow Kyle on Twitter. We'll link to his Twitter account in the show notes. I'm really glad he brought up the quality reader guidelines, I can't believe we didn't bring that up yet. How do we not do that? But it is something you should definitely take a look at, definitely read. It's not that Google's using that in the algorithm itself, although Google has said they kind of try to mimic some of those things algorithmically, but it definitely tells you how Google is thinking and what it's ultimately trying to do. Which is really important, at one point I'm glad he mentioned was that that sort of topical identity, that's part of, in my mind, the quality experience. It's not a quality experience you go to a website and have multiple pages that don't relate to each other, that are not topically associated with each other. Because if you zoom out of the query, let's say it's like who is Captain Kirk? Going back to Star Trek again, am I really trying to understand who Captain Kirk is or if you want to be more zoomed out? Am I trying to understand Star Trek as a concept, as a entity? And while my specific question is about Captain Kirk, I might really be looking to understand Star Trek. The website I go to has one page about Star Trek and then another page about Star Wars not relevant to me. Just kidding. I had to go there. If it is talking about Star Trek on one page and then it's talking about bricks and then it's talking about windows and it's talking about spaceship. Well spaceship might be relevant on another page. That's not a quality experience. Crystal Carter: I was talking to someone about this, about tags like blog tags and stuff. Basically I was saying let's say you were doing a Star Trek convention, you went to a Star Trek convention in New Orleans or something and you were talking about it and you wrote a blog about it and you say your website is about Star Trek. You would make a tag that says convention, but you don't necessarily need a tag for New Orleans because you're not going to write any more content about New Orleans and if you did make more content about New Orleans and you had a whole thing that was like, "oh yeah, beignets and Mardi Gras." I don't know, Gators or something, I don't know, essentially. Let's say you started making content about that for your Star Trek blog. That wouldn't make any sense and it's not helpful to the audience that you have, which want to know more about Star Trek stuff. Unless there was an episode where they go to New Orleans in Next Gen or something. I don't know I mean they do a lot of stuff … Mordy Oberstein: There's always creatures that are kind of gators. Crystal Carter: Yeah, so you want to keep stay on topic. If you want to veer off into something else, do it on a different channel. You can either do something on social where you talk about something different or you could maybe make another blog or you could even set up a sub domain maybe that was specifically around travel to conventions or something. But there's ways that you can do that and staying on topic is helpful. It's helpful to people. I also like that he mentioned money because it is important to think about that people are able to convert, people are able to do the things that they came to do from that business. I saw a thing on LinkedIn the other day and it was saying that SEOs be like, the question is how to open a beer and the answer is you pull the tab. Mordy Oberstein: Saw that. Crystal Carter: And then SEOs be like, what is beer? What is the beer can, how do you consider this? Here's a video explaining of all of the different steps. And sometimes people just want the information and in the quality rater guidelines, which I was just looking at the recent ones yesterday. They talk about the main content it's what helps the user achieve their goal. That's what it is. In the beer case, maybe it's a new beer can, because sometimes they do that. Sometimes there'll be some bespoke thing and they've got a different ring-pull or something. Maybe it's a new beer can, so they just want to know how to do it. How do I get to my beer? If it's a video, if it's a picture, if it's like three words, that's fine. I've seen high ranking content that is very short. I've seen content that ranks well that is just a video. It's just a video and it doesn't have much underneath of it. It's just a video but it ranks really well because that's what the intent is. The intent is to watch the video. The intent isn't to read a 3000 word essay as well. That's like the recipe ones, that's the classic one as well. Where they tell you about every...You just want the recipe, you just want the recipe. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of the right recipe for helpful content and content, and I'm glad we brought the idea that context is important because I think Google's doing something that might show us what exactly is helpful content. Just so we bit Google themselves have created some, I guess, content that essentially for every result shows what they think might be helpful for users to know contextually. That maybe we should explore and grab some lessons from. So this is a newish version of is this new because it's not really new. So is this newish? In case you didn't know Google has a little feature called about this result and what you essentially do is on this survey is this three little dots next to the result to the right of the results. If you click on it brings up this whole little panel that shows information about this result and it's giving you context. Lesson number one off the bat context is helpful. And that does go by the way, back to what we were talking about before, that the context of your website needs to be topically appropriate. If I have one page about Captain Kirk and then a bunch of pages about Gators in New Orleans, doesn't necessarily make sense the context doesn't make sense and context is helpful. In this feature, Google's giving you context. Crystal Carter: It's great. So I found this feature really interesting. It's got a lot of information about the particular result and the case I was looking at was Better Homes and Gardens, and I looked up Best Coffee Makers 2023 and when you click about this result, it showed me a little popup from Wikipedia that was saying, Homes and Gardens is a British monthly interior design thing and it tells me that my connection is secure. Again, adding in that information there, it also tells me some of the search terms that appear in there and then it has images that are related, so explains why they're showing it to me. But the thing I found really interesting though was that you can click through and you can find out more about this search. I was able to find out lots about Homes and Gardens magazine and it talked about who they are and when they were first doing this sort of thing and that I think is really fascinating. I think that that's really interesting for people to think about their wider presence and how who they are affects whether or not it's a helpful content. For instance, if I had, I don't know, a rash something on my hand and I said, Mordy, what do you think this is? And you said, "oh, it's that it." Well Mordy, but with all due respect, you're not a doctor. But if you said like, "oh actually I've seen that before, I had a similar thing." Or whatever, then I'd be like, "oh, okay, that's helpful. I can take that experience into account and maybe I should pursue something or whatever." But who gives you the advice is really important. What I found was that if there isn't in information on that particular business, so I found one for a smaller business and Google didn't have a Wikipedia page and it says they looked for a description of them and they couldn't find them. And that's interesting as well because that might mean that they're not able to verify you in the same way that again might give people trust signals that maybe you're not able to provide helpful content about this information. Then what they did instead was they pulled the information from their website. We've talked about homepages on this podcast. We've talked about homepages on a webinar, we talked about homepages in an article. Homepages are super important and you should say what you do on your homepage because it can very well appear in this kind of result. Mordy Oberstein: To me, this features all about context. By the way you can actually just side point, you can tell Google, remove this result from your searches. Crystal Carter: Oh, right, Mordy Oberstein: That button there. You can save the result there's a lot of stuff going on there, you should definitely check it out. But to me it's really all about context. Like Google tells you they have a link to how search works. They tell you why this result showed up for your query and then there's a button inside it said more about this page and you can learn when this page was first indexed by Google. If I Google baseball stats 2023, I get baseball reference.com, it tells me this site was indexed more than 10 years ago. It even tells me about this source and it lists a review site about this website. It's a site reviewing this website that I'm looking at. It has a bunch of articles or a bunch of websites talking about what this website is. What it does is trying to give me context. The lesson of the day in my mind is helpful content is content, that has context. Crystal Carter: Also, can I just say, the word says you and the search result and it tells you the search terms that appear in it. As an SEO research point, if you're wondering why a page ranks, you can click on those little dots and have a look at why the page ranks. I looked up Beyonce Tour because I don't know if people know, but I went to Beyonce recently. It was a life changing experience. Mordy Oberstein: You did? Crystal Carter: I did, I did. We talked about costumes, I wore a Beyonce outfit and people literally clapped, so I just want that on record. Anyway, so I looked up Beyonce Tour and Live Nation, for instance. It says it's ranking forwhy I got the search result. And it says the search terms appear in the search result, Beyonce and Tour a term related to your search result appears in this result. Beyonce, the results are in English, they know I speak English and it says this seems relevant to the UK, which is where I am. This tells you that these are priority information for Google with regards to that and it's fairly top level, but it's still useful. Because the Better Homes and Gardens one said images are important for instance. These are different things, but if you're not sure where to start, it's a really good little tool. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's very cool. And by the way, it'll talk about whether or not the result is personalized or not, which goes back to what we were saying before about helpful content. It's supposed to be specific, nuanced, targeted content. That's exactly what Google's trying to do and its results which tells you what Google thinks helpful content is. Crystal Carter: That's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to deliver you great value people. We're trying to be helpful to help you. Mordy Oberstein: We're trying to be helpful. You know you know who else is very helpful? Crystal Carter: Who's helpful? Mordy Oberstein: Barry is helpful. Barry Short is very helpful. He writes all sorts of articles about the news and SEO. Him and other people like Roger Monty and Matt Southern, Danny Goodwin, Lauren Baker, all very helpful. People who cover the SEO news. Crystal Carter: They are very helpful. I tell you what, we talked about the history of SEO. Like I remember doing a deck on featured snippets and I literally just went through every report that Barry's ever done on featured snippets and you can see the evolution of it as you pull it out. Like it's incredibly... Shout out to Barry. Mordy Oberstein: Let's get into some not only snappy, helpful SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Google's search generative experience gets quality updates and majors speed Boost says Barry Schwartz over@stroundtable.com . Google search liaison Danny Sullivan says quote, "we've made a number of quality updates, including a major improvement that reduces the time it takes to generate AI snapshots by half." Official judger of all things speed took at a stopwatch, Barry Schwarz said it feels twice as fast. Officially unofficially is twice as fast as Barry. As for the quality updates, no official word from the big G, but an even bigger G as in Gabe as in Glen Gabe Double G. Showed that there were improvements related to some YNYL queries. For example, Glen was searching and pulled up the SGE related to strep throat. He showed there's a little bit more nuance, some more caveats in there about strep throat in the new SGE result compared to the previous one. We don't know for sure, but that could be as a result of Google's quality update to the SGE. With this as reported by Kristy Hines over at SEJ search in journal, Google seems to be inviting more people to try the SGE. Perhaps as has released a new YouTube short showing how to sign up. My invite must be lost in the mail. At the same time, Reuters reports that advertisers are balking at the idea of being shown in AI chat experiences on the SERP saying quote, "Microsoft Google strategy to test AI search adds irks some brands." This says, "Microsoft is testing placement without advertiser consent within the AI chat experience, which has led to some huge media buyers pulling back on their Microsoft advertising spend." This reminds me of reminiscent of what went on back in the past with YouTube placement. Advertisers do not want to have their ads appear next to, we'll call it questionable content, unreliable content, any sort of content that might position their brand as being associated with something that's not of the utmost quality because brand associations is a huge part of the game. I would pay very close attention to this story. I think it's going to be when the narratives that comes out of the hole, AI on the SERP experience, and I would expect there to be a lot more of this sort of issues or these sort of issues rather coming up in the future. It's all part of the web, it's all part of navigating the web. It's almost to be expected and I'm sure it all gets sorted out. That's this week's version of the Snappy News. Wasn't that news, not just snappy, but also helpful. We're trying to be helpful today. Thank you to those people who covered the news for helping us help you be helpful. Crystal Carter: I feel help. Mordy Oberstein: I feel at that pivot needed some help. Somebody, anybody please help me. Crystal Carter: Not anybody. Mordy Oberstein: Right. I'm just going to just lean right into it. Who else is very helpful? Our follow of the week is a very helpful person. Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Melissa Bash. Crystal Carter: Melissa Bash. Mordy Oberstein: At SEO Aware at SEO. That's S-E-O, A-W-A-R-E over on Twitter. She's the lead content manager over Kelly Blue Book and Autotrader. She's always sharing useful information, helpful information about SEO, about Star Wars and about the Bucks, which I'm not a big Tom Brady fan, but it's helpful if you are. Crystal Carter: I was checking out some of her content the other day and you're absolutely right. She shares some really great stuff about SEO. That's really... Mordy Oberstein: OG. Melissa's an OG. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I think she's got some really interesting insights on some lighter topics as well. She's a great follow and she's interested in, she's been following along with the information about Chachi BT and about generative search and things like that. She's a great follow. Mordy Oberstein: She's literally been in the SEO world for a long time. She used to run Sam Rush's blog. She's somebody who has a lot of experience in creating content and having that content rake well on search. Definitely give Melissa a follow over on Twitter. We'll link to her Twitter profile in the show notes. Hope that was helpful. Crystal Carter: I hope that it was of assistance. I hope that it was useful and valuable and gave you context to the topics at hand. Mordy Oberstein: 'Cause context is helpful. Make sure your content has context. Crystal Carter: Then it wasn't not helpful. Mordy Oberstein: Unhelpful. Crystal Carter: Helpful. Mordy Oberstein: It's always helpful to be efficient when you speak, so not helpful to be unhelpful. Crystal Carter: That's true, that is true. Mordy Oberstein: Do you remember The Office where Kevin wants to save time by only speaking like the core words, like me hungry. Like I am hungry, why waste time saying I am, just say me hungry. That's not helpful. Crystal Carter: Unhelpful. Mordy Oberstein: Unhelpful. The office though is very helpful if you want to have a good time, have some fun. Crystal Carter: Is this true? This is true. Mordy Oberstein: I watch The Office. Also tune into our next episode. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with the new episodes we dive into Subdomains versus Subfolders. Debate ends here, well not really. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on SEO learning of over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content webinars on the Wix SEO learning about you guessed it at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes, oral rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Kyle Byers Semrush Melissa Fach Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Google Helpful Content System Google Helpful Content System To Find Hidden Gems Google Marketing Live Keynote 2023 Why is Google rewriting so many titles in the search results? Google's About this result feature News: Google Search Generative Experience Gets Quality Updates & Major Speed Boost Google Invites More Users To Try Search Generative Experience After Recent Quality Updates Microsoft, Google strategy to test AI search ads irks some brands Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Kyle Byers Semrush Melissa Fach Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Google Helpful Content System Google Helpful Content System To Find Hidden Gems Google Marketing Live Keynote 2023 Why is Google rewriting so many titles in the search results? Google's About this result feature News: Google Search Generative Experience Gets Quality Updates & Major Speed Boost Google Invites More Users To Try Search Generative Experience After Recent Quality Updates Microsoft, Google strategy to test AI search ads irks some brands 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 put you guys some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO I am Mordy overseeing the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the helpful, the always ready to help be very helpful, super helpful. Nothing is more helpful in SEO than our head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Help, I need somebody. Not just anybody. Help. I don't know any other... Mordy Oberstein: I can't sing I have a cold. Wait a second. I can't sing anyway. Crystal Carter: I don't know, any other songs about... Oh no, I get by with a little help from my friends those are both Beatles songs, maybe The Beatles are the most helpful. Mordy Oberstein: There's not a lot of songs with the word help. I'm looking at this the other day, actually. Crystal Carter: "Won't you please help me?" That's one. That's one. Here we go. Mordy Oberstein: That's still Help by the Beatles. Crystal Carter: Is is? Oh gosh. Oh yeah, you're right. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we've gone full circle from the two Beatles songs that talk about help. Crystal Carter: Literally. Although to be fair, the help from my friends when I don't really count them, when I count the Joe Cocker one. Mordy Oberstein: The Joe Cocker version is fabulous. Also Wonder Years, so. Crystal Carter: The Wonder Years, when the Wonder Years kicks in and it's like that, I'm like, yeah, Kevin, let's do this. Middle school is difficult. Mordy Oberstein: My association's always in the beginning intro, he puts on a Jets helmet. That old school Jets logo like Joe Namath Jets logo, that just sticks out to me. That's the way my brain works. I don't know. Crystal Carter: I just feel, I remember relating to him dealing with stress. He had so much stress. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders. And I was like, "Kevin I feel you." Mordy Oberstein: It's true though. Crystal Carter: The struggle is real. Mordy Oberstein: I got to re watch that. I haven't watched that in years. Crystal Carter: They rebooted it. It's pretty cool as well. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I did see they reboot. I watched one episode. I'm like, "I can't. It's too..." Crystal Carter: I've had a lot of associations with the original. You got to settle into it. I think that they kept a lot of the good aesthetic. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, I got to go back into it. Fine. Anyway. Crystal Carter: We digress. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. And where if Arby's has the meets, we have ADI. Not only can you use our ADI to literally leverage AI to create a website for you, but you can use GPTthree right inside the Wix editor, create AI generated content with the click of a mouse inside of the Wix editor. Warning, AI content should be done with supervision and may result in the loss of rank, loss of clicks, loss of conversions, and loss of appetite for your audience. Always consult with the content provider or SEO before taking AI content. Do not generate AI content on an empty stomach since nothing should ever be done on an empty stomach. That was a mouthful, but we have a lot of AI inside of Wix. You should definitely leverage it. Crystal Carter: You should absolutely check it out. It's pretty cool. I think that, yeah, you definitely have to find out what you can do, what you can't do because it doesn't do everything. It can save you some time and it's pretty rad. So check it out. Mordy Oberstein: Use responsibly. Crystal Carter: Use responsibly. Mordy Oberstein: All seriousness by the way, you should make sure your AI content is helpful 'cause it's super cool. Crystal Carter: Helpful. Mordy Oberstein: Cutting edge stuff from Wix. But you need to know how to use this stuff to make sure that, again, it's helpful. Which brings us to today's episode of What the Heck is Helpful anymore on the internet. Crystal Carter: What is helpful content? We keep getting lots of things about the less information, about the helpful content update and that your content should be helpful for people, but what exactly... Mordy Oberstein: Is helpful? We're taking a hard look at Google's passion for helpful content and asking what exactly does that mean? We'll discuss the clues Google leaves, so we may define what is helpful content where page experience now fits into helpful content and what is the future of helpful content in the algorithm ? Plus Sam Rush's own head of SEO Kyle Byers will tell us how he gauges content quality and will explore nifty little Google feature that may help us better understand how Google thinks of helpful. Of course we have your snappy SEO news who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. Throw your site and its content a lifeline because we're here to help as episode 42 of the SERP's Up podcast is the call button to content that has fallen and can't get up. Crystal Carter: There's so many nineties references in this. Mordy Oberstein: I love that. I know it's so many nineties. Crystal Carter: I feel like we should get a clapper before we get going. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, clap on, clap off. Here's some helpful content for you. Crystal Carter: Let's pop into the introduction then Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Just for a little bit of background, in August of 2022, Google released a new update called the Helpful Content Update. Ever since then, all SEOs can talk about is AI and also helpful content. But what exactly does helpful content look like, sound like, feel like? Exactly and that's kind of been a little bit of an elusive question. A little bit of background about the Helpful Content Update. It looks at the domain, the entire site. Yes, I said site and not pages. Hopefully that myth around "Google only looks at pages." Which I know Glen Gabe hates that myth. Is now fully gone because Google has officially said that the Helpful Content Update looks at the site overall, which makes a great deal of sense because it's really important for the user to understand that the site offers a good content quality experience because after looking at one page, you may decide to go to the next page. Content quality applies to all pages. Anyway in any regard the Helpful Content Update looks at the site to see how helpful the content is and if it passes a certain threshold and is deemed quality, which is good and that's what you want. If it doesn't pass that threshold, you might not rank as well. To put this in Google's own words, "content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines rather than to help or inform people is what we're talking about." This threshold, by the way, is constantly being evaluated. Google says, "the Helpful Content Update is also live and continuous. It's not that Google needs to press a button and then recalibrate is what I'm trying to say. Sites identified by this updat according Google may find this signal applied to them over a period of months. Our classifier for this update runs continuously allowing it to modern, newly launched sites and existing ones as it determines that the unhelpful content has not returned in the long term, the classification will no longer apply." By the way, Google's Gary ish at Pubcon in February 2023 made it sound like recovering from this is really, really, really hard. Which brings us to getting it right the first time. Crystal thoughts? Crystal Carter: My first thoughts is, I remember when they were like, "we're releasing the helpful content update." And people were like, "oh snap. It's on!" Mordy Oberstein: Armageddon 2023. Crystal Carter: People are like, "people have been making junk content. You better watch out because here it comes." Everybody sat around going, "what? I'm not seeing, I didn't see, I'm not sure if I see anything straight away." I think I remember Danny having to come out and be like, "no, it's slowly rolling through. It's a bit of a slow burn." I think it's interesting that we started with a little help from my friends because the way that they describe it is a bit like a relationship with a friend or something. You'll give your friend a little bit of slack if maybe they didn't return your call one time, but if every time you ask them to help you, they don't, then you're going to be like, "okay, maybe this person isn't actually helpful." If you have a lot of signals for that particular friend that maybe they're not helpful or maybe they're not engaging or whatever, then maybe you're going to think, "okay, so it's interesting that they're saying they're continuously rolling and it's continuously rolling out. And so I think it's something that might not immediately see a sharp change straight away as these updates happen." But you might see a gradual... Mordy Oberstein: Over time. By the way, it's constantly evolving. First of it's a machine learning property and in my mind, these things learn slowly, develop slowly, we calibrate slowly. They evolve over time. You've seen them with the product review updates, which are now review updates. They expand, they get more prolific. Even at Google IO, we actually covered this on our Google IO podcast . Google announced that the helpful content update is now going to be looking for the hidden gems of the web. Which by the way, Glen Gabe asked Danny Sullivan of Google is that new and it was new. It's a new ability of the helpful content that the way Barry Schwartz phrased it I thought was quite well, "Instead of looking at this from a negative point of view, is this site not offering a quality experience? The helpful content update will be looking in the positive sense. Is this a hidden gem of the web?" It's a new way of the algorithm functioning with the ranking system functioning. And by the way, I think we talked about this back when we did that podcast on Google IO. The fact that they announced it at Google IO, as part of their official materials around Google IO tells you it's for real. Crystal Carter: Yeah, indeed. Also, I think it's an evolution of the passage ranking thing that they were talking about 'cause they used the word hidden gem to describe that as well. At search on, I think it was either 2022 or 2021, I can't remember. But at search on, they described the passive ranking thing and they said specifically we're looking for hidden gems and I remember that Martin Schlitt was explaining this in an interview on SEJ and he was talking about with the hidden gems' thing, it's essentially about people who have created good content, helpful content, but maybe it hasn't been overly optimized or significantly keyword optimized. Their systems, you said it's machine learning and it's learning the machines are learning to understand our language and we are seeing that with some of these LLMs, how they can understand my terrible prompts, I give them terrible prompts, misspellings and everything. And yet they're able to come back with something that makes sense. They're able to understand language better, therefore they can understand a piece of content that might not be fully optimized for that. I remember there was one recently that I found and I was looking up... Not to give too much, I was looking up like Aura costumes 'cause I was like, oh, I think I might get a Aura costume" Mordy Oberstein: We're back to Star Trek. Star Trek. Crystal Carter: I was looking up Uhuracostume thing and the top ranking post had a YouTube video that was good but the page in terms of SEO, like terrible formatting, no headers, like that sort of thing. But the actual content of the page was good quality content. I think that they're trying to do is make sure that if you have something that's good quality and it's worth saying that you're not so impeded for getting in front of users by some of the sort of structural things that people have required previously. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I think for some context, my personal theory around this whole thing is that Google realize there's a content gap. I don't mean in terms of the number of pages available to, but the number of good pages or helpful pages available to it. And realizes that while you might have gone to a content marketing agency or a content agency to spin up some content for you, they're not the actual experts on whatever it is that you were talking about. So changing tires. I always go back to tires. Let's go to Star Trek costumes, a content marketing agency can help you, but they're not the actual experts on Star Trek costumes. You who are manufacturer Star Trek costumes or a Star Trek nerd, you are the expert, the business owner, whatever it is, they're the actual expert and they need to create an incentive for the actual experts to create content. In order to create that incentive, they have to rank, which means that they have to be able to pull up those hidden gems of the web. I think what's super interesting, and we're going to get into it, what is helpful content actually look like in our opinion? But it's one really super interesting point. I was just watching Google Marketing live recently, we're recording this a few weeks before we actually released this. And one of the stats they talked about was the propensity of people to do more conversational searches, meaning they're looking less for, I forget the example they gave, I think it was pajamas, less for men's pajamas. They're looking more for things like super comfortable men's pajamas that match. Whatever that... Much more specific. And I think that leans into what is helpful content. Crystal Carter: Again, I think it's important to know the history of some of SEO stuff. Like Barry Schwartzis our resident SEO historian and it's worth following along with the evolution of that because the conversational tone of queries is something that has evolved. Featured snippets enable that voice search enables that, SEO Assistantsor Google assistants enable that. And it facilitates you writing out more so that you can get different results. And as we move into search generative experience as we move into that, you're going to see more of that as well. When I'm speaking on Bing chat for instance, when I'm speaking to that, I'll say, "my plant has brown leaves and I don't know why. How can I fix my plant?" And it will say, "oh, this is..." Mordy Oberstein: Because you didn't water it, did you water it? Crystal Carter: No, I did water it. We discussed this. Mordy Oberstein: Did you stick it in the closet? Because it needs light. Crystal Carter: I watered the plant... Mordy Oberstein: And you gave it light and it's soil? Crystal Carter: I have it light, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, I'm just covering the basics. Crystal Carter: Yeah, thank you very much. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry. Crystal Carter: But to be fair, it doesn't have any drainage. Maybe it needs drainage's. That's the thing the plants need sometime, this is what the bot suggested. Mordy Oberstein: We all need drainage. But it's a really good point that not about the plants needing drainage, that is a good point. Now the way people search tells you a lot because what Google's trying to do is align with what people are looking for and it's going to align the kind of content that people are looking for, what they're looking for. If people are looking for something more targeted, more specific, that gives you a clue as to what Google thinks is helpful, which is TLDR in my opinion. Helpful content is targeted specific content with purpose. Crystal Carter: And based on some actual relevant experience. You've talked about this before when you were saying about Google's changing your title tags and you said that Google is changing your title tags because they're flexing, it's a flex. You're like, Google's able to do this because they're flexing on your title tags. They're like, you wrote a title tag, we could write one better. And that's essentially brightness. Yeah, that's what you explained to. There's a great article on it on the Wix SEO hub . What Google is able to do, and they've done this with featured snippets for years, they're able to do this. They add that kind of ability into meta description sometimes. Sometimes if I'm looking up a list of best Star Trek costumes to wear or whatever, sometimes the meta description will actually be the bullets from the article so they can pull out things like that. Essentially what they're saying is that, "you wrote some content, cool, we can serve it on search in a way that's useful. We can send people directly to the section of the website that is most useful for them. We can pull out the images from your website." They have more skills and because they have more skills, they have more capabilities, now they're able to deliver search in a way. They're helping you and you need to help them and that's essentially what I see. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, reverse engineering that goes into I think what always reverse engineer the SERP, what Google thinks is helpful, meaning if it's reformatting content, it means to me that the format of the kind we'll call the usability of that content is part of what's helpful. Actually in the helpful content update guidance, it talks about how easy is it to access the main content on the page, meaning you have to go to a bunch of popups and ads. So usability is part of helpful content. Imagine you had two pieces of content and they're both the exact same content, but one is formatted with bullets and tables, which one is better? Crystal Carter: I say this all the time, if I said to you, "Hey, I'm going to give you a copy of everything that Miles Davis ever recorded." You'd be like, "cool, thanks." Then I said, "they're all eight tracks." Mordy Oberstein: Unhelpful. Crystal Carter: That's not helpful. Now I just have a bunch eight, I don't even know where I would put them. Mordy Oberstein: Let me go to my 1970 Chevy station wagon and pop that eight track in. Crystal Carter: Then if you said here it is on an iPod. That would be better if you said here it is on your Spotify account. That would be fantastic. They're like format matters and this is where I think that when we're thinking about helpful content, I think when they first announced it, they said something about, it shouldn't have too much SEO on it. I think people reacted to that a little bit. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I mean they said if it's written for search, trying to get search engines to rank it, that's not we want. Crystal Carter: SEOs are like, excuse me? Mordy Oberstein: Reasonably offended, let's be honest with you. Crystal Carter: But I think that what you need is you need a marriage of the two things. I remember I worked with a lawyer for a while and lawyers write letters, they write prolifically and this team of lawyers would just write and write and write and they were publishing articles all the time about various questions that clients have asked them and stuff like that. I just go back in and I just hit it with the like, "okay, well this needs a header, this needs a this, this needs a that." But I wasn't doing heavy, "let's rewrite this and open a guide..." I was just making sure that it was all supported and that sort of thing rather than rewriting it for them. They always rank really, really well. I think that when you get the combination of the form and the function of good quality experience and somebody's like, "oh yeah, I wrote this great thing." And some of the formatting skills, some of the support for things like schema markups, some of the support for making sure that the page flows properly, et cetera, et cetera. That's where you hit the sweet spot. Mordy Oberstein: That's kind of how I think about when I'm creating content I kind of look at much more pedagogically than I do SEO, it's when I'm initially writing it. I think about who am I targeting? Is this targeting them? Is this structured in a way, for example, and this I think is very helpful. Is this structured in a way where I'm really developing the topic so that they clearly understand step one to step two to step three, I'm not missing any steps. Am I throwing in resources to help them along the way? For example, one of the ways I look at links from a helpful content point of view is if I'm making a point and I don't want to dive into that point because I don't have the time, it's not the appropriate place, then a link might be a great way to send them off so they can go learn about that and then better understand what it is that I'm talking about. Setting up content in a very pedagogical way, in a very structured way, I think is helpful by the way, in order to do that, you have to have topical expertise and or experience, which is where the whole EEAT, I can't believe we haven't brought that acronym in a minute yet, comes in. You can't do what I'm telling you to do right now unless you have some kind of expertise and experience in it. Then I go back and look at my headers, "okay, do I need to be a little bit more explicit for the bots?" Kind of thing. Crystal Carter: I think that this is really important and I think that also what's core to that, they say helpful content is written for people. I have an article on how to do user first topic and keyword research for SEO. The reason why I wrote this article is because when they say that it's about audience, it's about audience. In that article I talk about talk to your salespeople, ask your salespeople, what are people asking them about your products? Where are the gaps that they're experiencing? Where someone's going, "oh, but can I use it on a bicycle?" And they're going, "I don't know." If you have content for that, you can help your sales team, you can help the users, you can help your website things, you can help your customer service team because they don't have to answer that question all the time because they can refer someone to a link. I think that it's really important to understand your audience and also when you're creating content and you want it to be helpful write with an audience in mind. You were talking about your pedagogical. Mordy Oberstein: It's a crazy word, isn't it? Pedagogical. It took me forever. I was in grad school, pedagogy, pedagogy, pedagogy, pedagogy. Crystal Carter: Pedagogy. When you're talking about your approach, really you're thinking about the person reading it. The person reading this is going to want to know what that acronym means, I don't have time to fully explain it, but here's the acronym, here's the spell out of the acronym, here's the link to the page that explains to you what that acronym is if you need to go off and understand what that is. You're not leaving them hanging and that's really important. And nobody likes that when they're like... Mordy Oberstein: I've always said this, that the best way to create helpful content or good quality content is by predicting the needs of the user, while you're writing. Are they going to understand this point? No, I got to do something to help them here. Crystal Carter: Right, precisely. So when you think about the eight track thing, if that person doesn't have an eight track player, that's not going to help. Mordy Oberstein: Not going to. By the way, I think again, that goes back to in my mind that helpful content is specific. For example, if I were to ask, "who's the best baseball player?" That's a very nuanced question. What I really might mean is who is the best pitcher? Because you can't compare pitchers to position players or two totally different things. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: You need to be a little bit more specific. I think that the world, the content world, the web content world is getting a wee bit more specific. People are looking for things that are more specific. I think search engines are asking you to be a little more specific, they're trying to filter out what they user actually wants when they ask something very general. Google has all sorts of filtering features there to help you get a little more specific. Crystal Carter: They've also been doing things where for SERP's that have giant search results. For instance, if you look at something like a big, big head term like Yankees or Apple or something like that. If you look at a search tool, they'll tell you that there are 4 billion pages on the web all about Apple or the Yankees or whatever. But if you go to Google, they'll tell you they're showing 72 pages. These are the 72 pages that we're giving you for this. We're giving you the Yankees website, we're giving you the major League baseball website. We're going to give you a couple of those things if you need to find out some more things, here's some disambiguation bubbles. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there's a lot of disambiguation, a lot of refinement. Crystal Carter: You can dive into those, but we know that most people are going to click on this or this, so we're going to keep it short and if you want to go into deep dive, then you need to deep dive. Here's some fins, get out there. I think that it's important to think about that when you're thinking about the content you want to make. Can we please talk about page experience? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. I just want to make one last really, really, really real quick point and let's talk about page experience. Then we'll get into what Kyle Byers had to say. I think again, in being specific, which I think is what the core of helpful content is, because you're answering a specific question or you're fulfilling a specific user need, I think that really plays well into creating content with EEAT because you can't write something specific. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Unless you actually understand what the heck you're talking about. That's all I wanted to say. Let's go into page experience. Crystal Carter: Good facts. Page experience things, so basically in 2023, they updated their guidance designating security consideration as part of the helpful content ranking system . Essentially they explained that the secure websites generally align with success in search ranking and those creating and maintaining websites should ask if pages are served in a secure fashion. And they also said this about page experience as well. They said, oh, it's part of the helpful content thing, but after spending all that time working on page experience things and all of that sort of stuff, they didn't specifically say that it impacts ranking anymore. They said they just removed it from the ranking systems and added it as part of their helpful content thing. I think this comes back to the formatting discussion that we... Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I'm just thinking that. Crystal Carter: ...We've been having, but I think it's interesting that they've pivoted in this way that they're maybe less concerned about technical impediments for accessing content. As I said, maybe they have more abilities as a search engine in order to surface content that is valuable and maybe that's what this is a reflection of. Mordy Oberstein: That's interesting. Conversely, I do think at the same time, the fact that they put the more technical experience elements into the helpful content update sort of contextualizes the value of page experience and that it helps the content be more usable. It comes down to usability, which is a part of helpfulness and usability can be anything from format or the stuff not shifting around as you're trying to read it. Crystal Carter: Things like schema for instance, makes it more visible in the SERP, makes it more easy for people to find it, makes all of those different things. The form and the function again, they should work together seamlessly and I think that it's still the case. When they first announced that they were moving this to the page experience thing and it wasn't a direct ranking signal, essentially those people were like, "oh, I'm not going to do it anymore." People were like, "yeah, because everybody loves a website that takes three days to load. Yeah, cool." Mordy Oberstein: I always thought that that is more relevant for not saying more relevant, but it's really about usability, conversions, those kind of things than it is about, "I got more ranking juice out of it." Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think also you talk a bit about security and page experience and things and security is also a consideration in this. With security, it's also about making sure that users feel secure about giving you their details because your website is secure and encrypted. Also, that link, when you get those back links, when people click on the back link, that CloudFlare doesn't roll up a big old sign that says, "nah, don't do it, man, don't do it." Because you don't want that and CloudFlare will tell you, cloud CloudFlare will snitch on you. They'll just put you completely on blast and go, they didn't sort out their SSL, y'all don't go. Make sure that you've got your security and things because that will affect your page experience and that will affect whether or not it's helpful because if you've got a great t-shirt, it's not helpful for me when I give you my details, somebody else can get my details and then it's all... Mordy Oberstein: Unhelpful. Crystal Carter: That's unhelpful, I don't want that spam, I don't want that drama. Keep it clean people. Mordy Oberstein: What you do want though, you do want is to check out SEMRush's own director of organic search, Kyle Byers as he joins us to help us understand, how do you actually gauge? What is quality content? How do you know? How do you analyze it? Here's Kyle, Kyle Byers: This is a great question because. I could talk about this all day, but I know some listeners are driving and I don't want to put them to sleep, so I'll try to keep it short. There are three angles I like to think about when it comes to gauging content quality, the business perspective, the user's perspective, and Google's perspective. From the business perspective there's one major question. Is the content achieving your business goals? Leading indicators can be really helpful here, like rankings and visits and dwell time. But how about revenue, customer acquisitions, leads, attracting links or press coverage? What are your goals for this piece of content and is it achieving them? Then you have the user's perspective. Is it genuinely great content? The most important thing to get right is really nailing the search intent. People make searches on Google when they have an itch to scratch. They have a goal in mind, whether it's getting a simple fact or learning something more in depth and it's your job to make sure that your content scratches that itch. And you have to make it very obvious very quickly that it's going to scratch that itch, especially in your title tag, meta description, headings and introduction. Otherwise, people just won't read it. But then how can you make sure that the content actually scratches their itch? Well, the easiest way is to look at the pages that are already ranking well for that query and take inspiration from them. what format is working well? Are they how to guides, review videos, listicles, case studies, product pages? What subtopics are being covered by those pages and how in depth do they go and so on. To get a little more advanced a lot of queries have multiple search intents behind them. For example, queries like the best X, Y, Z product, you'll often see a mixed SERP with product comparison lists in the top maybe five or six positions. And then e-commerce category pages or product pages or something else after that, you can almost think of those as two separate SERPs when that happens and plan accordingly. Then last, we have to pay attention of course to how Google defines great content. Google's given us some pretty good information about this, especially in their quality rater guidelines and helpful content system updates. Here are some of the most important things Google has said that they care about. First up, there's EEAT experience, expertise, authoritative and trustworthiness. Each of those could actually be its own entire podcast episode. Then some more specific points Google looks for are, Is it accurate and error free? Does it contain original non-obvious valuable information? Is it comprehensive content? Does it avoid click bait or exaggerated claims in the H1 and title tag? And so on. Then there are also some less obvious ones like having a site with a primary purpose or focus and not having content that's mass-produced or outsourced to two large, a number of different creators. Then ultimately Google's biggest question is, does the content satisfy the user's needs? Which comes back in large part to search intent. Again, if someone lands on your page from a Google search, is your content going to scratch their itch? If it is, it's probably pretty high quality. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much Kyle, make sure you follow Kyle on Twitter. We'll link to his Twitter account in the show notes. I'm really glad he brought up the quality reader guidelines, I can't believe we didn't bring that up yet. How do we not do that? But it is something you should definitely take a look at, definitely read. It's not that Google's using that in the algorithm itself, although Google has said they kind of try to mimic some of those things algorithmically, but it definitely tells you how Google is thinking and what it's ultimately trying to do. Which is really important, at one point I'm glad he mentioned was that that sort of topical identity, that's part of, in my mind, the quality experience. It's not a quality experience you go to a website and have multiple pages that don't relate to each other, that are not topically associated with each other. Because if you zoom out of the query, let's say it's like who is Captain Kirk? Going back to Star Trek again, am I really trying to understand who Captain Kirk is or if you want to be more zoomed out? Am I trying to understand Star Trek as a concept, as a entity? And while my specific question is about Captain Kirk, I might really be looking to understand Star Trek. The website I go to has one page about Star Trek and then another page about Star Wars not relevant to me. Just kidding. I had to go there. If it is talking about Star Trek on one page and then it's talking about bricks and then it's talking about windows and it's talking about spaceship. Well spaceship might be relevant on another page. That's not a quality experience. Crystal Carter: I was talking to someone about this, about tags like blog tags and stuff. Basically I was saying let's say you were doing a Star Trek convention, you went to a Star Trek convention in New Orleans or something and you were talking about it and you wrote a blog about it and you say your website is about Star Trek. You would make a tag that says convention, but you don't necessarily need a tag for New Orleans because you're not going to write any more content about New Orleans and if you did make more content about New Orleans and you had a whole thing that was like, "oh yeah, beignets and Mardi Gras." I don't know, Gators or something, I don't know, essentially. Let's say you started making content about that for your Star Trek blog. That wouldn't make any sense and it's not helpful to the audience that you have, which want to know more about Star Trek stuff. Unless there was an episode where they go to New Orleans in Next Gen or something. I don't know I mean they do a lot of stuff … Mordy Oberstein: There's always creatures that are kind of gators. Crystal Carter: Yeah, so you want to keep stay on topic. If you want to veer off into something else, do it on a different channel. You can either do something on social where you talk about something different or you could maybe make another blog or you could even set up a sub domain maybe that was specifically around travel to conventions or something. But there's ways that you can do that and staying on topic is helpful. It's helpful to people. I also like that he mentioned money because it is important to think about that people are able to convert, people are able to do the things that they came to do from that business. I saw a thing on LinkedIn the other day and it was saying that SEOs be like, the question is how to open a beer and the answer is you pull the tab. Mordy Oberstein: Saw that. Crystal Carter: And then SEOs be like, what is beer? What is the beer can, how do you consider this? Here's a video explaining of all of the different steps. And sometimes people just want the information and in the quality rater guidelines, which I was just looking at the recent ones yesterday. They talk about the main content it's what helps the user achieve their goal. That's what it is. In the beer case, maybe it's a new beer can, because sometimes they do that. Sometimes there'll be some bespoke thing and they've got a different ring-pull or something. Maybe it's a new beer can, so they just want to know how to do it. How do I get to my beer? If it's a video, if it's a picture, if it's like three words, that's fine. I've seen high ranking content that is very short. I've seen content that ranks well that is just a video. It's just a video and it doesn't have much underneath of it. It's just a video but it ranks really well because that's what the intent is. The intent is to watch the video. The intent isn't to read a 3000 word essay as well. That's like the recipe ones, that's the classic one as well. Where they tell you about every...You just want the recipe, you just want the recipe. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of the right recipe for helpful content and content, and I'm glad we brought the idea that context is important because I think Google's doing something that might show us what exactly is helpful content. Just so we bit Google themselves have created some, I guess, content that essentially for every result shows what they think might be helpful for users to know contextually. That maybe we should explore and grab some lessons from. So this is a newish version of is this new because it's not really new. So is this newish? In case you didn't know Google has a little feature called about this result and what you essentially do is on this survey is this three little dots next to the result to the right of the results. If you click on it brings up this whole little panel that shows information about this result and it's giving you context. Lesson number one off the bat context is helpful. And that does go by the way, back to what we were talking about before, that the context of your website needs to be topically appropriate. If I have one page about Captain Kirk and then a bunch of pages about Gators in New Orleans, doesn't necessarily make sense the context doesn't make sense and context is helpful. In this feature, Google's giving you context. Crystal Carter: It's great. So I found this feature really interesting. It's got a lot of information about the particular result and the case I was looking at was Better Homes and Gardens, and I looked up Best Coffee Makers 2023 and when you click about this result, it showed me a little popup from Wikipedia that was saying, Homes and Gardens is a British monthly interior design thing and it tells me that my connection is secure. Again, adding in that information there, it also tells me some of the search terms that appear in there and then it has images that are related, so explains why they're showing it to me. But the thing I found really interesting though was that you can click through and you can find out more about this search. I was able to find out lots about Homes and Gardens magazine and it talked about who they are and when they were first doing this sort of thing and that I think is really fascinating. I think that that's really interesting for people to think about their wider presence and how who they are affects whether or not it's a helpful content. For instance, if I had, I don't know, a rash something on my hand and I said, Mordy, what do you think this is? And you said, "oh, it's that it." Well Mordy, but with all due respect, you're not a doctor. But if you said like, "oh actually I've seen that before, I had a similar thing." Or whatever, then I'd be like, "oh, okay, that's helpful. I can take that experience into account and maybe I should pursue something or whatever." But who gives you the advice is really important. What I found was that if there isn't in information on that particular business, so I found one for a smaller business and Google didn't have a Wikipedia page and it says they looked for a description of them and they couldn't find them. And that's interesting as well because that might mean that they're not able to verify you in the same way that again might give people trust signals that maybe you're not able to provide helpful content about this information. Then what they did instead was they pulled the information from their website. We've talked about homepages on this podcast. We've talked about homepages on a webinar, we talked about homepages in an article. Homepages are super important and you should say what you do on your homepage because it can very well appear in this kind of result. Mordy Oberstein: To me, this features all about context. By the way you can actually just side point, you can tell Google, remove this result from your searches. Crystal Carter: Oh, right, Mordy Oberstein: That button there. You can save the result there's a lot of stuff going on there, you should definitely check it out. But to me it's really all about context. Like Google tells you they have a link to how search works. They tell you why this result showed up for your query and then there's a button inside it said more about this page and you can learn when this page was first indexed by Google. If I Google baseball stats 2023, I get baseball reference.com, it tells me this site was indexed more than 10 years ago. It even tells me about this source and it lists a review site about this website. It's a site reviewing this website that I'm looking at. It has a bunch of articles or a bunch of websites talking about what this website is. What it does is trying to give me context. The lesson of the day in my mind is helpful content is content, that has context. Crystal Carter: Also, can I just say, the word says you and the search result and it tells you the search terms that appear in it. As an SEO research point, if you're wondering why a page ranks, you can click on those little dots and have a look at why the page ranks. I looked up Beyonce Tour because I don't know if people know, but I went to Beyonce recently. It was a life changing experience. Mordy Oberstein: You did? Crystal Carter: I did, I did. We talked about costumes, I wore a Beyonce outfit and people literally clapped, so I just want that on record. Anyway, so I looked up Beyonce Tour and Live Nation, for instance. It says it's ranking forwhy I got the search result. And it says the search terms appear in the search result, Beyonce and Tour a term related to your search result appears in this result. Beyonce, the results are in English, they know I speak English and it says this seems relevant to the UK, which is where I am. This tells you that these are priority information for Google with regards to that and it's fairly top level, but it's still useful. Because the Better Homes and Gardens one said images are important for instance. These are different things, but if you're not sure where to start, it's a really good little tool. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's very cool. And by the way, it'll talk about whether or not the result is personalized or not, which goes back to what we were saying before about helpful content. It's supposed to be specific, nuanced, targeted content. That's exactly what Google's trying to do and its results which tells you what Google thinks helpful content is. Crystal Carter: That's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to deliver you great value people. We're trying to be helpful to help you. Mordy Oberstein: We're trying to be helpful. You know you know who else is very helpful? Crystal Carter: Who's helpful? Mordy Oberstein: Barry is helpful. Barry Short is very helpful. He writes all sorts of articles about the news and SEO. Him and other people like Roger Monty and Matt Southern, Danny Goodwin, Lauren Baker, all very helpful. People who cover the SEO news. Crystal Carter: They are very helpful. I tell you what, we talked about the history of SEO. Like I remember doing a deck on featured snippets and I literally just went through every report that Barry's ever done on featured snippets and you can see the evolution of it as you pull it out. Like it's incredibly... Shout out to Barry. Mordy Oberstein: Let's get into some not only snappy, helpful SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Google's search generative experience gets quality updates and majors speed Boost says Barry Schwartz over@stroundtable.com . Google search liaison Danny Sullivan says quote, "we've made a number of quality updates, including a major improvement that reduces the time it takes to generate AI snapshots by half." Official judger of all things speed took at a stopwatch, Barry Schwarz said it feels twice as fast. Officially unofficially is twice as fast as Barry. As for the quality updates, no official word from the big G, but an even bigger G as in Gabe as in Glen Gabe Double G. Showed that there were improvements related to some YNYL queries. For example, Glen was searching and pulled up the SGE related to strep throat. He showed there's a little bit more nuance, some more caveats in there about strep throat in the new SGE result compared to the previous one. We don't know for sure, but that could be as a result of Google's quality update to the SGE. With this as reported by Kristy Hines over at SEJ search in journal, Google seems to be inviting more people to try the SGE. Perhaps as has released a new YouTube short showing how to sign up. My invite must be lost in the mail. At the same time, Reuters reports that advertisers are balking at the idea of being shown in AI chat experiences on the SERP saying quote, "Microsoft Google strategy to test AI search adds irks some brands." This says, "Microsoft is testing placement without advertiser consent within the AI chat experience, which has led to some huge media buyers pulling back on their Microsoft advertising spend." This reminds me of reminiscent of what went on back in the past with YouTube placement. Advertisers do not want to have their ads appear next to, we'll call it questionable content, unreliable content, any sort of content that might position their brand as being associated with something that's not of the utmost quality because brand associations is a huge part of the game. I would pay very close attention to this story. I think it's going to be when the narratives that comes out of the hole, AI on the SERP experience, and I would expect there to be a lot more of this sort of issues or these sort of issues rather coming up in the future. It's all part of the web, it's all part of navigating the web. It's almost to be expected and I'm sure it all gets sorted out. That's this week's version of the Snappy News. Wasn't that news, not just snappy, but also helpful. We're trying to be helpful today. Thank you to those people who covered the news for helping us help you be helpful. Crystal Carter: I feel help. Mordy Oberstein: I feel at that pivot needed some help. Somebody, anybody please help me. Crystal Carter: Not anybody. Mordy Oberstein: Right. I'm just going to just lean right into it. Who else is very helpful? Our follow of the week is a very helpful person. Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Melissa Bash. Crystal Carter: Melissa Bash. Mordy Oberstein: At SEO Aware at SEO. That's S-E-O, A-W-A-R-E over on Twitter. She's the lead content manager over Kelly Blue Book and Autotrader. She's always sharing useful information, helpful information about SEO, about Star Wars and about the Bucks, which I'm not a big Tom Brady fan, but it's helpful if you are. Crystal Carter: I was checking out some of her content the other day and you're absolutely right. She shares some really great stuff about SEO. That's really... Mordy Oberstein: OG. Melissa's an OG. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I think she's got some really interesting insights on some lighter topics as well. She's a great follow and she's interested in, she's been following along with the information about Chachi BT and about generative search and things like that. She's a great follow. Mordy Oberstein: She's literally been in the SEO world for a long time. She used to run Sam Rush's blog. She's somebody who has a lot of experience in creating content and having that content rake well on search. Definitely give Melissa a follow over on Twitter. We'll link to her Twitter profile in the show notes. Hope that was helpful. Crystal Carter: I hope that it was of assistance. I hope that it was useful and valuable and gave you context to the topics at hand. Mordy Oberstein: 'Cause context is helpful. Make sure your content has context. Crystal Carter: Then it wasn't not helpful. Mordy Oberstein: Unhelpful. Crystal Carter: Helpful. Mordy Oberstein: It's always helpful to be efficient when you speak, so not helpful to be unhelpful. Crystal Carter: That's true, that is true. Mordy Oberstein: Do you remember The Office where Kevin wants to save time by only speaking like the core words, like me hungry. Like I am hungry, why waste time saying I am, just say me hungry. That's not helpful. Crystal Carter: Unhelpful. Mordy Oberstein: Unhelpful. The office though is very helpful if you want to have a good time, have some fun. Crystal Carter: Is this true? This is true. Mordy Oberstein: I watch The Office. Also tune into our next episode. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with the new episodes we dive into Subdomains versus Subfolders. Debate ends here, well not really. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on SEO learning of over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content webinars on the Wix SEO learning about you guessed it at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes, oral 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

What is good content? Mordy and Crystal team up to tackle what it means to create good content for both users and bots. Learn what qualities good content tends to have and how Google responds to it as we dive into real examples of content that ranks and doesn’t rank well. Go deeper into what good content consists of in our Deep Thoughts segment. Is content strictly the words on the page or is it something else? Get a conceptual framework for what content is so that you have the foundation to create the best content possible. We’re joined by Shelby Blackley & Jessie Willms of WTF SEO to get their take on how to get users to not only click on content but ultimately trust the brand and come back for more! Back Uncommonly good content What is good content? Mordy and Crystal team up to tackle what it means to create good content for both users and bots. Learn what qualities good content tends to have and how Google responds to it as we dive into real examples of content that ranks and doesn’t rank well. Go deeper into what good content consists of in our Deep Thoughts segment. Is content strictly the words on the page or is it something else? Get a conceptual framework for what content is so that you have the foundation to create the best content possible. We’re joined by Shelby Blackley & Jessie Willms of WTF SEO to get their take on how to get users to not only click on content but ultimately trust the brand and come back for more! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 02 | August 30, 2022 | 45 MIN 00:00 / 44:55 This week’s guests Shelby Blackley An award-winning journalist, digital marketer and communicator with more than 10 years experience. Specializes in SEO, audience behaviour, data trends and interpersonal connections. Focuses on finding the right audience and platform for your stories, content or ideas. Shelby co-write's a weekly newsletter called, “WTF is SEO?” which explores search engine optimization through the lens of journalism. Jessie Willms Jessie Willms is a Toronto-based audience editor at Canada’s national newspaper. She has developed her data and SEO skills at some of Canada’s top newsrooms. She now runs data and audience workshops for journalists, while teaching data and interactive journalism at Centennial College. In 2021, she – along with Shleby – co-founded WTFisSEO, a newsletter about search for publishers. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP’s Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix. And I'm joined by our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, SERP's people. I'm very happy to be here. Mordy Oberstein: I thought you were going to say like, hey, all you groovy cats and kittens because- Crystal Carter: I love cool cats and kittens and dogs and- Mordy Oberstein: And gerbils. Crystal Carter: Gerbils. And also- Mordy Oberstein: Hamsters. Crystal Carter: ... hamsters, guinea pigs. I've got a friend who's- Mordy Oberstein: Birds. Crystal Carter: ... He has a lizard. This is- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, forget about lizards, birds. Crystal Carter: Birds. Birds are good. Yeah, that's good. Mordy Oberstein: People who have pets, you are welcome on this podcast. And those of you who don't. Crystal Carter: Yes. Those of you who don't. Those of you who virtual pets or potted plants, potted plants are cool. Mordy Oberstein: Or even just like pets, altogether. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I have animal friends. I just anthropomorphized the animals in my midst. There are seagulls nesting across the street from my house and I've named them Gerald and Susan. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's wonderful. Crystal Carter: Yeah, the- Mordy Oberstein: That's really lovely. Are you sure it's the same two seagulls every single day? Crystal Carter: Dude, they got a little baby. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Crystal Carter: And the baby is like ... Yeah, I can see them. Mordy Oberstein: But you didn't name the baby? Crystal Carter: Well, I mean, we were still deciding on it. But he's really cute. He's really friendly. Mordy Oberstein: You have list of names? Crystal Carter: Yeah, we got a list of names. We're going to have a gender reveal party and everything. Mordy Oberstein: Perfect. On that note, the SERP’s Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can run a quick and link site audit with our Deepcrawl integration have again during the Wix app market to make your site healthy today with the Deepcrawl app. So much going on in this episode. I feel like we're just going to say that at every episode, but it's true. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of content. We have a lot of content today. Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot of content. [00:01:59] What are we talking about in this episode? I like what you did there. Because this week, we're talking about creating uncommonly good content for users and for bots. We're going to be covering being uncommon by creating some uncommonly awesome content for both users and bots. Crystal Carter: Users and bots. Bots would like content that is interesting as well, and not just the same as everyone else's content. Mordy Oberstein: You sound like a coneheads consume mass consumptions. Those of you watch Saturday Night Live way back in the day. Anyway, we're going to go into what it means to create good content, how to create good content with guest drops from, Shelby Blackley over at Mashable and Jessie Willms. So looking forward to that. We're also going to get lost in the ether of, what is content? That's my William Shatner impersonation, by the way, as we have a deep thought moment for you. Crystal Carter: Deep thoughts. Deep, deep thoughts of the content. Mordy Oberstein: Mm, deep thoughts. We're also going to be taking a hard look at the SERP itself to see what ranks, what doesn't, why it does, why it doesn't as we take a look at the keyword, should I use pastels, pastels, I never get this word right, in my business logo design. Crystal Carter: It's something that we've all considered. Are we going for lavender or powder blue eggshell? Mordy Oberstein: I love pastels. Crystal Carter: What do [inaudible 00:03:14]? Mordy Oberstein: Eggshell. I painted my apartment eggshell one time. Anyways, we're getting ready for some real life lessons on what content is ranking and what Google likes and what it doesn't like, so you can apply that to your own content. Plus, some snappy SEO news and who to follow in the SEO industry for some SEO awesomeness. So much going on. Well, let's snap into it. Content. [00:03:36] Focus Topic of the Week | Content Content is the commodity of your website. People are going to your website to consume something. That thing is pizza. No, content. Crystal Carter: Content. Mordy Oberstein: Content, not a pizza. It could be content around pizza. It could be content around a product so they can buy it. It could be a podcast episode like this one. It could be a blog post. Whatever it is, it's some form of? Content. Crystal Carter: Content. Mordy Oberstein: A site without content is basically like a body without bones. It's a giant lump of mush. Crystal Carter: Are you getting into the deep thoughts already? Who are we- Mordy Oberstein: That's right, yeah. Crystal Carter: ... without content Mordy Oberstein: Deep metaphors by Mordy Oberstein. Back in the day, if you've been doing SEO for a while, you'll remember this. But if you haven't been, this is a good lesson for you to learn. Back in the day, when you wrote content for the web, you wanted to rank and pulling traffic from search, so you created content that wasn't, I don't know, call it not exactly natural. Crystal Carter: Mm, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Mm. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we've seen not-good content. Mordy Oberstein: Gee, not good content. You were doing things like making sure your keywords and your title and the first end of the first paragraph, of the first heading, of every single page, and every heading in the last paragraph, keywords here, keywords there, keywords everywhere. The only thing that wasn't actually there, other than the keyword, was actually good content. Crystal Carter: Oh. Oh. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, snap. We're getting salty. By the way, if anybody tells you, if you're listening to this, you need to have your keyword over here and your keyword over there and your keyword in the first end. Do not listen to them. For the love of God, do not listen to them. That's bad SEO advice. Crystal Carter: It can lead to some trouble. Mordy Oberstein: Really bad trouble, really not good for anything. Why? Well, Google's got via machine learning and NLP and a bunch of other things that make me sound well smart when I say that. Google has gotten really good in understanding what content is, what users want. You should now write content that isn't bleh. Which is why today ... By the way, it's the official diagnosis of bad content, it's bleh. Crystal Carter: Exactly. And I think on the machine learning point, it's really important to think about the machine learning is powered by NLP, which is natural- Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Crystal Carter: ... language processing. It's natural language. One of the problems with writing keywords or writing four keywords in the way that people did back in the day is that it wasn't very natural. And that's not how people write and it's not how people talk to their computers anymore. And it's certainly not the way that we should be making content anymore. Mordy Oberstein: No. It's really just bad, which, again, why, today, we're talking about creating uncommonly good content and what that actually means, which is, I guess, where we should begin. What does it actually mean to create good content from an SEO point of view? It sounds like a simple question for the probably simple answer, but it is not. It is not simple. Crystal Carter: It's not. It is not simple and it's very ... Whenever Google has an algorithm update, they always say, oh, just make good content, just make good content. And everyone is like, but what is good? Mordy Oberstein: What does that mean? Crystal Carter: What does it mean? What does good content mean? Mordy Oberstein: What's in the box? What's in the box? Crystal Carter: Just tell us what do you want us to do, Google. Everyone gets very confused. And I think that there's a very interesting thing. And I always think about this as a tech SEO. And I've got a quote here from John Mueller. He is quoted in search engine journal, and he says, "When it comes to the quality of the content, we don't mean just the text of your articles." And we're talking about good content. It's really about the quality of the website overall that includes everything from layout to design, like how you have things presented on your page, how you integrate images, how you work with speed, all of those factors contribute to what is good. Because the thing is, what is good also has to do with the context. If you have a delicious five-star gourmet meal that's presented on a dirty plate, the meal might be good content, but the context of the meal doesn't mean it's not good. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. Arghhhh. Arghhhh. Crystal Carter: You need to think about all of those things. And so, I think that when you think about good content, it's important to think about the overall content experience, not just the words. Mordy Oberstein: That's so true, so true. And we'll, hopefully, get to it later. I have a whole sniff test around that. To me, good content is all about ... If you wanted to ask me like, how do I define ... There's multiple ways you could define what is good content. I define good content as nuance content, meaning it's content that you created that you're trying to predict the problems that users are going to have with the content itself. And therefore, you're creating with nuance. If you're creating content, and while you're doing, you're thinking about, well, this user, when they read this, they're not going to really understand this. Let me add this line and let me add a link in, let me do this with this or this. Or this user, they might understand this point that the other user won't, but they're not going to understand this point. Or they're going to need another piece of content after they read this piece of content to really get what they want. And when you start predicting the problems that your users are going to have with your content, and that's not a bad thing to going to have problems, they will never really have problems. You end up running with nuance. It's like when I was teaching, was like that you try to predict this type of students going to have a problem with what I'm saying, but this type of student won't, but this type of student will have a different problem. And you try to build your lesson around that. You're trying to build content around the different problems that users are going to have. And that usually means you end up creating content with the right page structure, with the right level of detail, with the right nuance, with the right kind of links. You're creating, in the end, as a default, substantial content by doing that. Crystal Carter: And I think that what you're talking about, the crux of what you're talking about, is thinking the user. As a user, how would you feel if you came to this content? Would you have more questions? Would you need more support? Would you need to be provided with more information? Would you want it in a different format? You need to think about the users. I had an experience, I don't eat meat. I went to a place and they were like, "We've got new vegetarian options." And I said to the waitress, "I would like the vegetarian options." And then she's like, "We don't have it." And that was it, that's all she said. She didn't give me more options. I needed more options. She didn't care about what I was doing. And I think that when you're thinking about users, don't leave them with that end. Don't leave them with content that doesn't go anywhere. Think about the content that matters for them. And I think that's super important. And for a tech SEO point of view, again, I mentioned format, but from a tech SEO point of view, there's a lot of things that can be done from the same content, the same written content, but provided in a different way. If they were to say about, oh, I want to listen to like, I don't know, Beyoncé's whole back catalog and someone would say, great. And they gave me a stack of vinyl records and I was on a train, that wouldn't be any help. That would be useless with me. The content is the same, but- Mordy Oberstein: You don't walk around the phonograph? Because that's-, Crystal Carter: Right. I'm not going to do that. The content is the same, but being able to play it on Spotify is much better content for me than being able to play it on a record. From a tech SEO point of view, you can sometimes make content better just by changing the format, making it better for mobile, making it more accessible for other users using audio and video and all this sorts of different things. And that can make content really good. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm trying to link with this show. And so I have a whole post about it, and so I wrote for so much a while back of why usability is going to be the differentiating factor going forward. But tech SEO comes in because they make sure content either less or more usable, and that's a huge part of UX UI. It's really all one thing. And then I'll go back to my sniff test that we get to later. But I want to briefly talk about like what prevent ... It sounds really simple what we're saying, right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's not like, wow, that's earth shattering. There are really good points, I hope, I think. But for some reason, most of the content on the web gets this wrong. And I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say most of it gets it wrong because there's page 1, but then there's page 2 through 20. And that's not always means that it's bad. It might be irrelevant for the key, whatever. But I think there's two things in my mind that make people hesitant about going this direction with their content. And that is, one, they're anxious about sales. And it's just landing pages all of the time. Where people on a landing page, you really want to try to drive ... That's where you're making the money. You really want to drive the sales, so CTA here, CTA there, and quick marketing kind of content. And you don't offer more informational content that gives context to the user. Or you don't scale back those CTAs because you're just anxious about making the sale. I'm not blaming anybody. I get that you're anxious, but that anxiety can lead you to go too far with pushing a sale, let's say, and not creating really good content. And the second thing is relying on wrong metrics. Let's take search volume, a tool, like Samra says, that every single month, a million people are looking for this keyword. So I'm going to write about this keyword, I'm going to do whatever I can and try to get search. And then said, no, I wrote about this keyword. But the end, you're not thinking about, A, is this content I should be writing? Is this good for my user? And even if it should be written on your blog or on your website, whatever it is, you're not thinking about what makes us good content. You're just thinking about how to get a million users to come and look at your content every month. And those metrics- Crystal Carter: Right. And I- Mordy Oberstein: ... just throw things off sometimes. Crystal Carter: And I think that one of the things that's good about those metrics is that they're really accessible. You've got your average search volume metric and you can see that and you can show that to someone and that sort of thing, but there are other metrics that you can use and there are other ways that you can get content ideas. And I think, also, Google often says that like, there's the ... I think the number they normally bat around is around 15% of queries have never been made. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, 15%. Crystal Carter: And you have other tools available than just the same tools that everyone has. If you have a customer service team, they will know the kinds of questions that people are regularly asking them about what you do. If you have a sales team, they will regularly ask you about those things. If you genuinely are using your product, there's probably questions that you have. Or if you, let's say, show it to your mom and she's like, "But how do I actually bake the cake?" And you're like, "Oh, follow the recipe." She's like, "Yeah, but this doesn't say that." If she says that, that's a gap, that's a content gap, that's an opportunity, and that's something that people are going to be looking for. There are other things. And reviews are a really good source of this. I've had it before where I've written content on golf. I know nothing about golf, but I have a friend who's related to golf and I followed him. And I also went through the reviews and looked at the kinds of stuff that everybody was talking about in the reviews. And we made the content based on that, not just on keyword volumes, but on the kinds of things that you're seeing come up from users and that you can actually answer. Mordy Oberstein: And I've actually done this, where I've gone to keyword research tools, plucked out the questions that they offer, then gone to real people I knew who are dealing with it, whatever it was I was researching. And the questions that I got back were completely different. That's a really good point. The last thing I want to hit on before we head over to our guest tips for this week is, practically speaking, how do you actually go about creating the really good content? This comes by my sniff test. Well, first, I want to say is, and I'll probably say this a lot on this podcast, start with empathy. Start with really understanding your audience. What are their pain points? What's their life situation? And what do they actually need? Because otherwise, you can't actually write that content I was talking about earlier where you're predicting what they're going to need if you don't understand who they are and what they need. [00:14:21] The Brand Sniff Test The second thing is that I call it the brand sniff test. Whenever you go to a page or you go really anything, you go to a store, you walk in, you look around and you're like, the prices might be great, they might have exactly what you need, but you look at it, and something just doesn't give you a great impression. And we, as human beings, we do this in three seconds flat. You go to a webpage, you're looking at it like the overall experience, there's something off with it. All of the latent signals that you're getting from the page, whether it be the tone, whether it be like they're still using tables from 1995. All of those things that give off and what brand marketers will use all the time as signals, like how effective are we, I call it the brand sniff test. Does your page pass the brand sniff test? Is the tone right? Is the format right? Or is the graphics right? Everything, all of those latent signals. When someone reads the content, does it come off that's well written, that is substantial, that is detailed, that has nuance to it, that's not just fluff? Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I- Mordy Oberstein: Those latent signals. And Google's trying to mimic that. It's the same thing that Google's trying to mimic. Obviously, they're not you, they can't show up and do that in three seconds. They're trying to mimic that through quantitative analysis, but that's what they're trying to accomplish. Give your content- Crystal Carter: And I think that- Mordy Oberstein: ... the brand sniff. Sorry, you're going. Crystal Carter: No, no. And I think it's true. If you're arriving on a new website and whether you're getting information or whether you're looking to buy something or whether you're looking to answer a question, whatever your intent might be, you want to know that the person that you're getting this information from is a decent source and that whatever the query have is actually in their wheelhouse, that they actually know what they're talking about. I could ask anybody about, I don't know why I've got a cold or something like that, but my doctor probably knows better than the person that I met down the pub. And because it's in my doctor's wheelhouse, it's important to remember that. And I think also, you talked about empathy. It's important to think about being genuinely of use to your users. I think I see a lot of content that is around like, we do this, we are great, we've got this, we do that. When you see content that's really good, it explains why. I saw a gym that was like, we have lots of machines, so you don't have to wait. We keep everything clean so that you can see healthy. We are open all the hours so that you can exercise whenever you want. Phones, in particular, are very personal. It's very important to think about like you were talking to one person when you're writing that content. And so, think about that person when you're writing the content. And I think if you do that, you'll make much better content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And by the way, I so agree with you. And I think, speculate, that Google understands the difference between language profile. It understands when you write a certain way and when you're not writing a certain way. And it says, this way is good and that way is bad for whatever topic that you're dealing with. [00:17:05] Focus Topic Guest: Shelby Blackley and Jesse Williams But speaking of experts, as you brought up, we have two experts who are going to be talking to you about how do you not only get people to click on the content. You rank, they click, how do you get them to ultimately buy into that content, trust it, and come back for more maybe or actually, buy that product in the end? Here's Shelby Blackley over at Mashable and Jessie Willms from WTF SEO, or they're both from WTF SEO. We'll link to those links in the show notes on how to get people to trust your content after they click on it from the SERP. Jessie Willms: The question that we're answering today is, how do you create content that doesn't just get clicks, but really resonates and engages the user once they land on the page? Shelby Blackley: Well, I think that the big thing about having a quality piece of journalism or having a quality piece of content is really focusing on three pillars, search intent, keyword research, and the actual reader experience and how they are immersed in the piece. When you think about search intent, it's very much like why people are searching these things. They're looking at what is the actual main purpose of the page. To create a quality piece, you need to look at what's actually out there and what people are actually creating. If someone's looking up a specific keyword and they want an FAQ, how can you take that FAQ and take it an extra level? Is there a way to engage it? Can you add in schema? Is there an H2 subheading that you can add in? All of these will allow the readers to get what they need out of it. Jessie Willms: Right. By aligning the search intent with the content that we end up creating, we can make sure that we really fulfill that request that people are making when they turn to a search engine, I should say. Shelby Blackley: Exactly. And then you think about the keyword research behind it too. And we do so much around keyword research, right, Jessie? Jessie Willms: Yeah. Keyword research is the first thing that any new SEO will do when they are thinking about creating a new piece of content. We really want to, first, understand what it is people are looking for to understand the questions that we need to answer and the topics that we need to cover in whatever piece of content that we create. The other thing between keyword research as your first step is it helps inform not just what you cover, but how you cover it. Like Shelby said, if you are doing key research and you see that other publishers are creating FAQs to answer these reader questions, then you know that this is in line with how readers want to consume this content. A series of questions and answers is a really effective tool for creating that engagement with readers, because it allows them to answer specifically the question that they're after, but also scan and skim over other questions that they might find useful. Shelby Blackley: Right. And it's a perfect opportunity for internal linking out to other stories. Jessie Willms: Exactly. Shelby Blackley: For example, if you've got that FAQ, you can link out to a really great piece of enterprise journalism that will definitely hook people and keep them there for longer, right? Jessie Willms: Yeah. Internal links are really great two-way relationship between your content. If you have, in the context of journalism, for example, a really big investigation, pairing that with an FAQ that answers the most common questions that came up during this investigation is a really excellent way to make sure that you have multiple entry points for your readers into your most valuable content. Shelby Blackley: Which takes us into our third part about the reader experience, because it's all about, how can you give the reader as much information as possible in the easiest way, but also the most engaging. If you're creating a piece of content and you've got a video that you can throw in, absolutely, it should be in there. Not only can that video rank on its own, but you're already adding to that reader experience. And then you can add in an audio clip. What if there's another piece of journalism that's connected to it? Jessie Willms: Mm-hmm. Exactly. We need to remember that readers get information in a variety of ways. So wanting to make sure that we create those access points, as Shelby said, pairing a piece of text journalism with a video component or a piece of audio or even, for example, a static graphic that explains a concept. These are all really useful ways to make sure that whatever reader finds your content, that that particular type of reader can get something out of the information that you're servicing. Shelby Blackley: Absolutely. And we recently had an issue on 10X content. And I think this whole question can be answered, really thinking about content in that sphere of 10X. If you're not familiar, 10X content was coined by Rand Fishkin or the co-founder of moz, now it's SparkToro. And it's really about taking a piece of journalism or a piece of content and making it 10 times better than what's out there. What's on SERP's right now? Are you seeing regular FAQs that are just lists? How do you take it 10 times better to really serve that audience and make those readers want to come back to your site? Jessie Willms: And for any journalist listening, this is a very key pillar of journalism. You don't want to just match what your competitors are doing. You want to beat them by producing something that is better than what they've created. Shelby Blackley: Absolutely. And always thinking about how can you best serve the reader and give them the most information they can. Jessie Willms: Yeah. Centering the reader in your experience is a great way to make content that resonates. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much to Shelby and Jessie for that really interesting. Crystal, wonder what you're thinking. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that it's really on the mark with a lot of what we've been discussing. User-centric content is really important. And they also talked about format, which I'm a big proponent of and making sure that you have content that is good on a lot of different levels. And I think that they also mentioned how can you make your content better. I think we think about making new content a lot, but a lot of the work that I've done in the past has been around enhancing content that already exists. And there's a lot of times where you can go back over well performing content or existing content or content that's on the board, but maybe not at the top and actually tailor it with new elements to make it rank better and perform better for users. But keeping users at the center is absolutely key. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, again, to Jessie and to Shelby, really appreciate you sending that into us. Be sure to check out WTF SEO. It's a newsletter for journalists who do SEO. But again, journalism and content go hand in hand. If you're looking to create content, there's some really great tips in there. They also have a Slack group, a Slack channel. Check that out as well. We'll link to it all in the show notes. Again, thank you so, so much from us, here at the SERP’s Up podcast. Okay. I had this great idea. I think it was a great idea. Why don't we take a look at- Crystal Carter: We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. I think you are being so skeptical, Crystal. [00:23:20] From the Top of the SERP I had this idea. Why don't we take a look at content that ranks really well and that doesn't rank as well or so, so, or not well at all, maybe, and see if we can maybe diagnose some reasons why content is ranking well and why it's not ranking well. So that you, our lovely audience, could have some tips around creating content that ranks well and doesn't rank well. And we're calling it from the top of the SERP. My association, by the way, the top of the SERP, when I was a kid, I grew in New York and Z100 was a radio station. Their thing was from the top of the Empire State Building. My mind, I hear from the top of the SERP. Crystal Carter: Do you know what, I live in England and there's something called Top of the Pops, which is a bit like American bandstand. And so that's what I think of. You said, top of the SERP, and I'm like, top of the pops. Yeah, top of the pops. Mordy Oberstein: What do you think of, our dear audience? Let us know on Twitter. Anyway, for real. We're looking down, but we're not judging any site or any page here in particular. That's why I need to say that. But this week, we're going to look at content around the keyword. Should I use pastels in my business logo design? And Crystal has a very different way of saying pastels, it's pastels? Crystal Carter: Pastels. Mordy Oberstein: Pastels, all right. Crystal Carter: Pastels. Mordy Oberstein: Pastels. I say it pastels. Crystal Carter: Pastels. Mordy Oberstein: Potato, potato yet again. When we ran this keyword, and by the way, if you go ahead in Google, as you might not see the exact same thing as we saw because rank is always changing. Crystal Carter: Exactly, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But there was a page from ZillionDesigns that ranks really, really well. And what I liked about this page is that ... And so I'm getting zilliondesigns.com. What it does really well is it gets really deep into pastels, which is so exciting, right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: And how you could use them for design. For example, it gets into things around like the intensity of pastels and what that means for using it in a logo and how the different colors relate and how that evokes different emotions. It really what I thought it did a really good job. And I think what Google sees in this piece of content is that it takes understanding of pastels. It applies it to logo and design. But from a very business point of view, what does this mean for your business? Crystal Carter: I think- Mordy Oberstein: Which really speaks to the intent. Crystal Carter: And what I think is really interesting is that we were talking about like literal keywords and things like that. The actual page is called using pastel colors in your brand. That's what it's called. It doesn't say using it in your logo. But as you go through it, they have lots of visuals and they're talking about logos and they have tons and tons of examples of pastel colors and logos so that you ... And Google understands that if you're talking about pastel colors and logos, you not only want to talk about pastel colors, you not only want to talk about the ... But you also want to see them in the logo. They're ranking top, even though they're not explicitly saying logo, logo, logo all over the page. But they've got good examples of logos and how you can use them. From an intent point of view, it's giving you information and it's also giving you demonstration of what you need. And I think that's one of the things [inaudible 00:26:26]. Mordy Oberstein: I think all of the pages that are ranking well the top of the SERP, they are doing things like that. They're giving you a little bit of context. There's a page from tailorbrands.com and they're talking about muted pastels. And they write ... I was going to say something like they literally write, I'll read it to you, a muted palette can actually help highlight a specific part of your logo, like an icon or your brand name. You can always experiment blending muted pastels with colors, with a brighter accent to give it a unique look that pops off the page, as opposed to just saying that you should always experiment with blending muted pastels and colors. It gives you the whole context around why that is, and it goes even deeper into it. The pages that I see, at least from my point of view, that are ranking well are not just listing information or showing you examples, but they're giving you some kind of context around how this works. You can extrapolate out what they're saying and apply it to your own situation, which I think Google sees that. Crystal Carter: Exactly, because I think Google understands what the next query is going to be. They know what people are going to come back for. They can see when they ... And a bit of content is addressing multiple stages of the query at once. Not only understanding what the past logo is and not going, these are pastel colors, lavender is pastel and baby pink is pastel and things, and not just listing them all and then somebody has to go back and find another thing. But it's a rich bit of content that's working there. I think what's also interesting about these is the top ranking ones, is that they're pretty robust. They're fairly longer form bits of content. Which means that they're probably ranking for multiple terms, which is very, very interesting to see. They're both doing a really good job on delivering content that is valuable to users. Mordy Oberstein: So, takeaway for this kind of query and perhaps your kind of query is also if you see this out there for the things that you're trying to rank for, a little bit of context and around what you're saying and why you're saying it and how it applies to the particular use case of what people are looking for, in this case, their business, definitely help here. It seemed that Google is saying, hey, we want users to be able to take away something and being able to apply it to their own site. And the only way you can do that is if you offer people a concept that they could take away and apply it to their own site, not just like, here's the information. Now, to the pages that didn't do so well. Now these are pages that maybe were on page two, maybe bumped up to page one for a little while, went back down to page two. One of the pages we looked at, one was on page two and then one was on page four. Maybe it'll get backed up to page two. But it wasn't consistently performing well, is our point. What did you see there? Crystal Carter: Yes. This is one that I saw from invideo.io and they're talking about pastel colors. What's very interesting here is that InVideo is a video website. It looks like they're providing a video tool and this is talking about pretty much different color palettes that you might use. And so the content is called pastel colors and it was ranking page two. It's now ranking lower. And I think part of this is because it's not explicitly talking about logo design. It's talking about pastel colors, generally. Even though they don't state it in the title, there's an implied connection between using pastel colors and video rather than using it in a logo design. They mention the word logo, but it's not really an emphasis. I don't think this is necessarily that this page needs to be optimized for the pastel colors for your logo query. I think this is a question that this is kind of in the general neighborhood, but this content doesn't actually satisfy this particular query. It probably ranks for something else very well. But in this particular instance, it's not actually satisfying it. It's in the ballpark, but it's not going to be taught because it's not actually satisfying the query. I think if you had this page and you saw that it lost rank, don't worry about it. Because you weren't supposed to rank for it in the first place. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really good point, by the way, general point for listening to this. Again, we're not trying to be judgmental. These are good pages, but not for this particular keyword or this particular intent. And I think you're right. And for this particular page, what it did that I think doesn't work for this particular query is like, let's say, it talks about the pale lemon color. This color too is named after [inaudible 00:30:16] and it's softer version of a vibrant yellow, doing the job of a perfect background with your visuals whenever you need an alternative for white. And it tells you, okay, this is a good alternative for white, but it doesn't give you a concept or context around why this color might be good in the business context, how you might pair this color. The next step is not there. There's no context around it. Crystal Carter: Exactly. It's not talking about logo design, which is a different thing from a video palette. Another one that was ranking page two, for the color is pastel colors and design, ideas, examples, mega inspiration. And this one is just general pastel colors and it's GraphicMama blog. What I think is interesting about this one is, again, it discusses logos a little bit, but it's not dedicated to logo design. And it's just discussing pastel colors, generally. But again, it's not dedicated to logo design. But what's also interesting about this one is that this has a lot of social proof. I think the reason why this is ranking on page two rather than ranking on page four is that if you look at it says that it's been viewed 12,000 times. That's pretty good. Based on that, I'm guessing that GraphicMama has a lot of social media followings and things like that. And they've also really done really well with showing lots of different illustrations of use cases for capsule design. Some of them which include logos. But again, it's not dedicated to that particular thing. Again, this is one where the content is perfectly solid, but Google's trying to find the content that is the most useful and the most appropriate for that particular query, and that's what they're going to put on top. Mordy Oberstein: That's what we were talking about earlier in the podcast, where you're trying to write nuance content for a particular audience and this content doesn't speak this particular audience. Because the audience in mind is coming from a business point of view. They're using it for their logo, for their what? For their business, for their website, whatever it is, some kind of business professional use. And what the content that you have here just gives you the information about pastels in a vacuum, but not in the context of how you can actually use it. I think it lacks from that point of, again, intent and that level of nuance that the intent demands. But either way, just to sum it all up, it's about intent, it's about nuance, it's about the right content at the right place, at the right time. And in this particular case, it seems to be about creating context and creating concepts that the user is able to walk away from and therefore apply to their own site, which again, speaks to the intent- Crystal Carter: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: ... of. Crystal Carter: They want to be able to learn how to do something and they want to be able to learn how to apply some information. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And you can't do that without concepts. It's just not possible. Amazing. Crystal Carter: There we go. Mordy Oberstein: Now we're not done with content just yet, there's more. But wait, there's more. Crystal Carter: There's more. Mordy Oberstein: Because content, when you talk about content, it's always hard to pin it down. And whether it's using tools to analyze content or which tools are the best for how do you define content, what kind of content are you talking about? Content is always ... Again, here's that word again, so nuanced. [00:33:13] Deep Thoughts | What IS Content? We thought, why don't we try to define, what is content? Crystal Carter: What is content? Mordy Oberstein: Is content? Here's a deep thought by Crystal and Mordy. Crystal Carter: I think on this one, I think the reason why I wanted to bring this up is because I think a lot of people, when they say, "Oh, we're going to make some content," is they think about blogs. That's the first thing they think about. They think, oh, we're going to make some blogs. That's the content. Once we've done the blogs, we've done the content. And I- Mordy Oberstein: I love the blogs. Crystal Carter: Love the blogs, don't get me wrong. Blogs are great. Blogs are good. Blogs are fantastic. However, that's not all your content. That's not the end all be all of your content. There is a lot of different content on your site. And content can include like really tiny things. Content can include big things like images, videos, audio, lots of different multimedia, but can also include things like microcopy, like things for buttons. Or a really good example that I can think of is in MailChimp, for instance. One of the reasons why I think MailChimp has such a good following is that when you press send on MailChimp, while it's loading up your email templates and getting them all the things, they put cute little quotes or they'll say cute little thing, something to do with bananas or something like that in between. And those little moments, those that lose a little bit of moments, those are also content. That's like a Microcopy Canvas. Another one, while they're waiting for things to load, it'll have a quote about something creative or something like that. And all of those different parts of your content are part of your content. And I think that it's important to remember that, to me, my deep thought is that content is about everything that people experience from your brand and from your website. Mordy Oberstein: That's exactly where I went with this. I defined content as that which communicates. And that's everything. Crystal Carter: Oh. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I want to be thorough. No, but for real. And by the way, most of the communication is done lately. And we, as marketers or SEOs or content creator, just by default, end up focusing on the more manifest parts of your content. But like a dream, it's really the latent part of your content that really matters. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I'm just trying to think, there's definitely times where if I go to a website and stuff and it's like, nothing they said, but you just go, oop, no. This isn't a thing. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: And you just run away straight away. Mordy Oberstein: Everything. Yes, the content is the actual facts or the messaging or ideas or product or whatever it is that you're trying to communicate, but it's way more than that. It's everything about communication. It's everything you're signaling, everything you're giving off. Which means, by the way, if you wanted to take it from the same concept on the flip side, content is relationship building. Crystal Carter: That's very interesting. That's very interesting. And I think, also, that comes with ... That helps you to decide about which content to make. I think if you're building relationships, when you're making this content, you are trying to build a relationship with people. There are people that I follow. There's an artist that I follow, and she makes amazing content. And I look at her pictures all the time and I tell people about her all the time. I've only bought three things from her, but I tell people about her all the time because I feel like- Mordy Oberstein: Resonates. Crystal Carter: ... I have a relationship with her content because it makes me happy. And- Mordy Oberstein: No, no joke. That's totally true. When you read a piece of content, when you're looking at an image, when you're listening to whatever it is, it hits you a certain way and that builds associations. I compare it to you have a doctor and they can treat you. And everything is like 100%, on the up and up, they are the best at their craft. But then there's also the bedside manner part of it. And your content is really both. Your content is obviously the actual facts. And so you're talking about, you have a blog about scientific theories of theory, theory of relativity. But it's also how you're communicating it. In event, you came up really pretentious. Your reader might have the best facts, but would they be able to actually assimilate that information? Were they so turned off by your tone that they would forget about this? I love what you said as facts, but I hate how you said it. I'm not taking this content in. Crystal Carter: It's very interesting. And I think that people forget that it's not just ... These are the deal breakers. When people are deciding which content to go to or which information to access or which thing to buy, those bits of nuance in between can be what makes the difference. I know there are people who really, really like iPhones, for instance, who really just love the box for years. I remember people would be like, oh, I just love the boxes. And that would be part of the experience, would be that like they're- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, totally. Crystal Carter: They had these really good boxes and you could have the same phone. Again, you can resell an iPhone, for instance, but if it comes in a box. That's- Mordy Oberstein: Right. Imagine your iPhone came in a brown paper bag, like a lunch bag. Crystal Carter: Right. You feel differently about it. You feel differently about it. And you know it's the same content, but you feel differently about it because it feels different. And like you said, it's very ethereal. It can be very in between, there's a lot of in between. But I think it's sometimes when we're talking about why people can't make great content and I think sometimes people feel nervous about actually investing the time or actually showing some personality, but do it. Just do it. And you can also try it in different channels. I mentioned not just blogs, but a blog is a really good ... You can do a litmus test so you can just try it and see what people think. You write one little blog and see if people take to that. And if you can get feedback on it, you go, okay, so this didn't resonate that well, okay, this did resonate. And then you can build on that and you can ... You don't have to do everything all at once. You can try things and see how it connects with people. But I think that thinking about relationship- Mordy Oberstein: Content. Crystal Carter: ... element of content is really important. Mordy Oberstein: It's a relationship. It's communication that relates. Crystal Carter: Relatable communication. Mordy Oberstein: Relatable communications. Do you know what else- Crystal Carter: If no one can understand you, then are you [inaudible 00:39:30] communicated? Mordy Oberstein: Doesn't matter. Crystal Carter: It's like they say, if a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound? And my answer to that is, who cares? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, who cares? [00:39:37] Snappy SEO News You know what we do care about? The news. So, here- Crystal Carter: The news. Mordy Oberstein: The news. Some snappy SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Two things for you today. You have PSA, just in case you missed it. [00:39:55] News: Beauty Blog With Financial & Medical Advice A Bit Sus But first, vindication from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google beauty blog with financial and medical advice, a bit sus, that's suspect. Google's John Mueller was asked if offering medical advice on a beauty blog was a viable plan. Now for the record, the question was a hypothetical so they can pull out a concept. Just FYI, no one was actually proposing doing something like that. John from Google said, "If you're giving financial and medical advice on a beauty blog, I suspect users are probably rightly going to find that a bit sus," as in suspect. Vindication, I've been saying this forever, well, since August 2018, where I wrote a post for Rank Ranger, is Google profiling your site? Well, while John is going to say, Google treats this as suspect in the algorithm. Technically, you have to think that if the quality of each page is great, but it's on completely different topics, again, you're talking about financial advice or medical advice on a beauty blog that's going through setting very mixed signals to Google and call into question the reliability of that content. Because quality looks at the entire domain of the site. Meaning Google looks at the quality of the site overall, not just specific pages. For long time SEOs, that might sound a bit odd. But it's true [00:41:41] News: Google's Helpful Content Update when it brings us to our PSA. Just in case you missed it, Google announced it will be launching the helpful content update. By the time you are listening to this, it may already be live and rolling out. Police check the SEO news outlets for more coverage, such as Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, and Search Engine Journal, and so forth. I'm not going to get into too many details here because it's snappy. But basically, the update is going after content written for bots first and not users. Content, you write so that you rank, but not really focused on your audience being happy. That's what this update is going after. It is a sitewide algorithm. Google is scoring the entire site, not just pages, so willing to some more resources around the update in the show notes so that you can learn more. And that is the snappy news. Crystal Carter: Let's roll. [00:42:08] Follow of the Week Mordy Oberstein: Before we leave every week, what we would like to do is to give you, our dear listeners, more resources to learn more SEO. One of the greatest resources out there is the SEO community. Now there are some great people to follow, some not so great people to follow in the SEO community, like any community. Here, however, is a great person to follow. Crystal, who we following this week? Crystal Carter: This week, I'm going to give a shout out to Ross Simmonds. Ross Simmonds is @TheCoolestCool on Twitter. And Ross is someone who has a big following, but I'm always surprised that more people aren't aware of him. Sometimes I'm like, "Oh, Ross Simmonds says this," and people say, "Oh, I don't follow him." And I'm like, "You should. You absolutely should follow him." And one of the things that he specializes in is content distro. He talks about repurposing your content, about making sure that your content is being found in different places. So that not only are you making unusually awesome content, but that you're also making sure that it's found in lots of unusually awesome ways. And this is something that I have done for clients, and I've seen incredible results. And I think that it's something that you can add to your SEO process. Because that way, you don't have to just hope that people will find your content and all that time you spent connecting with your users and building relationships and doing all of that sort of stuff can find more fruits. And I think the other thing is that he talks about using about different channels and formatting, specifically, for those channels, so making Twitter threads or making videos or making this other or the other to make that content really sing in lots of new ways. And I think he does it really, really well. Mordy Oberstein: Which is a perfect place to end off. Because you need to not only create that great content, but you need to know how to share that great content and spread that great content around., Crystal Carter: Spread it around. Mordy Oberstein: Appropriate. Thank you, Crystal. That was so appropriate. And thank you to our great audience. Thank you for joining us with the SERP’s Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Well, not to worry, we're back next week with an all new episode as we get into the algorithm. Crystal Carter: Mm. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, algorithm updates. Ooh, scary. [00:44:18] Wix.com/SEO/Learn Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our very own Wix SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Look and learn more about everything SEO. Check out all the great content at webinars over at the Wix SEO learning hub at, you guess it, I'll say it again one more time, wix.com/seo/learn. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Crystal Carter: SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Shelby Blackley Jessie Willms Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub WTFSEO Newsletter News: Google: Beauty Blog With Financial & Medical Advice A Bit Sus What creators should know about Google's helpful content update Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Shelby Blackley Jessie Willms Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub WTFSEO Newsletter News: Google: Beauty Blog With Financial & Medical Advice A Bit Sus What creators should know about Google's helpful content update Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP’s Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix. And I'm joined by our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, SERP's people. I'm very happy to be here. Mordy Oberstein: I thought you were going to say like, hey, all you groovy cats and kittens because- Crystal Carter: I love cool cats and kittens and dogs and- Mordy Oberstein: And gerbils. Crystal Carter: Gerbils. And also- Mordy Oberstein: Hamsters. Crystal Carter: ... hamsters, guinea pigs. I've got a friend who's- Mordy Oberstein: Birds. Crystal Carter: ... He has a lizard. This is- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, forget about lizards, birds. Crystal Carter: Birds. Birds are good. Yeah, that's good. Mordy Oberstein: People who have pets, you are welcome on this podcast. And those of you who don't. Crystal Carter: Yes. Those of you who don't. Those of you who virtual pets or potted plants, potted plants are cool. Mordy Oberstein: Or even just like pets, altogether. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I have animal friends. I just anthropomorphized the animals in my midst. There are seagulls nesting across the street from my house and I've named them Gerald and Susan. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's wonderful. Crystal Carter: Yeah, the- Mordy Oberstein: That's really lovely. Are you sure it's the same two seagulls every single day? Crystal Carter: Dude, they got a little baby. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Crystal Carter: And the baby is like ... Yeah, I can see them. Mordy Oberstein: But you didn't name the baby? Crystal Carter: Well, I mean, we were still deciding on it. But he's really cute. He's really friendly. Mordy Oberstein: You have list of names? Crystal Carter: Yeah, we got a list of names. We're going to have a gender reveal party and everything. Mordy Oberstein: Perfect. On that note, the SERP’s Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can run a quick and link site audit with our Deepcrawl integration have again during the Wix app market to make your site healthy today with the Deepcrawl app. So much going on in this episode. I feel like we're just going to say that at every episode, but it's true. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of content. We have a lot of content today. Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot of content. [00:01:59] What are we talking about in this episode? I like what you did there. Because this week, we're talking about creating uncommonly good content for users and for bots. We're going to be covering being uncommon by creating some uncommonly awesome content for both users and bots. Crystal Carter: Users and bots. Bots would like content that is interesting as well, and not just the same as everyone else's content. Mordy Oberstein: You sound like a coneheads consume mass consumptions. Those of you watch Saturday Night Live way back in the day. Anyway, we're going to go into what it means to create good content, how to create good content with guest drops from, Shelby Blackley over at Mashable and Jessie Willms. So looking forward to that. We're also going to get lost in the ether of, what is content? That's my William Shatner impersonation, by the way, as we have a deep thought moment for you. Crystal Carter: Deep thoughts. Deep, deep thoughts of the content. Mordy Oberstein: Mm, deep thoughts. We're also going to be taking a hard look at the SERP itself to see what ranks, what doesn't, why it does, why it doesn't as we take a look at the keyword, should I use pastels, pastels, I never get this word right, in my business logo design. Crystal Carter: It's something that we've all considered. Are we going for lavender or powder blue eggshell? Mordy Oberstein: I love pastels. Crystal Carter: What do [inaudible 00:03:14]? Mordy Oberstein: Eggshell. I painted my apartment eggshell one time. Anyways, we're getting ready for some real life lessons on what content is ranking and what Google likes and what it doesn't like, so you can apply that to your own content. Plus, some snappy SEO news and who to follow in the SEO industry for some SEO awesomeness. So much going on. Well, let's snap into it. Content. [00:03:36] Focus Topic of the Week | Content Content is the commodity of your website. People are going to your website to consume something. That thing is pizza. No, content. Crystal Carter: Content. Mordy Oberstein: Content, not a pizza. It could be content around pizza. It could be content around a product so they can buy it. It could be a podcast episode like this one. It could be a blog post. Whatever it is, it's some form of? Content. Crystal Carter: Content. Mordy Oberstein: A site without content is basically like a body without bones. It's a giant lump of mush. Crystal Carter: Are you getting into the deep thoughts already? Who are we- Mordy Oberstein: That's right, yeah. Crystal Carter: ... without content Mordy Oberstein: Deep metaphors by Mordy Oberstein. Back in the day, if you've been doing SEO for a while, you'll remember this. But if you haven't been, this is a good lesson for you to learn. Back in the day, when you wrote content for the web, you wanted to rank and pulling traffic from search, so you created content that wasn't, I don't know, call it not exactly natural. Crystal Carter: Mm, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Mm. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we've seen not-good content. Mordy Oberstein: Gee, not good content. You were doing things like making sure your keywords and your title and the first end of the first paragraph, of the first heading, of every single page, and every heading in the last paragraph, keywords here, keywords there, keywords everywhere. The only thing that wasn't actually there, other than the keyword, was actually good content. Crystal Carter: Oh. Oh. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, snap. We're getting salty. By the way, if anybody tells you, if you're listening to this, you need to have your keyword over here and your keyword over there and your keyword in the first end. Do not listen to them. For the love of God, do not listen to them. That's bad SEO advice. Crystal Carter: It can lead to some trouble. Mordy Oberstein: Really bad trouble, really not good for anything. Why? Well, Google's got via machine learning and NLP and a bunch of other things that make me sound well smart when I say that. Google has gotten really good in understanding what content is, what users want. You should now write content that isn't bleh. Which is why today ... By the way, it's the official diagnosis of bad content, it's bleh. Crystal Carter: Exactly. And I think on the machine learning point, it's really important to think about the machine learning is powered by NLP, which is natural- Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Crystal Carter: ... language processing. It's natural language. One of the problems with writing keywords or writing four keywords in the way that people did back in the day is that it wasn't very natural. And that's not how people write and it's not how people talk to their computers anymore. And it's certainly not the way that we should be making content anymore. Mordy Oberstein: No. It's really just bad, which, again, why, today, we're talking about creating uncommonly good content and what that actually means, which is, I guess, where we should begin. What does it actually mean to create good content from an SEO point of view? It sounds like a simple question for the probably simple answer, but it is not. It is not simple. Crystal Carter: It's not. It is not simple and it's very ... Whenever Google has an algorithm update, they always say, oh, just make good content, just make good content. And everyone is like, but what is good? Mordy Oberstein: What does that mean? Crystal Carter: What does it mean? What does good content mean? Mordy Oberstein: What's in the box? What's in the box? Crystal Carter: Just tell us what do you want us to do, Google. Everyone gets very confused. And I think that there's a very interesting thing. And I always think about this as a tech SEO. And I've got a quote here from John Mueller. He is quoted in search engine journal, and he says, "When it comes to the quality of the content, we don't mean just the text of your articles." And we're talking about good content. It's really about the quality of the website overall that includes everything from layout to design, like how you have things presented on your page, how you integrate images, how you work with speed, all of those factors contribute to what is good. Because the thing is, what is good also has to do with the context. If you have a delicious five-star gourmet meal that's presented on a dirty plate, the meal might be good content, but the context of the meal doesn't mean it's not good. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. Arghhhh. Arghhhh. Crystal Carter: You need to think about all of those things. And so, I think that when you think about good content, it's important to think about the overall content experience, not just the words. Mordy Oberstein: That's so true, so true. And we'll, hopefully, get to it later. I have a whole sniff test around that. To me, good content is all about ... If you wanted to ask me like, how do I define ... There's multiple ways you could define what is good content. I define good content as nuance content, meaning it's content that you created that you're trying to predict the problems that users are going to have with the content itself. And therefore, you're creating with nuance. If you're creating content, and while you're doing, you're thinking about, well, this user, when they read this, they're not going to really understand this. Let me add this line and let me add a link in, let me do this with this or this. Or this user, they might understand this point that the other user won't, but they're not going to understand this point. Or they're going to need another piece of content after they read this piece of content to really get what they want. And when you start predicting the problems that your users are going to have with your content, and that's not a bad thing to going to have problems, they will never really have problems. You end up running with nuance. It's like when I was teaching, was like that you try to predict this type of students going to have a problem with what I'm saying, but this type of student won't, but this type of student will have a different problem. And you try to build your lesson around that. You're trying to build content around the different problems that users are going to have. And that usually means you end up creating content with the right page structure, with the right level of detail, with the right nuance, with the right kind of links. You're creating, in the end, as a default, substantial content by doing that. Crystal Carter: And I think that what you're talking about, the crux of what you're talking about, is thinking the user. As a user, how would you feel if you came to this content? Would you have more questions? Would you need more support? Would you need to be provided with more information? Would you want it in a different format? You need to think about the users. I had an experience, I don't eat meat. I went to a place and they were like, "We've got new vegetarian options." And I said to the waitress, "I would like the vegetarian options." And then she's like, "We don't have it." And that was it, that's all she said. She didn't give me more options. I needed more options. She didn't care about what I was doing. And I think that when you're thinking about users, don't leave them with that end. Don't leave them with content that doesn't go anywhere. Think about the content that matters for them. And I think that's super important. And for a tech SEO point of view, again, I mentioned format, but from a tech SEO point of view, there's a lot of things that can be done from the same content, the same written content, but provided in a different way. If they were to say about, oh, I want to listen to like, I don't know, Beyoncé's whole back catalog and someone would say, great. And they gave me a stack of vinyl records and I was on a train, that wouldn't be any help. That would be useless with me. The content is the same, but- Mordy Oberstein: You don't walk around the phonograph? Because that's-, Crystal Carter: Right. I'm not going to do that. The content is the same, but being able to play it on Spotify is much better content for me than being able to play it on a record. From a tech SEO point of view, you can sometimes make content better just by changing the format, making it better for mobile, making it more accessible for other users using audio and video and all this sorts of different things. And that can make content really good. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm trying to link with this show. And so I have a whole post about it, and so I wrote for so much a while back of why usability is going to be the differentiating factor going forward. But tech SEO comes in because they make sure content either less or more usable, and that's a huge part of UX UI. It's really all one thing. And then I'll go back to my sniff test that we get to later. But I want to briefly talk about like what prevent ... It sounds really simple what we're saying, right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's not like, wow, that's earth shattering. There are really good points, I hope, I think. But for some reason, most of the content on the web gets this wrong. And I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say most of it gets it wrong because there's page 1, but then there's page 2 through 20. And that's not always means that it's bad. It might be irrelevant for the key, whatever. But I think there's two things in my mind that make people hesitant about going this direction with their content. And that is, one, they're anxious about sales. And it's just landing pages all of the time. Where people on a landing page, you really want to try to drive ... That's where you're making the money. You really want to drive the sales, so CTA here, CTA there, and quick marketing kind of content. And you don't offer more informational content that gives context to the user. Or you don't scale back those CTAs because you're just anxious about making the sale. I'm not blaming anybody. I get that you're anxious, but that anxiety can lead you to go too far with pushing a sale, let's say, and not creating really good content. And the second thing is relying on wrong metrics. Let's take search volume, a tool, like Samra says, that every single month, a million people are looking for this keyword. So I'm going to write about this keyword, I'm going to do whatever I can and try to get search. And then said, no, I wrote about this keyword. But the end, you're not thinking about, A, is this content I should be writing? Is this good for my user? And even if it should be written on your blog or on your website, whatever it is, you're not thinking about what makes us good content. You're just thinking about how to get a million users to come and look at your content every month. And those metrics- Crystal Carter: Right. And I- Mordy Oberstein: ... just throw things off sometimes. Crystal Carter: And I think that one of the things that's good about those metrics is that they're really accessible. You've got your average search volume metric and you can see that and you can show that to someone and that sort of thing, but there are other metrics that you can use and there are other ways that you can get content ideas. And I think, also, Google often says that like, there's the ... I think the number they normally bat around is around 15% of queries have never been made. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, 15%. Crystal Carter: And you have other tools available than just the same tools that everyone has. If you have a customer service team, they will know the kinds of questions that people are regularly asking them about what you do. If you have a sales team, they will regularly ask you about those things. If you genuinely are using your product, there's probably questions that you have. Or if you, let's say, show it to your mom and she's like, "But how do I actually bake the cake?" And you're like, "Oh, follow the recipe." She's like, "Yeah, but this doesn't say that." If she says that, that's a gap, that's a content gap, that's an opportunity, and that's something that people are going to be looking for. There are other things. And reviews are a really good source of this. I've had it before where I've written content on golf. I know nothing about golf, but I have a friend who's related to golf and I followed him. And I also went through the reviews and looked at the kinds of stuff that everybody was talking about in the reviews. And we made the content based on that, not just on keyword volumes, but on the kinds of things that you're seeing come up from users and that you can actually answer. Mordy Oberstein: And I've actually done this, where I've gone to keyword research tools, plucked out the questions that they offer, then gone to real people I knew who are dealing with it, whatever it was I was researching. And the questions that I got back were completely different. That's a really good point. The last thing I want to hit on before we head over to our guest tips for this week is, practically speaking, how do you actually go about creating the really good content? This comes by my sniff test. Well, first, I want to say is, and I'll probably say this a lot on this podcast, start with empathy. Start with really understanding your audience. What are their pain points? What's their life situation? And what do they actually need? Because otherwise, you can't actually write that content I was talking about earlier where you're predicting what they're going to need if you don't understand who they are and what they need. [00:14:21] The Brand Sniff Test The second thing is that I call it the brand sniff test. Whenever you go to a page or you go really anything, you go to a store, you walk in, you look around and you're like, the prices might be great, they might have exactly what you need, but you look at it, and something just doesn't give you a great impression. And we, as human beings, we do this in three seconds flat. You go to a webpage, you're looking at it like the overall experience, there's something off with it. All of the latent signals that you're getting from the page, whether it be the tone, whether it be like they're still using tables from 1995. All of those things that give off and what brand marketers will use all the time as signals, like how effective are we, I call it the brand sniff test. Does your page pass the brand sniff test? Is the tone right? Is the format right? Or is the graphics right? Everything, all of those latent signals. When someone reads the content, does it come off that's well written, that is substantial, that is detailed, that has nuance to it, that's not just fluff? Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I- Mordy Oberstein: Those latent signals. And Google's trying to mimic that. It's the same thing that Google's trying to mimic. Obviously, they're not you, they can't show up and do that in three seconds. They're trying to mimic that through quantitative analysis, but that's what they're trying to accomplish. Give your content- Crystal Carter: And I think that- Mordy Oberstein: ... the brand sniff. Sorry, you're going. Crystal Carter: No, no. And I think it's true. If you're arriving on a new website and whether you're getting information or whether you're looking to buy something or whether you're looking to answer a question, whatever your intent might be, you want to know that the person that you're getting this information from is a decent source and that whatever the query have is actually in their wheelhouse, that they actually know what they're talking about. I could ask anybody about, I don't know why I've got a cold or something like that, but my doctor probably knows better than the person that I met down the pub. And because it's in my doctor's wheelhouse, it's important to remember that. And I think also, you talked about empathy. It's important to think about being genuinely of use to your users. I think I see a lot of content that is around like, we do this, we are great, we've got this, we do that. When you see content that's really good, it explains why. I saw a gym that was like, we have lots of machines, so you don't have to wait. We keep everything clean so that you can see healthy. We are open all the hours so that you can exercise whenever you want. Phones, in particular, are very personal. It's very important to think about like you were talking to one person when you're writing that content. And so, think about that person when you're writing the content. And I think if you do that, you'll make much better content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And by the way, I so agree with you. And I think, speculate, that Google understands the difference between language profile. It understands when you write a certain way and when you're not writing a certain way. And it says, this way is good and that way is bad for whatever topic that you're dealing with. [00:17:05] Focus Topic Guest: Shelby Blackley and Jesse Williams But speaking of experts, as you brought up, we have two experts who are going to be talking to you about how do you not only get people to click on the content. You rank, they click, how do you get them to ultimately buy into that content, trust it, and come back for more maybe or actually, buy that product in the end? Here's Shelby Blackley over at Mashable and Jessie Willms from WTF SEO, or they're both from WTF SEO. We'll link to those links in the show notes on how to get people to trust your content after they click on it from the SERP. Jessie Willms: The question that we're answering today is, how do you create content that doesn't just get clicks, but really resonates and engages the user once they land on the page? Shelby Blackley: Well, I think that the big thing about having a quality piece of journalism or having a quality piece of content is really focusing on three pillars, search intent, keyword research, and the actual reader experience and how they are immersed in the piece. When you think about search intent, it's very much like why people are searching these things. They're looking at what is the actual main purpose of the page. To create a quality piece, you need to look at what's actually out there and what people are actually creating. If someone's looking up a specific keyword and they want an FAQ, how can you take that FAQ and take it an extra level? Is there a way to engage it? Can you add in schema? Is there an H2 subheading that you can add in? All of these will allow the readers to get what they need out of it. Jessie Willms: Right. By aligning the search intent with the content that we end up creating, we can make sure that we really fulfill that request that people are making when they turn to a search engine, I should say. Shelby Blackley: Exactly. And then you think about the keyword research behind it too. And we do so much around keyword research, right, Jessie? Jessie Willms: Yeah. Keyword research is the first thing that any new SEO will do when they are thinking about creating a new piece of content. We really want to, first, understand what it is people are looking for to understand the questions that we need to answer and the topics that we need to cover in whatever piece of content that we create. The other thing between keyword research as your first step is it helps inform not just what you cover, but how you cover it. Like Shelby said, if you are doing key research and you see that other publishers are creating FAQs to answer these reader questions, then you know that this is in line with how readers want to consume this content. A series of questions and answers is a really effective tool for creating that engagement with readers, because it allows them to answer specifically the question that they're after, but also scan and skim over other questions that they might find useful. Shelby Blackley: Right. And it's a perfect opportunity for internal linking out to other stories. Jessie Willms: Exactly. Shelby Blackley: For example, if you've got that FAQ, you can link out to a really great piece of enterprise journalism that will definitely hook people and keep them there for longer, right? Jessie Willms: Yeah. Internal links are really great two-way relationship between your content. If you have, in the context of journalism, for example, a really big investigation, pairing that with an FAQ that answers the most common questions that came up during this investigation is a really excellent way to make sure that you have multiple entry points for your readers into your most valuable content. Shelby Blackley: Which takes us into our third part about the reader experience, because it's all about, how can you give the reader as much information as possible in the easiest way, but also the most engaging. If you're creating a piece of content and you've got a video that you can throw in, absolutely, it should be in there. Not only can that video rank on its own, but you're already adding to that reader experience. And then you can add in an audio clip. What if there's another piece of journalism that's connected to it? Jessie Willms: Mm-hmm. Exactly. We need to remember that readers get information in a variety of ways. So wanting to make sure that we create those access points, as Shelby said, pairing a piece of text journalism with a video component or a piece of audio or even, for example, a static graphic that explains a concept. These are all really useful ways to make sure that whatever reader finds your content, that that particular type of reader can get something out of the information that you're servicing. Shelby Blackley: Absolutely. And we recently had an issue on 10X content. And I think this whole question can be answered, really thinking about content in that sphere of 10X. If you're not familiar, 10X content was coined by Rand Fishkin or the co-founder of moz, now it's SparkToro. And it's really about taking a piece of journalism or a piece of content and making it 10 times better than what's out there. What's on SERP's right now? Are you seeing regular FAQs that are just lists? How do you take it 10 times better to really serve that audience and make those readers want to come back to your site? Jessie Willms: And for any journalist listening, this is a very key pillar of journalism. You don't want to just match what your competitors are doing. You want to beat them by producing something that is better than what they've created. Shelby Blackley: Absolutely. And always thinking about how can you best serve the reader and give them the most information they can. Jessie Willms: Yeah. Centering the reader in your experience is a great way to make content that resonates. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much to Shelby and Jessie for that really interesting. Crystal, wonder what you're thinking. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that it's really on the mark with a lot of what we've been discussing. User-centric content is really important. And they also talked about format, which I'm a big proponent of and making sure that you have content that is good on a lot of different levels. And I think that they also mentioned how can you make your content better. I think we think about making new content a lot, but a lot of the work that I've done in the past has been around enhancing content that already exists. And there's a lot of times where you can go back over well performing content or existing content or content that's on the board, but maybe not at the top and actually tailor it with new elements to make it rank better and perform better for users. But keeping users at the center is absolutely key. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, again, to Jessie and to Shelby, really appreciate you sending that into us. Be sure to check out WTF SEO. It's a newsletter for journalists who do SEO. But again, journalism and content go hand in hand. If you're looking to create content, there's some really great tips in there. They also have a Slack group, a Slack channel. Check that out as well. We'll link to it all in the show notes. Again, thank you so, so much from us, here at the SERP’s Up podcast. Okay. I had this great idea. I think it was a great idea. Why don't we take a look at- Crystal Carter: We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. I think you are being so skeptical, Crystal. [00:23:20] From the Top of the SERP I had this idea. Why don't we take a look at content that ranks really well and that doesn't rank as well or so, so, or not well at all, maybe, and see if we can maybe diagnose some reasons why content is ranking well and why it's not ranking well. So that you, our lovely audience, could have some tips around creating content that ranks well and doesn't rank well. And we're calling it from the top of the SERP. My association, by the way, the top of the SERP, when I was a kid, I grew in New York and Z100 was a radio station. Their thing was from the top of the Empire State Building. My mind, I hear from the top of the SERP. Crystal Carter: Do you know what, I live in England and there's something called Top of the Pops, which is a bit like American bandstand. And so that's what I think of. You said, top of the SERP, and I'm like, top of the pops. Yeah, top of the pops. Mordy Oberstein: What do you think of, our dear audience? Let us know on Twitter. Anyway, for real. We're looking down, but we're not judging any site or any page here in particular. That's why I need to say that. But this week, we're going to look at content around the keyword. Should I use pastels in my business logo design? And Crystal has a very different way of saying pastels, it's pastels? Crystal Carter: Pastels. Mordy Oberstein: Pastels, all right. Crystal Carter: Pastels. Mordy Oberstein: Pastels. I say it pastels. Crystal Carter: Pastels. Mordy Oberstein: Potato, potato yet again. When we ran this keyword, and by the way, if you go ahead in Google, as you might not see the exact same thing as we saw because rank is always changing. Crystal Carter: Exactly, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But there was a page from ZillionDesigns that ranks really, really well. And what I liked about this page is that ... And so I'm getting zilliondesigns.com. What it does really well is it gets really deep into pastels, which is so exciting, right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: And how you could use them for design. For example, it gets into things around like the intensity of pastels and what that means for using it in a logo and how the different colors relate and how that evokes different emotions. It really what I thought it did a really good job. And I think what Google sees in this piece of content is that it takes understanding of pastels. It applies it to logo and design. But from a very business point of view, what does this mean for your business? Crystal Carter: I think- Mordy Oberstein: Which really speaks to the intent. Crystal Carter: And what I think is really interesting is that we were talking about like literal keywords and things like that. The actual page is called using pastel colors in your brand. That's what it's called. It doesn't say using it in your logo. But as you go through it, they have lots of visuals and they're talking about logos and they have tons and tons of examples of pastel colors and logos so that you ... And Google understands that if you're talking about pastel colors and logos, you not only want to talk about pastel colors, you not only want to talk about the ... But you also want to see them in the logo. They're ranking top, even though they're not explicitly saying logo, logo, logo all over the page. But they've got good examples of logos and how you can use them. From an intent point of view, it's giving you information and it's also giving you demonstration of what you need. And I think that's one of the things [inaudible 00:26:26]. Mordy Oberstein: I think all of the pages that are ranking well the top of the SERP, they are doing things like that. They're giving you a little bit of context. There's a page from tailorbrands.com and they're talking about muted pastels. And they write ... I was going to say something like they literally write, I'll read it to you, a muted palette can actually help highlight a specific part of your logo, like an icon or your brand name. You can always experiment blending muted pastels with colors, with a brighter accent to give it a unique look that pops off the page, as opposed to just saying that you should always experiment with blending muted pastels and colors. It gives you the whole context around why that is, and it goes even deeper into it. The pages that I see, at least from my point of view, that are ranking well are not just listing information or showing you examples, but they're giving you some kind of context around how this works. You can extrapolate out what they're saying and apply it to your own situation, which I think Google sees that. Crystal Carter: Exactly, because I think Google understands what the next query is going to be. They know what people are going to come back for. They can see when they ... And a bit of content is addressing multiple stages of the query at once. Not only understanding what the past logo is and not going, these are pastel colors, lavender is pastel and baby pink is pastel and things, and not just listing them all and then somebody has to go back and find another thing. But it's a rich bit of content that's working there. I think what's also interesting about these is the top ranking ones, is that they're pretty robust. They're fairly longer form bits of content. Which means that they're probably ranking for multiple terms, which is very, very interesting to see. They're both doing a really good job on delivering content that is valuable to users. Mordy Oberstein: So, takeaway for this kind of query and perhaps your kind of query is also if you see this out there for the things that you're trying to rank for, a little bit of context and around what you're saying and why you're saying it and how it applies to the particular use case of what people are looking for, in this case, their business, definitely help here. It seemed that Google is saying, hey, we want users to be able to take away something and being able to apply it to their own site. And the only way you can do that is if you offer people a concept that they could take away and apply it to their own site, not just like, here's the information. Now, to the pages that didn't do so well. Now these are pages that maybe were on page two, maybe bumped up to page one for a little while, went back down to page two. One of the pages we looked at, one was on page two and then one was on page four. Maybe it'll get backed up to page two. But it wasn't consistently performing well, is our point. What did you see there? Crystal Carter: Yes. This is one that I saw from invideo.io and they're talking about pastel colors. What's very interesting here is that InVideo is a video website. It looks like they're providing a video tool and this is talking about pretty much different color palettes that you might use. And so the content is called pastel colors and it was ranking page two. It's now ranking lower. And I think part of this is because it's not explicitly talking about logo design. It's talking about pastel colors, generally. Even though they don't state it in the title, there's an implied connection between using pastel colors and video rather than using it in a logo design. They mention the word logo, but it's not really an emphasis. I don't think this is necessarily that this page needs to be optimized for the pastel colors for your logo query. I think this is a question that this is kind of in the general neighborhood, but this content doesn't actually satisfy this particular query. It probably ranks for something else very well. But in this particular instance, it's not actually satisfying it. It's in the ballpark, but it's not going to be taught because it's not actually satisfying the query. I think if you had this page and you saw that it lost rank, don't worry about it. Because you weren't supposed to rank for it in the first place. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really good point, by the way, general point for listening to this. Again, we're not trying to be judgmental. These are good pages, but not for this particular keyword or this particular intent. And I think you're right. And for this particular page, what it did that I think doesn't work for this particular query is like, let's say, it talks about the pale lemon color. This color too is named after [inaudible 00:30:16] and it's softer version of a vibrant yellow, doing the job of a perfect background with your visuals whenever you need an alternative for white. And it tells you, okay, this is a good alternative for white, but it doesn't give you a concept or context around why this color might be good in the business context, how you might pair this color. The next step is not there. There's no context around it. Crystal Carter: Exactly. It's not talking about logo design, which is a different thing from a video palette. Another one that was ranking page two, for the color is pastel colors and design, ideas, examples, mega inspiration. And this one is just general pastel colors and it's GraphicMama blog. What I think is interesting about this one is, again, it discusses logos a little bit, but it's not dedicated to logo design. And it's just discussing pastel colors, generally. But again, it's not dedicated to logo design. But what's also interesting about this one is that this has a lot of social proof. I think the reason why this is ranking on page two rather than ranking on page four is that if you look at it says that it's been viewed 12,000 times. That's pretty good. Based on that, I'm guessing that GraphicMama has a lot of social media followings and things like that. And they've also really done really well with showing lots of different illustrations of use cases for capsule design. Some of them which include logos. But again, it's not dedicated to that particular thing. Again, this is one where the content is perfectly solid, but Google's trying to find the content that is the most useful and the most appropriate for that particular query, and that's what they're going to put on top. Mordy Oberstein: That's what we were talking about earlier in the podcast, where you're trying to write nuance content for a particular audience and this content doesn't speak this particular audience. Because the audience in mind is coming from a business point of view. They're using it for their logo, for their what? For their business, for their website, whatever it is, some kind of business professional use. And what the content that you have here just gives you the information about pastels in a vacuum, but not in the context of how you can actually use it. I think it lacks from that point of, again, intent and that level of nuance that the intent demands. But either way, just to sum it all up, it's about intent, it's about nuance, it's about the right content at the right place, at the right time. And in this particular case, it seems to be about creating context and creating concepts that the user is able to walk away from and therefore apply to their own site, which again, speaks to the intent- Crystal Carter: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: ... of. Crystal Carter: They want to be able to learn how to do something and they want to be able to learn how to apply some information. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And you can't do that without concepts. It's just not possible. Amazing. Crystal Carter: There we go. Mordy Oberstein: Now we're not done with content just yet, there's more. But wait, there's more. Crystal Carter: There's more. Mordy Oberstein: Because content, when you talk about content, it's always hard to pin it down. And whether it's using tools to analyze content or which tools are the best for how do you define content, what kind of content are you talking about? Content is always ... Again, here's that word again, so nuanced. [00:33:13] Deep Thoughts | What IS Content? We thought, why don't we try to define, what is content? Crystal Carter: What is content? Mordy Oberstein: Is content? Here's a deep thought by Crystal and Mordy. Crystal Carter: I think on this one, I think the reason why I wanted to bring this up is because I think a lot of people, when they say, "Oh, we're going to make some content," is they think about blogs. That's the first thing they think about. They think, oh, we're going to make some blogs. That's the content. Once we've done the blogs, we've done the content. And I- Mordy Oberstein: I love the blogs. Crystal Carter: Love the blogs, don't get me wrong. Blogs are great. Blogs are good. Blogs are fantastic. However, that's not all your content. That's not the end all be all of your content. There is a lot of different content on your site. And content can include like really tiny things. Content can include big things like images, videos, audio, lots of different multimedia, but can also include things like microcopy, like things for buttons. Or a really good example that I can think of is in MailChimp, for instance. One of the reasons why I think MailChimp has such a good following is that when you press send on MailChimp, while it's loading up your email templates and getting them all the things, they put cute little quotes or they'll say cute little thing, something to do with bananas or something like that in between. And those little moments, those that lose a little bit of moments, those are also content. That's like a Microcopy Canvas. Another one, while they're waiting for things to load, it'll have a quote about something creative or something like that. And all of those different parts of your content are part of your content. And I think that it's important to remember that, to me, my deep thought is that content is about everything that people experience from your brand and from your website. Mordy Oberstein: That's exactly where I went with this. I defined content as that which communicates. And that's everything. Crystal Carter: Oh. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I want to be thorough. No, but for real. And by the way, most of the communication is done lately. And we, as marketers or SEOs or content creator, just by default, end up focusing on the more manifest parts of your content. But like a dream, it's really the latent part of your content that really matters. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I'm just trying to think, there's definitely times where if I go to a website and stuff and it's like, nothing they said, but you just go, oop, no. This isn't a thing. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: And you just run away straight away. Mordy Oberstein: Everything. Yes, the content is the actual facts or the messaging or ideas or product or whatever it is that you're trying to communicate, but it's way more than that. It's everything about communication. It's everything you're signaling, everything you're giving off. Which means, by the way, if you wanted to take it from the same concept on the flip side, content is relationship building. Crystal Carter: That's very interesting. That's very interesting. And I think, also, that comes with ... That helps you to decide about which content to make. I think if you're building relationships, when you're making this content, you are trying to build a relationship with people. There are people that I follow. There's an artist that I follow, and she makes amazing content. And I look at her pictures all the time and I tell people about her all the time. I've only bought three things from her, but I tell people about her all the time because I feel like- Mordy Oberstein: Resonates. Crystal Carter: ... I have a relationship with her content because it makes me happy. And- Mordy Oberstein: No, no joke. That's totally true. When you read a piece of content, when you're looking at an image, when you're listening to whatever it is, it hits you a certain way and that builds associations. I compare it to you have a doctor and they can treat you. And everything is like 100%, on the up and up, they are the best at their craft. But then there's also the bedside manner part of it. And your content is really both. Your content is obviously the actual facts. And so you're talking about, you have a blog about scientific theories of theory, theory of relativity. But it's also how you're communicating it. In event, you came up really pretentious. Your reader might have the best facts, but would they be able to actually assimilate that information? Were they so turned off by your tone that they would forget about this? I love what you said as facts, but I hate how you said it. I'm not taking this content in. Crystal Carter: It's very interesting. And I think that people forget that it's not just ... These are the deal breakers. When people are deciding which content to go to or which information to access or which thing to buy, those bits of nuance in between can be what makes the difference. I know there are people who really, really like iPhones, for instance, who really just love the box for years. I remember people would be like, oh, I just love the boxes. And that would be part of the experience, would be that like they're- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, totally. Crystal Carter: They had these really good boxes and you could have the same phone. Again, you can resell an iPhone, for instance, but if it comes in a box. That's- Mordy Oberstein: Right. Imagine your iPhone came in a brown paper bag, like a lunch bag. Crystal Carter: Right. You feel differently about it. You feel differently about it. And you know it's the same content, but you feel differently about it because it feels different. And like you said, it's very ethereal. It can be very in between, there's a lot of in between. But I think it's sometimes when we're talking about why people can't make great content and I think sometimes people feel nervous about actually investing the time or actually showing some personality, but do it. Just do it. And you can also try it in different channels. I mentioned not just blogs, but a blog is a really good ... You can do a litmus test so you can just try it and see what people think. You write one little blog and see if people take to that. And if you can get feedback on it, you go, okay, so this didn't resonate that well, okay, this did resonate. And then you can build on that and you can ... You don't have to do everything all at once. You can try things and see how it connects with people. But I think that thinking about relationship- Mordy Oberstein: Content. Crystal Carter: ... element of content is really important. Mordy Oberstein: It's a relationship. It's communication that relates. Crystal Carter: Relatable communication. Mordy Oberstein: Relatable communications. Do you know what else- Crystal Carter: If no one can understand you, then are you [inaudible 00:39:30] communicated? Mordy Oberstein: Doesn't matter. Crystal Carter: It's like they say, if a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound? And my answer to that is, who cares? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, who cares? [00:39:37] Snappy SEO News You know what we do care about? The news. So, here- Crystal Carter: The news. Mordy Oberstein: The news. Some snappy SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Two things for you today. You have PSA, just in case you missed it. [00:39:55] News: Beauty Blog With Financial & Medical Advice A Bit Sus But first, vindication from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google beauty blog with financial and medical advice, a bit sus, that's suspect. Google's John Mueller was asked if offering medical advice on a beauty blog was a viable plan. Now for the record, the question was a hypothetical so they can pull out a concept. Just FYI, no one was actually proposing doing something like that. John from Google said, "If you're giving financial and medical advice on a beauty blog, I suspect users are probably rightly going to find that a bit sus," as in suspect. Vindication, I've been saying this forever, well, since August 2018, where I wrote a post for Rank Ranger, is Google profiling your site? Well, while John is going to say, Google treats this as suspect in the algorithm. Technically, you have to think that if the quality of each page is great, but it's on completely different topics, again, you're talking about financial advice or medical advice on a beauty blog that's going through setting very mixed signals to Google and call into question the reliability of that content. Because quality looks at the entire domain of the site. Meaning Google looks at the quality of the site overall, not just specific pages. For long time SEOs, that might sound a bit odd. But it's true [00:41:41] News: Google's Helpful Content Update when it brings us to our PSA. Just in case you missed it, Google announced it will be launching the helpful content update. By the time you are listening to this, it may already be live and rolling out. Police check the SEO news outlets for more coverage, such as Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, and Search Engine Journal, and so forth. I'm not going to get into too many details here because it's snappy. But basically, the update is going after content written for bots first and not users. Content, you write so that you rank, but not really focused on your audience being happy. That's what this update is going after. It is a sitewide algorithm. Google is scoring the entire site, not just pages, so willing to some more resources around the update in the show notes so that you can learn more. And that is the snappy news. Crystal Carter: Let's roll. [00:42:08] Follow of the Week Mordy Oberstein: Before we leave every week, what we would like to do is to give you, our dear listeners, more resources to learn more SEO. One of the greatest resources out there is the SEO community. Now there are some great people to follow, some not so great people to follow in the SEO community, like any community. Here, however, is a great person to follow. Crystal, who we following this week? Crystal Carter: This week, I'm going to give a shout out to Ross Simmonds. Ross Simmonds is @TheCoolestCool on Twitter. And Ross is someone who has a big following, but I'm always surprised that more people aren't aware of him. Sometimes I'm like, "Oh, Ross Simmonds says this," and people say, "Oh, I don't follow him." And I'm like, "You should. You absolutely should follow him." And one of the things that he specializes in is content distro. He talks about repurposing your content, about making sure that your content is being found in different places. So that not only are you making unusually awesome content, but that you're also making sure that it's found in lots of unusually awesome ways. And this is something that I have done for clients, and I've seen incredible results. And I think that it's something that you can add to your SEO process. Because that way, you don't have to just hope that people will find your content and all that time you spent connecting with your users and building relationships and doing all of that sort of stuff can find more fruits. And I think the other thing is that he talks about using about different channels and formatting, specifically, for those channels, so making Twitter threads or making videos or making this other or the other to make that content really sing in lots of new ways. And I think he does it really, really well. Mordy Oberstein: Which is a perfect place to end off. Because you need to not only create that great content, but you need to know how to share that great content and spread that great content around., Crystal Carter: Spread it around. Mordy Oberstein: Appropriate. Thank you, Crystal. That was so appropriate. And thank you to our great audience. Thank you for joining us with the SERP’s Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Well, not to worry, we're back next week with an all new episode as we get into the algorithm. Crystal Carter: Mm. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, algorithm updates. Ooh, scary. [00:44:18] Wix.com/SEO/Learn Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our very own Wix SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Look and learn more about everything SEO. Check out all the great content at webinars over at the Wix SEO learning hub at, you guess it, I'll say it again one more time, wix.com/seo/learn. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Crystal Carter: 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