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Zoe Ashbridge is an SEO strategist and co-founder of Forank, a boutique search engine marketing (SEM) agency that helps B2B companies turn Google and AI search visibility into qualified leads. Zoe Ashbridge SEO strategist and co-founder of Forank Zoe Ashbridge is an SEO strategist and co-founder of Forank , a boutique search engine marketing (SEM) agency that helps B2B companies turn Google and AI search visibility into qualified leads through data-driven SEM strategies. Her work spans search engine optimization (SEO), including technical and on-page, content strategy, and generative engine optimization (GEO). Her work always has a clear focus on driving qualified leads and measurable business outcomes. Zoe takes take a data-driven approach to marketing, aligning search performance with real commercial goals across both traditional and evolving AI search platforms. Her campaigns have delivered proven impact, including generating marketing-qualified leads directly from search. Zoe’s insights have been featured in Search Engine Land, HubSpot, Moz, Backlinko, MarTech, GoDaddy, Screaming Frog, and more. 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

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 Einat Hoobian-Seybold Head of Product SEO & Accessibility at Wix Jennifer Long Lead SEO Manager at SolarWinds Zoe Ashbridge SEO strategist and co-founder of Forank Adel Raslan Product Marketing Manager at Google 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 Senior SEO Director at StudioHawk 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 Tamara Sykes Head of Client Content Strategy, Stacker Atiba de Souza CEO at Client Attraction Pros Flora Bazie CEO, Digital Accessibility Expert at LinoraTech Inc. 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 Making marketing metrics meaningful Listen Now UPCOMING WEBINAR Structured data and AI in 2026 Save Your Spot UPCOMING WEBINAR Structured data and AI in 2026 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 Crystal Carter 30 Mar 2026 Crystal Carter Introduction to structured data for SEO Crystal Carter 18 Mar 2026 Crystal Carter How to optimize images for search on Wix Crystal Carter 16 Mar 2026 Crystal Carter How to add and customize structured data on Wix Krystal Taing 24 Feb 2026 Krystal Taing How to use Uberall on your Wix & Wix Studio websites James Clark 5 Feb 2026 James Clark Google Search Console: Your complete guide Einat Hoobian-Seybold 26 Jan 2026 Einat Hoobian-Seybold How to connect your Wix & Wix Studio websites to Bing 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 12 Mar 2026 Structured data and AI in 2026 30 Jan 2026 Optimize Your Website with AI Agents: New Tools and Strategies 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

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 Structured data and AI in 2026 Tuesday 31 Mar 2026 | 2 PM ET Drive growth with schema markup Learn more Watch past webinars 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... 16 Sept 2024 Live SEO Audit with SEJ: AI assisted content Tuesday, April 30, 2024 | 1PM ET Our panel of SEO and content experts will be live auditing sites in this session. Submit your site on... 2 Oct 2024 Live webinar: How to rank with AI content Tuesday, March 26, 2024 | 1PM ET The emergence of generative AI has led to a revolutionary number of sites relying upon the technology... 16 Sept 2024 Live webinar: Bring automation and AI into your sales funnel Tuesday, February 27, 2024 | 1PM ET Market smarter by leveraging AI and automation in your workflows. Join industry-leading growth... 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

Kiera is the editorial director of Wix Studio and oversees content on the AI Search Lab and SEO Learning Hub. She has 15 years of experience in SEO and content strategy. Kiera Carter Editorial Director, Wix Studio Kiera is the editorial director of Wix Studio and oversees content on the AI Search Lab and SEO Learning Hub. She has 15 years of experience in SEO and content strategy. In a past life, she held editorial leadership positions at companies like Hearst and People Inc. Her journalism has been published by The New York Times , Wall Street Journal , Marie Claire , and others. Articles & Resources 2 Dec 2025 The content marketing advice you'll need in 2026, according to MozCon speakers 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

Crystal Carter is the Head of AI Search & SEO Communications at Wix and an SEO & Digital Marketing professional with almost 20 years of experience.  Her global business clients have included Disney, McDonalds, and Tomy. An active AI & SEO communicator, she hosts SEO webinars, presents keynotes and her expertise has been featured at Google Search Central, Microsoft, BrightonSEO, Moz, OMR, Semrush, and more. Crystal Carter Head of AI Search & SEO Communications, Wix Crystal Carter is the Head of AI Search & SEO Communications at Wix and an SEO & Digital Marketing professional with almost 20 years of experience. Her global business clients have included Disney, McDonalds, and Tomy. An active AI & SEO communicator, she hosts SEO webinars , presents keynotes and her expertise has been featured at Google Search Central, Microsoft, BrightonSEO, Moz, OMR, Semrush, and more. Articles & Resources 4 Jun 2025 AI Tools for SEO: From LLM Workflows to MCP 28 May 2024 How to use long-tail keywords and why you should 30 Apr 2024 What is bounce rate and how has it changed? 26 Mar 2024 Introduction to structured data for SEO 28 Dec 2023 Automate your digital marketing funnel with Wix Studio & Zapier 5 Sept 2023 How to design a Wix Studio website with SEO in mind 3 Aug 2023 What is structured data validation? 15 Dec 2022 Homepage SEO strategies to achieve business goals 16 Nov 2022 Edit by Page: Manage SEO on your Wix site pages at scale 15 Nov 2022 How to Use Wix SEO Settings 29 Sept 2022 How to do user-first topic and keyword research for SEO 25 Aug 2022 YouTube Clips: What SEOs need to know Resources Crystal Carter LLM brand visibility tracker Interpret your brand's LLM presence in AI-powered search results and provide actionable strategies to optimize for the future of generative search. Crystal Carter Yearly client goal planner Monitor the progress you make with clients and highlight achievements that can help you further your own career. Crystal Carter Content distribution toolkit Learn how to drive traffic to your posts with Wix Blog’s content distribution tools. Crystal Carter User-first keyword ideation Google Sheet Uncover razor sharp insights by collating search data from existing user touchpoints with this SEO worksheet. Crystal Carter SEO toolkit for Wix web design Make SEO an integral part of your web design process effectively and efficiently with this toolkit. 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

Wait, you should NOT take on every SEO client possible? Yep. Find out when does it and when does it not make sense to take on an SEO client. How do you determine if a client is the right fit for your services? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter take a look into how to decide which SEO clients to take on. CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, joins us to help you navigate varying approaches to taking on larger versus smaller clients. Plus, Foxwell Digital founder Andrew Foxwell discusses how qualifying leads will change in the future Dive into some of the common red flags to look out for when on the hunt for new SEO clients. Gear up for episode 73 and discover which clients you should and shouldn’t be taking on this week on the SERP’s up SEO Podcast! Back What SEO clients should you take on? Wait, you should NOT take on every SEO client possible? Yep. Find out when does it and when does it not make sense to take on an SEO client. How do you determine if a client is the right fit for your services? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter take a look into how to decide which SEO clients to take on. CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, joins us to help you navigate varying approaches to taking on larger versus smaller clients. Plus, Foxwell Digital founder Andrew Foxwell discusses how qualifying leads will change in the future Dive into some of the common red flags to look out for when on the hunt for new SEO clients. Gear up for episode 73 and discover which clients you should and shouldn’t be taking on this week on the SERP’s up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 73 | February 7, 2024 | 37 MIN 00:00 / 36:43 This week’s guests Sydni Craig-Hart Sydni Craig-Hart is CEO and Co-Founder of Smart Simple Marketing—the multi-award-winning, go-to firm that the biggest brands in Silicon Valley, the global tech world, and beyond turn to when they want to increase market share and drive engagement with diverse small businesses. Sydni is a 4th generation entrepreneur who has spent 17+ years working with over 11,000 small and diverse-owned businesses in 79 industries. Her goal since day one has been to help small business owners attract more clients and increase their revenue. The focus of her work involves working with innovative entrepreneurs to help create and execute a simple marketing strategy that supports a profitable, sustainable business. Be sure to connect with Sydni and ask about a copy of Smart Simple Marketing’s critical insights case study. Andrew Foxwell Andrew Foxwell is the co-founder of Foxwell Digital, a social media advisory firm focused on honesty and transparency through its membership offerings, online courses, account management, and consulting services. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha and mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast where we're putting together some groovy to insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of our SEO brand here at Wix Central. The amazon, the fabulous, the incredible, the unequivocal Head of Risk and Communications here at Wix. The one, the only Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: It is me. Hello, internet people. Welcome to our podcast on the internet. Mordy Oberstein: It's on the internet? That's so cool. Crystal Carter: Yes. It's coming through fiber optic things. Mordy Oberstein: It's in the computer? Crystal Carter: Yes, we are in the computer or the phone or possibly the... Mordy Oberstein: Tablet? Crystal Carter: Do people listen to podcasts in their... I mean, a Tesla is essentially a tablet on wheels basically, so if you're listening to us in your Tesla, give us a little boop, boop. Thanks. But yeah, welcome. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome. Welcome back to us. This is our first recording after the holiday season. Crystal Carter: This is the first one of 2024, the first recording of 2024. If you were listening to this in whatever month it comes out... Mordy Oberstein: Right. Who knows? Crystal Carter: Yeah. You'll know that we plan ahead in advance. We like to get ahead of ourselves. Mordy Oberstein: You got to plan. You got to produce it, you got to get guest clip. It's a lot that goes into it. Crystal Carter: Magic doesn't happen by itself. Mordy Oberstein: No. Even though if it could, that'd be amazing. Anyway, this SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Search Light, over at Wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also access a wide variety of SEO resources such as templates, checklists, and one-pagers that you can implement SEO the right way. Share them with designers, devs, et cetera, so that you can ensure you hand your clients the most well optimized site possible. Because this week, we're talking about SEO and clients and which SEO clients you should and shouldn't take. When it does and doesn't make sense to take on an SEO client, spoiler alert, if you're listening and you are that client, here's what your SEO agency is probably thinking about you. We're diving into how to best assess client fit, red flags to watch for, when should outsider considerations factor in to taking on a client and when they shouldn't. Also, big client, small client, does it matter? The CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, talks how to qualify all sorts of potential clients. We'll also hear from Foxwell Digital's founder, Andrew Foxwell, about how qualifying leads is set to change going forward. Plus, we have the snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So the next time a client says, "Take on me, take me on, I'll be gone in a day or two," you might say goodbye right now as episode number 73 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you have an aha moment about which clients to take on and which will be stumbling away. I went 80s. Crystal Carter: You did. You did. Mordy Oberstein: I love Aha. My kids like Aha. They have one song, to be honest with you. So when I say they like Aha, they like that one song. Crystal Carter: Right. I mean, I think that that song is also, so there's the high note on it and there's also the video. The video is very good. Mordy Oberstein: The high note is very high. Crystal Carter: The high note, it's very... Mordy Oberstein: It's very, very high. But by the way, if a client ever came over to me and started singing Take On Me as a way to get me, I would just 100%, "Fine. I'll add you to my queue because that's incredible." Anyway, we're talking about which clients should you take, should you not take, and I think it's a very tricky topic because this is sort of like gut instinct. Take everyone. Especially when you're getting started, you want to make sure that you're... Maybe you're not as well established as you'd like to be yet because you've just gotten started. So, yeah, take whoever. Crystal Carter: Right. People think that but it doesn't work that way. Mordy Oberstein: It doesn't work that way and I believe very, very quickly you'll realize that's not the approach. Crystal Carter: No, no. I think that people will often find this, they'll learn this the hard way. Unfortunately, sometimes clients don't pay, sometimes people ask you for blood from a stone, but without giving you appropriate things, sometimes people can give you a lot of stress over it. Don't get me wrong, there are wonderful, fantastic, incredible client relationships and things. But sometimes SEO's, agency folks will sometimes discuss red flags sometimes that come up when choosing which clients. So just looking around my network for instance, Anthony Barone, who is the managing director of Studio Hawk, we had him on the podcast previously. He posted recently about an issue with a client and one of the red flags that he saw was they had two stars out of 200 reviews on Google, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That's a great way to qualify that leave there. Crystal Carter: Right. They had 3.2 on Trustpilot, and this was one of the mistakes that he said, he didn't look at them, at the reputation of them before signing with the company. Sometimes that can be things from reviews or sometimes it can be from around the agency network. Have they worked with other agency owners that you know? Or have they worked with other freelancers that you know? Have they worked with a lot of freelancers or a lot of agencies within a shorter period of time? Because that can sometimes be a sign that the client isn't necessarily ready to have an agency or an account manager from an external party. That's something that can be really tricky. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it's not always like, oh, they're a bad client. To me, it's a lot of, they're not the right client for us or for me. I think a lot of it comes down to, I look at it almost as if it's a job application where you're trying to hire somebody. When you're taking on a client, you're in a way hiring somebody in a backwards way. You want to make sure that they align with what you're trying to achieve for yourself. There's many kinds of clients with many types of websites doing many different things. Is that what you do? It sounds like a silly fundamental, like obviously you need to ask that, but a lot of times we don't. I made that mistake a gazillion times. I have very limited bandwidth. I like to say yes. I like to help people and I like to say, "Yes, I will help you with your website." But a lot of times, this really isn't for me, it's not what I like to focus on. It's not what I specialize in, it's not what I'm interested in, it's not what I really excel at because I don't have the bandwidth in general. Why would I take this on? That was silly. So, really just fundamentally making sure what the client is, who they are, what they do, what their business is, and what they need in terms of SEO aligns to what you do. It's such a fundamental thing but it's such a big payoff. Or not payoff. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, precisely. No, precisely. If they're asking for the moon on a stick and you don't have that, then just don't get involved. Don't get involved. Mordy Oberstein: That's such a red flag. I will tell you a little trick that I do. You're having a conversation with the prospective client. You're going back and forth in emails. Don't reply a day or two and see what happens. Are they in your inbox again chirping, "Hey, just to follow up on our conversation," a day afterwards? That's a red flag to me. Crystal Carter: That's a red flag for you? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because that's a client I feel like who's going to be... Some days I get to my emails in the morning, sometimes I get to my emails in the evening, sometimes I don't get to my emails that day. 24-hour turnaround time is normal. I think that's a normal turnaround time. If they're in your inbox in a 24-hour period asking for a follow-up right away, so that's a red flag. Because once we get started with the work and you feel more entitled because now you're actually paying me, we've agreed on the account, whatever, this is not going to end well for me. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Here's another one that someone else was discussing. So, shout out to Aaron Redman Hawkins, who also works for another agency. He was saying that he was asking questions. The pitch was a big pitch, right? A six-figure pitch, but he was asking for questions and they got upset about the questions that he was asking. They were asking him like, "What's with all the probing questions?" they said. He says, "I was attempting to get a solid understanding of what the actual numbers were so I would have an accurate baseline to work from," and they didn't want to answer his questions. Mordy Oberstein: That's a red flag. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: It's an immediate red flag. Crystal Carter: He's like, "I need to know what I'm working with before I get involved," And that's something that's a red flag entirely, if people aren't able to answer your question. Either they don't know the answers, which is problematic because that means they don't know their business and therefore won't be able to recognize the value that you're giving to them, or they're hiding something which is worrisome. So, that's something to think about as well. That's pretty much the same with most relationships. If people don't want to answer questions or something, what's going on there? Mordy Oberstein: Right, it's like a relationship. You're getting involved in a relationship and in this case, and what makes it difficult is you want that other person to change. That's a very complicated, thinking about your personal life if, if men did that. But that's really what you're asking, because you're going to come in and you're going to make hopefully recommendations. Otherwise, what are you doing? If the other party is not receptive to changing, that's a problem and that's something you kind of need to figure out. I'll say, I used to do a lot of hiring for an old, old, old job I used to have. I don't know, it's like 20 years. I'm old at this point. I'm talking about my job I had 15 years ago. I used to interview a lot of people and I knew within five minutes whether or not this person was a good fit. Now, we can talk about their qualifications and were they qualified or not? I had a sense in five minutes this person is going to be difficult to work with or easy to work with. And if you're taking on a client, and if you are a prospective client listening to this podcast, be mindful that, yes, it might be hard to take the advice of the SEO, but it's in your best interest. If you're going to be difficult or not receptive to that change, that's a red flag to the agency, to the consultant, because they need your buy-in. You're a team and if you don't come off as being willing to make changes and being receptive to changes, it's not going to end well for anybody. Crystal Carter: Right, right. I think it's really important for people to realize that collaborative element, because you'll get better results when you work together. You'll get better results when you're collaborative, and I think that that's really important. Just shout out to Amelia Fowler, who is also a fantastic SEO, fantastic person. One of her red flags is people asking for guaranteed results. Yeah. Yeah. She's saying, "Nobody, no single agency or freelancer can guarantee results. They can benchmark, they can illustrate potential, they can do math and estimate, they can give you similar results from campaigns in the industry, but can you guarantee results? No." I've had people come to me and they're like, "Oh, we'll pay you after you get these results for us." Mordy Oberstein: Right. No. No. Crystal Carter: I'm like, "No. I'm not in charge of your sales funnel." We can get you traffic, we can get you increased rankings, we can do that sort of stuff. But what happens after the lead comes in is up to you and that's how you close the sale. I can't be held accountable for that. Mordy Oberstein: That. Not even that. I just tweeted about this the other day. When I say the other day, the other day of recordings. You got to go way back in the amount of nonsense I tweet out to find this tweet. But you're coming in as an SEO, and let's say you're working on A, B, and C. You're just getting started. A, B, and C. Up comes an algorithm update and because of X, Y, and Z, which you haven't even gotten to, may not even be your scope of work, the website now gets slaughtered in the rankings. If you're going to be getting paid based on rankings and organic traffic and whatever, there's so much that's not even in your scope of work, especially initially. Or that's in your control or in your hands or that you've even gotten to yet. You're just going to end up in an impossible situation for yourself, because the work that you were brought on to do, you did. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: It's not my fault that I didn't know or didn't get to yet, or wasn't even asked me about, or wasn't a part of the scope of work that you bought links 10 years ago from PBNs and Google finally realized, and now you're slaughtered in the rankings. Crystal Carter: Right. I think this is also one of the reasons why people should expect to be in SEO for a good amount of time. A lot of SEOs will say, "Give me six months. Give six months to do a good job." We could do some quick wins stuff in the first couple of months, and it's always good practice to do the quick wins quickly and things. If you see quick wins to do, sure, do them quickly and you can see. Move the needle a little bit and you can that show the value of your work fairly early on. But to get real results, to get real value, you should expect to see some of that coming through after a few months. A lot of SEOs will do that and it's good practice. If you get an SEO that tells you that, that's because it's good practice. I think that it can sometimes be a red flag if somebody wants something to happen straight away, particularly with SEO. Because there's so many moving parts, there's so many algorithms things. Like you're saying, SERP features, lots of different stuff can happen. So, if somebody's expecting you to be able to turn on the SEO tomorrow and for them to get buckets of sales and all that sort of stuff, that can be really, really tricky. So, I think that's something to be wary of. Mordy Oberstein: It speaks to bad expectations. The expectations are just completely unrealistic, unaligned, otherworldly. Crystal Carter: Right. Anu Adegbola, the founder of PPC Live, she's talked about that for PPC. That people looking for PPC results straight away and things like that can be a little bit of a tricky thing, particularly with regards to sales. I think that it can be something that can be tricky depending on what type of product it is and all of that sort of stuff. You can get great results from PPC of course, but people should be realistic about the timeline, should be realistic about their expectations around that. Especially with PPC with budget sometimes. I found that when I've worked on PPC, people are like, "Oh, I want to see all this sort of stuff," and I'm like, "Yo, your budget's too small to see that return. It's just too small." Mordy Oberstein: I want to spend $1 and get a million back. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I'm sorry, it's just not going to happen. I also want to shout out to Nick Leroy. Nick Leroy has a great video within the Wix. I think it's a Wix partners website. Mordy Oberstein: Partners, yeah. Crystal Carter: And so, there's a great YouTube video where he talks about qualifying clients and qualifying and that sort of stuff. He also has a great one about folks who are getting SEO and the red flags you should be thinking about if you're getting an SEO team involved. We also have an article in the SEO Hub about this as well, about how to find an SEO agency. But one of the things Nick Leroy talked about was who's fulfilling the SEO? So, one of the things that can be tricky sometimes is that sometimes SEOs will say, "Oh, I can do all this SEO," but you don't necessarily know who's actually going to implement it or who's actually going to do that work. So, it's worth having that discussion and understanding who's involved with that. Also, he talks about not being able to get references for them. Are they able to tell you who their previous clients are? Do they have good accolades, good reputation and good reputation with evidence? Also, one of the things that he points out is a high employee turnover. That's also a good one as well because it is true. If you're seeing agencies where people are constantly circulating through, that's not a great sign of cohesion in the business at the moment. Great agencies will have folks working there for years and that are contributing to it and helping the agency to build in terms of skills and also in terms of abilities. So, that's something to definitely think about as well. Mordy Oberstein: Fundamentally, you need to, both parties need to evaluate the relationship, boundaries need to be created, boundaries need to be respected by both parties. You don't want to be asking your SEO agency a gazillion questions a gazillion times a day. They shouldn't be sending you a million different things. Piecemeal, piecemeal, piecemeal, piecemeal. Boundaries, respect, expectations, alignment, all that needs to be considered if you're going to take a client on and if you're going to take an agency on or a consultant on. To help us qualify or better qualify taking on big clients and how they might differ from taking on smaller clients. We have the CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, to help us help you take on the right clients. Sydni Craig-Hart: One of the biggest differences between qualifying big clients versus small clients is that big clients often have more stakeholders involved in the decision-making process than small clients. For example, the person that you are speaking to, who is super excited to have met you, is really interested in your product or service and thinks you're so cool, may not actually be the final decision maker and may not be controlling the budget that will be needed to actually invest in what it is that you're offering. So it's really, really important that when you're having these conversations that you are digging in and understanding who are all of the people involved in making this decision? Who needs to sit at the table? Who needs to be involved in the conversation and what's their perspective? What's their role? What is their impact in this particular project or initiative? Because if you don't involve those folks in the conversation, you might find yourself in a situation where the person that you're speaking to is then left with the task of trying to sell you to the person who is actually making the decision. And in no circumstance is that individual going to be able to sell you as well as you will be able to sell yourself. Now, when you're selling to smaller clients, you don't really have this issue. Usually, the person you're speaking to is the decision maker. They are crystal clear on what they need, what their expectations are, what their budget is, and they can say yes or no pretty quickly to what it is that you are offering without jumping through any hoops or having to go through procurement or legal or what have you. They can just say yes and sign the contract and you can be on your way. But with larger clients, there's usually a lot of other departments and steps that are involved. It's just really, really critical that you're digging in and asking a lot of questions, still respectfully of the person that you are speaking to because you want to honor their role and their contribution to this process, but you really need to understand what their position is and are they the final decision maker. And find out is there someone else whose opinion you would value or is there someone else who's going to weigh in on this decision? Is there someone else's viewpoint that we need to consider? Who is finally going to make the decision about whether this is initiative you're going to move forward with? When you ask those kinds of questions, you understand are there more people that you need to be inviting to these conversations as you and this individual are discussing whether or not this is an opportunity that you're going to pursue. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much for that Sydni. Crystal, kind of your point there about bigger organizations have different people you don't know who you're working with and who's going to do what and what's going to happen on the client side also. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, I think you have some really great points there, particularly with larger clients. I think that what she talks about not expecting that the person that you're talking to is the last person that's going to see the document or your presentation or whatever. I think that is such an important tip and it's such an important part of leveling up. I had a great conversation with Sydni about how she went from working with smaller clients to working with people like Facebook and other folks like that and stuff. I think that understanding that if you're making a pitch deck for instance, it should include enough information for anyone in the organization to understand so that the person you're speaking to, for instance, can pass it on to the CEO, the CMO, the whoever, operations, whoever it is, and that they can understand it. That your website is accessible for all of that sort of stuff and has enough information on it to make sure that you look legit. That you look like you know what you're doing and that you're ready for the job. She's got some great insights on that and, yeah, I think it's a great advice. Mordy Oberstein: Now, we could talk about grabbing leads forever, and we can talk about grabbing lots and lots of leads and qualifying, taking as many as you possibly can, but it's one thing to take all the leads and qualify them. It's something else to understand how to qualify them the best way. To help us with this and to make sure that you're spending your precious time getting as much value out of qualifying leads as much as possible, we decided to go a little bit deep into the weeds in terms of qualifying leads with Foxwell Digital's founder, Andrew Foxwell. So, here's a look at how will qualifying leads change in the future. We actually asked Andrew that very question, how will qualifying leads change in the future? Here's what Andrew Foxwell had to say about how qualifying leads will change in the future. Take it away, Andrew. Andrew Foxwell: First of all, I guess I think qualifying leads isn't going to change at all. It's going to be totally, exactly the same forever. Obviously, I'm making that up. Qualifying leads as an agency, how is this going to change over time? I think that it's going to change over time by, number one, having probably more AI being part of the game. Right? Having more automation being part of the game, and people not being sure whether something is automated or real is likely going to be true I think as leads get qualified over time. I also think that going through and looking at the lead itself, and if you're really looking to qualify a lead, looking through and doing more research on that particular person is going to be more available. That's something that I think people have been doing a little bit more of. But if you're really qualifying lead, there's so much social media out there and where people are talking and presenting themselves. It's going to source all that together and allow you to see a more full picture of what's taking place with that person in their life and why they're submitting their information along to bring them through being an MQL as it stands. I think that would be a part of it, is knowing more about the person. I think the other thing that's probably going to change as it relates to qualifying leads over time in the future is really looking at that whole person. I think that if you really want to do lead qualification properly, you can do all this automation and fancy stuff, but in order to win, you need to make sure that you're understanding the stages that the person has gone through. You're understanding what they've clicked on in all your properties, what they've read and why. And you're going to want to bring to them a conversation with vulnerability of, "Hey, we noticed you were looking here and that might be a thing you're struggling with. Here's something that we think could help." Leading with that empathetic, less salesy tactic, but knowing that you are the person that can help solve their problem. You're a person that potentially can help solve the problem. So, I think those are probably the ways that things are going to change. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much for that, Andrew. Make sure we check out Andrew on social media. We'll link to his profile in the show notes. Of course, Sydni as well. Meant to mention that before. I love, by the way, he went from AI to, yeah, use automation, but where you're really going to win is actually digging deep. I meant to bring this up earlier of going and looking at the social media accounts and really understanding who that person is. Such a great point. Forget just taking on the client and qualifying them, but understanding what the best way to work with them might be. What kind of personality they are and maybe where have some common ground so you can work better with them once you do qualify the lead, get them on board and now actually have to work with them for the long term. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it's really important to know your clients. To actually know your clients. I used to spend a lot of time doing a lot of the what seems like nothing. The small talk stuff before the meeting starts where you say, "Oh, what'd you do this weekend?" and things like. All of that intel is really, really useful. Like, "Oh, well, you got any plans for the weekend or something?" "Oh yeah, I'm taking the kids." Note they have children. Right? "Oh, and I'm going to here and, oh, I just got back from this concert." Okay, they're a music person. There's things that are really, really useful for this. For one, for instance if they have kids, then you know that wherever you live, there's going to be school vacation time. Right? So chances are during school vacation, they're going to be less available or at least slightly less focused maybe than they will be during the other times. So, you should plan your stuff accordingly. Right? If they've got a particular interest with music or sports or something or other or things like that, that's really useful for the kinds of metaphors and things that you can use to help them to understand what you're talking about. Mordy Oberstein: Touchdown. Touchdown. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly. You can use things like that. Mordy Oberstein: A home run, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Right, just to make things more relatable to them and to build more trust with them. It's really, really useful. So, yeah. I think he discussed how things kind of change but they kind of stay the same. You still have to interact with people. Mordy Oberstein: People are people. That hasn't changed fundamentally ever. I don't know. I'm not a psychologist. Crystal Carter: Automation will help or whatever, but eventually you've got to get your hands dirty. You've got to get involved. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you got to really get to know them. Take them for a picnic. I don't know. Go for a long walk together or something. Crystal Carter: Break some bread. Have a drink. Whatever you need to do. Mordy Oberstein: Go on vacation together. Something that's not... Crystal Carter: We're not going on vacation together. Mordy Oberstein: I was like, when were you going to catch? I'm like, go for a picnic, go for a long walk. Crystal Carter: Look, who's clients are these? Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: My favorite clients. I take them on a picnic. We play softball. I will say that if you're qualifying based on social media, be careful or be cautious because who people are on social media, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, are not who they are in real life to a certain extent. Or it's like a caricature of that person. Like I'm very sarcastic on social media. I am sarcastic in general but I'm not that sarcastic. Crystal Carter: I mean, what? Mordy Oberstein: Well, all right. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: I might be a bad example. I might be a very bad example. Crystal Carter: But I think that there's definitely tools you can get. For instance, one tactic I've seen is that people will take LinkedIn posts, for instance, and they'll analyze them for tone of voice and style and things like that. You can also figure out that this person is not somebody that likes a very, very long email, for instance. If lots of their posts are fairly concise and things like that, of course cover the details and things, but maybe put them in bullet points. Maybe put them in a little list. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's a great tip right there. Crystal Carter: Things like that. If somebody's writing longer ones, then they're probably somebody who likes to have more detail, more nuance, more et cetera in the email, for instance. So, there are tools that you can use like AI tools and other tools that can help you to understand, for instance, more about your client even before you get involved with them. Mordy Oberstein: You know where you can learn a lot about someone? By reading their news articles each and every week. I really feel like you really get to know them intimately and who they are and what they're about. Whoever your favorite journalist is. Mine is Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: We do love Barry. Shout out to Barry. Mordy Oberstein: So with that introduction and, well, let's get to know Barry a little bit better now as we get into some Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Well, an old friend has gone away. No, not referring to Carl Weathers, though that is really sad. Although on the same time, there's a new Billy Joel song that's really happy, because I'm a massive Billy Joel fan. I am off track on this. We're talking about the cash link on the SERP. Per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, Google search officially retires cash links. So when you went to the SERP, you could see the cash version of the page where you could until now. Now it's gone. Is it a big deal? I don't know. I liked it. SEOs, we really liked it. I have used it a few times to look at what was going on on a page relatively recently. I've actually used it for some social media stuff before, to see how people related to their social media profiles. I found it really helpful at certain moments in time and I'm actually sad that it is gone. However, if you would like to see an old version of the page, you should check out the Wayback Machine. We'll link to that in the podcast show notes. We actually talked about it on a previous podcast episode. It's a great tool. Make sure to donate to it because they always need our support. Okay. Next up, this from next week's guest, a little sneak peek there, Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land, and Google Bard Ads Image Generation. It is what it says. Google Bard now can create images. I love it. It's really, really, really, really good. I've basically been using a combination of the Wix image AI Generator within the image upload tool and Bing's version of it. Bard is really good. I'm adding Bard to my little AI image repertoire. I love AI images. It's way easier looking for stock images. I think it's a great use of AI technology as opposed to just creating blog posts, which I am not a big fan of. So, Bard offering great images is great for the web in my opinion. Just to have a quick look, head over to Bard, generate whatever you want. It is really good. It does, interestingly, surprisingly to me, it will actually create images for entities like sports teams or sports stadiums or other sports stuff. Because I like sports. Besides Billy Joel, I like sports. You're really getting a little insight into what I prefer, but not that you actually care. But I was a little bit surprised that it does that. It won't do actual people. So for example, you could say, "Hey, create an image of the New York Yankees." But then if you said, "Hey, create an image of Lou Gehrig giving a speech at Yankee Stadium," it says, "No, I can't do that." If you try to fool into doing that, it knows what you're trying to do and it won't do it. So, check that out. It's really cool. I like it. Next up, also from Barry Schwartz but now we're moving on to SERoundtable.com, but we're not moving away from AI. It's Barry, right? Google Maps has AI-generated answers for local questions with local guides. I actually also love this. I'm somewhat of an AI curmudgeon, and this is two AI things that I really like. Okay, let me explain what this is before I get overly excited about it because I think it's really cool. So basically, you're on Google Maps and you want to, I don't know, I'll give you Google's example. They show a GIF and the article link to it in the show notes. You're looking for, I don't know, a restaurant or a cafe or whatever it is. You want a vintage vibe. So, you go into the AI little pop-up thing that a slider thing that it has there, and you say, "Hey, looking for a cafe with vintage vibe. Find me a place," and it shows you a bunch of places. "Find me a record store nearby," and that kind of thing. So, it's an interactive way of being able to move from one local query to the next local query and expand your local maps journey. The reason why I like this, I was just having this problem the other day. It's my anniversary coming up soon. Wow, you're really getting a look into my life with this little news segment here. I was looking for a cafe. The cafe that my wife wanted to go to does not have great desserts, but I really wanted dessert. So I'm like, "Okay, show me a cafe." I went to Google, I found the cafe that she wanted, and I went to look for a dessert place and it was really annoying because when you look for the dessert place, you lose the pin. So now, how far away is the dessert place from the cafe? I don't know. It got really confusing and really annoying. But if you can use an AI assistant within Google Maps and say, "Okay, show me cafe whatever it is on the map. Great. Now, show me a great dessert place that serves fudge, whatever, whatever, within a two-minute walk." That would be really, really helpful and really, really useful. So I think with Maps, the way that Maps works, it can be very, very difficult to go from one search to the next search while keeping the context of the original search. If this SGE kind of experiment that Google is showing within the local maps can help solve that problem, that is a great place. A fabulous place to use that sort of SGE-ish experience within the Google results. With that, and now knowing about all of my life and life preferences, that is this week's Snappy News. The best part wasn't the news. The best part was getting to know Barry better and doing the news. Crystal Carter: Precisely, and I hope that wherever he is, whether it's sunny or not sunny, that he's enjoying himself. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: I hope he's having so much fun. Mordy Oberstein: And enjoying a nice butter sandwich. Which brings us to our follow of the week. What the butter sandwich has to do with the follow of the week, I don't know, but we're just going to run with it. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Our follow of the week this week is Chase Freezman, who maybe he enjoys a good butter sandwich. Chase, do you? Let us know on social media. Chase is a fabulous person. He's a great SEO, worked at Seer. You could follow him on, which is a great SEO agency by the way, Digital Marketing Agency, you can follow him on X@ChaseFreezman, that's F-R-E-E-Z-M-A-N. Of course, we'll link to Chase in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's a great SEO. Super friendly, super nice and super clever. So yeah, do follow him to find out lots more great information and also what's happening at Seer. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and ask him. Maybe he likes butter sandwiches. Crystal Carter: Does he ever run with a butter sandwich? This is the question. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Well, you would run and... Would you just be running and holding it or running and eating the butter sandwich? Crystal Carter: I've definitely walked around eating a butter sandwich. Well, I'm not sure if I've eaten a butter sandwich. I think I just had bread with butter on it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Right, right. I know. Who makes a sandwich out of it? I'll be honest with you, I don't really know the last time I've ever ate butter and bread. It's got to be years. Crystal Carter: I like carbs. Mordy Oberstein: You like the butter and the bread? Crystal Carter: So, I will regularly. I mean, if it's good bread, I don't need anything else. Mordy Oberstein: Right. No, it's true. No, I enjoy it. I love bread and butter. I just don't think I've sat down and ate bread and butter in the years. Is that weird? Crystal Carter: You've never been to Olive Garden? Cheesecake Factory? Mordy Oberstein: It's not Kosher. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Okay. I see. Mordy Oberstein: No, but first off, okay, yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: We could go to my whole history of eating and bread and butter and restaurant visits and so forth. Crystal Carter: You don't have it all with butter? Is that not... Do you do that? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, people do. My kids, my 12-year-old twins, I have 12-year-old twins, loves bread and butter. He makes a little toast, he puts the butter on. I don't. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm almost surprised at myself. Crystal Carter: You should get involved. Crystal Carter: You should get involved with it. Gary loves it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. He loves chunks, rips the bread right up, makes a mean butter sandwich. But you know what it's like now? You ever, you think about yourself and you're really like, "Wow, what a blind spot I've had"? Crystal Carter: Yeah, man. Mordy Oberstein: What a blind spot. I've never had bread and butter for years? I feel disappointed in myself. Crystal Carter: This is the real deep thought. Mordy Oberstein: This is the real deep thought. Crystal Carter: What have I been doing with my life? It's like, yeah ... Mordy Oberstein: What have I been eating? What's wrong with me? Crystal Carter: Who am I? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know who I am anymore. Wow. I have to go make a butter sandwich now. With that, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into Google's Gemini and what it means possibly, maybe, who knows, for SEO. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on our SEO Learning Hub over at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Sydni Craig-Hart Andrew Foxwell Chase Freezman Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Smart Simple Marketing Foxwell Digital Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) News: Google Search officially retires cache link Google Bard adds image generation Google Maps Tests AI Generated Answers For Local Questions With Local Guides Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Sydni Craig-Hart Andrew Foxwell Chase Freezman Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Smart Simple Marketing Foxwell Digital Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) News: Google Search officially retires cache link Google Bard adds image generation Google Maps Tests AI Generated Answers For Local Questions With Local Guides Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha and mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast where we're putting together some groovy to insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of our SEO brand here at Wix Central. The amazon, the fabulous, the incredible, the unequivocal Head of Risk and Communications here at Wix. The one, the only Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: It is me. Hello, internet people. Welcome to our podcast on the internet. Mordy Oberstein: It's on the internet? That's so cool. Crystal Carter: Yes. It's coming through fiber optic things. Mordy Oberstein: It's in the computer? Crystal Carter: Yes, we are in the computer or the phone or possibly the... Mordy Oberstein: Tablet? Crystal Carter: Do people listen to podcasts in their... I mean, a Tesla is essentially a tablet on wheels basically, so if you're listening to us in your Tesla, give us a little boop, boop. Thanks. But yeah, welcome. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome. Welcome back to us. This is our first recording after the holiday season. Crystal Carter: This is the first one of 2024, the first recording of 2024. If you were listening to this in whatever month it comes out... Mordy Oberstein: Right. Who knows? Crystal Carter: Yeah. You'll know that we plan ahead in advance. We like to get ahead of ourselves. Mordy Oberstein: You got to plan. You got to produce it, you got to get guest clip. It's a lot that goes into it. Crystal Carter: Magic doesn't happen by itself. Mordy Oberstein: No. Even though if it could, that'd be amazing. Anyway, this SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Search Light, over at Wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also access a wide variety of SEO resources such as templates, checklists, and one-pagers that you can implement SEO the right way. Share them with designers, devs, et cetera, so that you can ensure you hand your clients the most well optimized site possible. Because this week, we're talking about SEO and clients and which SEO clients you should and shouldn't take. When it does and doesn't make sense to take on an SEO client, spoiler alert, if you're listening and you are that client, here's what your SEO agency is probably thinking about you. We're diving into how to best assess client fit, red flags to watch for, when should outsider considerations factor in to taking on a client and when they shouldn't. Also, big client, small client, does it matter? The CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, talks how to qualify all sorts of potential clients. We'll also hear from Foxwell Digital's founder, Andrew Foxwell, about how qualifying leads is set to change going forward. Plus, we have the snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So the next time a client says, "Take on me, take me on, I'll be gone in a day or two," you might say goodbye right now as episode number 73 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you have an aha moment about which clients to take on and which will be stumbling away. I went 80s. Crystal Carter: You did. You did. Mordy Oberstein: I love Aha. My kids like Aha. They have one song, to be honest with you. So when I say they like Aha, they like that one song. Crystal Carter: Right. I mean, I think that that song is also, so there's the high note on it and there's also the video. The video is very good. Mordy Oberstein: The high note is very high. Crystal Carter: The high note, it's very... Mordy Oberstein: It's very, very high. But by the way, if a client ever came over to me and started singing Take On Me as a way to get me, I would just 100%, "Fine. I'll add you to my queue because that's incredible." Anyway, we're talking about which clients should you take, should you not take, and I think it's a very tricky topic because this is sort of like gut instinct. Take everyone. Especially when you're getting started, you want to make sure that you're... Maybe you're not as well established as you'd like to be yet because you've just gotten started. So, yeah, take whoever. Crystal Carter: Right. People think that but it doesn't work that way. Mordy Oberstein: It doesn't work that way and I believe very, very quickly you'll realize that's not the approach. Crystal Carter: No, no. I think that people will often find this, they'll learn this the hard way. Unfortunately, sometimes clients don't pay, sometimes people ask you for blood from a stone, but without giving you appropriate things, sometimes people can give you a lot of stress over it. Don't get me wrong, there are wonderful, fantastic, incredible client relationships and things. But sometimes SEO's, agency folks will sometimes discuss red flags sometimes that come up when choosing which clients. So just looking around my network for instance, Anthony Barone, who is the managing director of Studio Hawk, we had him on the podcast previously. He posted recently about an issue with a client and one of the red flags that he saw was they had two stars out of 200 reviews on Google, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That's a great way to qualify that leave there. Crystal Carter: Right. They had 3.2 on Trustpilot, and this was one of the mistakes that he said, he didn't look at them, at the reputation of them before signing with the company. Sometimes that can be things from reviews or sometimes it can be from around the agency network. Have they worked with other agency owners that you know? Or have they worked with other freelancers that you know? Have they worked with a lot of freelancers or a lot of agencies within a shorter period of time? Because that can sometimes be a sign that the client isn't necessarily ready to have an agency or an account manager from an external party. That's something that can be really tricky. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it's not always like, oh, they're a bad client. To me, it's a lot of, they're not the right client for us or for me. I think a lot of it comes down to, I look at it almost as if it's a job application where you're trying to hire somebody. When you're taking on a client, you're in a way hiring somebody in a backwards way. You want to make sure that they align with what you're trying to achieve for yourself. There's many kinds of clients with many types of websites doing many different things. Is that what you do? It sounds like a silly fundamental, like obviously you need to ask that, but a lot of times we don't. I made that mistake a gazillion times. I have very limited bandwidth. I like to say yes. I like to help people and I like to say, "Yes, I will help you with your website." But a lot of times, this really isn't for me, it's not what I like to focus on. It's not what I specialize in, it's not what I'm interested in, it's not what I really excel at because I don't have the bandwidth in general. Why would I take this on? That was silly. So, really just fundamentally making sure what the client is, who they are, what they do, what their business is, and what they need in terms of SEO aligns to what you do. It's such a fundamental thing but it's such a big payoff. Or not payoff. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, precisely. No, precisely. If they're asking for the moon on a stick and you don't have that, then just don't get involved. Don't get involved. Mordy Oberstein: That's such a red flag. I will tell you a little trick that I do. You're having a conversation with the prospective client. You're going back and forth in emails. Don't reply a day or two and see what happens. Are they in your inbox again chirping, "Hey, just to follow up on our conversation," a day afterwards? That's a red flag to me. Crystal Carter: That's a red flag for you? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because that's a client I feel like who's going to be... Some days I get to my emails in the morning, sometimes I get to my emails in the evening, sometimes I don't get to my emails that day. 24-hour turnaround time is normal. I think that's a normal turnaround time. If they're in your inbox in a 24-hour period asking for a follow-up right away, so that's a red flag. Because once we get started with the work and you feel more entitled because now you're actually paying me, we've agreed on the account, whatever, this is not going to end well for me. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Here's another one that someone else was discussing. So, shout out to Aaron Redman Hawkins, who also works for another agency. He was saying that he was asking questions. The pitch was a big pitch, right? A six-figure pitch, but he was asking for questions and they got upset about the questions that he was asking. They were asking him like, "What's with all the probing questions?" they said. He says, "I was attempting to get a solid understanding of what the actual numbers were so I would have an accurate baseline to work from," and they didn't want to answer his questions. Mordy Oberstein: That's a red flag. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: It's an immediate red flag. Crystal Carter: He's like, "I need to know what I'm working with before I get involved," And that's something that's a red flag entirely, if people aren't able to answer your question. Either they don't know the answers, which is problematic because that means they don't know their business and therefore won't be able to recognize the value that you're giving to them, or they're hiding something which is worrisome. So, that's something to think about as well. That's pretty much the same with most relationships. If people don't want to answer questions or something, what's going on there? Mordy Oberstein: Right, it's like a relationship. You're getting involved in a relationship and in this case, and what makes it difficult is you want that other person to change. That's a very complicated, thinking about your personal life if, if men did that. But that's really what you're asking, because you're going to come in and you're going to make hopefully recommendations. Otherwise, what are you doing? If the other party is not receptive to changing, that's a problem and that's something you kind of need to figure out. I'll say, I used to do a lot of hiring for an old, old, old job I used to have. I don't know, it's like 20 years. I'm old at this point. I'm talking about my job I had 15 years ago. I used to interview a lot of people and I knew within five minutes whether or not this person was a good fit. Now, we can talk about their qualifications and were they qualified or not? I had a sense in five minutes this person is going to be difficult to work with or easy to work with. And if you're taking on a client, and if you are a prospective client listening to this podcast, be mindful that, yes, it might be hard to take the advice of the SEO, but it's in your best interest. If you're going to be difficult or not receptive to that change, that's a red flag to the agency, to the consultant, because they need your buy-in. You're a team and if you don't come off as being willing to make changes and being receptive to changes, it's not going to end well for anybody. Crystal Carter: Right, right. I think it's really important for people to realize that collaborative element, because you'll get better results when you work together. You'll get better results when you're collaborative, and I think that that's really important. Just shout out to Amelia Fowler, who is also a fantastic SEO, fantastic person. One of her red flags is people asking for guaranteed results. Yeah. Yeah. She's saying, "Nobody, no single agency or freelancer can guarantee results. They can benchmark, they can illustrate potential, they can do math and estimate, they can give you similar results from campaigns in the industry, but can you guarantee results? No." I've had people come to me and they're like, "Oh, we'll pay you after you get these results for us." Mordy Oberstein: Right. No. No. Crystal Carter: I'm like, "No. I'm not in charge of your sales funnel." We can get you traffic, we can get you increased rankings, we can do that sort of stuff. But what happens after the lead comes in is up to you and that's how you close the sale. I can't be held accountable for that. Mordy Oberstein: That. Not even that. I just tweeted about this the other day. When I say the other day, the other day of recordings. You got to go way back in the amount of nonsense I tweet out to find this tweet. But you're coming in as an SEO, and let's say you're working on A, B, and C. You're just getting started. A, B, and C. Up comes an algorithm update and because of X, Y, and Z, which you haven't even gotten to, may not even be your scope of work, the website now gets slaughtered in the rankings. If you're going to be getting paid based on rankings and organic traffic and whatever, there's so much that's not even in your scope of work, especially initially. Or that's in your control or in your hands or that you've even gotten to yet. You're just going to end up in an impossible situation for yourself, because the work that you were brought on to do, you did. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: It's not my fault that I didn't know or didn't get to yet, or wasn't even asked me about, or wasn't a part of the scope of work that you bought links 10 years ago from PBNs and Google finally realized, and now you're slaughtered in the rankings. Crystal Carter: Right. I think this is also one of the reasons why people should expect to be in SEO for a good amount of time. A lot of SEOs will say, "Give me six months. Give six months to do a good job." We could do some quick wins stuff in the first couple of months, and it's always good practice to do the quick wins quickly and things. If you see quick wins to do, sure, do them quickly and you can see. Move the needle a little bit and you can that show the value of your work fairly early on. But to get real results, to get real value, you should expect to see some of that coming through after a few months. A lot of SEOs will do that and it's good practice. If you get an SEO that tells you that, that's because it's good practice. I think that it can sometimes be a red flag if somebody wants something to happen straight away, particularly with SEO. Because there's so many moving parts, there's so many algorithms things. Like you're saying, SERP features, lots of different stuff can happen. So, if somebody's expecting you to be able to turn on the SEO tomorrow and for them to get buckets of sales and all that sort of stuff, that can be really, really tricky. So, I think that's something to be wary of. Mordy Oberstein: It speaks to bad expectations. The expectations are just completely unrealistic, unaligned, otherworldly. Crystal Carter: Right. Anu Adegbola, the founder of PPC Live, she's talked about that for PPC. That people looking for PPC results straight away and things like that can be a little bit of a tricky thing, particularly with regards to sales. I think that it can be something that can be tricky depending on what type of product it is and all of that sort of stuff. You can get great results from PPC of course, but people should be realistic about the timeline, should be realistic about their expectations around that. Especially with PPC with budget sometimes. I found that when I've worked on PPC, people are like, "Oh, I want to see all this sort of stuff," and I'm like, "Yo, your budget's too small to see that return. It's just too small." Mordy Oberstein: I want to spend $1 and get a million back. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I'm sorry, it's just not going to happen. I also want to shout out to Nick Leroy. Nick Leroy has a great video within the Wix. I think it's a Wix partners website. Mordy Oberstein: Partners, yeah. Crystal Carter: And so, there's a great YouTube video where he talks about qualifying clients and qualifying and that sort of stuff. He also has a great one about folks who are getting SEO and the red flags you should be thinking about if you're getting an SEO team involved. We also have an article in the SEO Hub about this as well, about how to find an SEO agency. But one of the things Nick Leroy talked about was who's fulfilling the SEO? So, one of the things that can be tricky sometimes is that sometimes SEOs will say, "Oh, I can do all this SEO," but you don't necessarily know who's actually going to implement it or who's actually going to do that work. So, it's worth having that discussion and understanding who's involved with that. Also, he talks about not being able to get references for them. Are they able to tell you who their previous clients are? Do they have good accolades, good reputation and good reputation with evidence? Also, one of the things that he points out is a high employee turnover. That's also a good one as well because it is true. If you're seeing agencies where people are constantly circulating through, that's not a great sign of cohesion in the business at the moment. Great agencies will have folks working there for years and that are contributing to it and helping the agency to build in terms of skills and also in terms of abilities. So, that's something to definitely think about as well. Mordy Oberstein: Fundamentally, you need to, both parties need to evaluate the relationship, boundaries need to be created, boundaries need to be respected by both parties. You don't want to be asking your SEO agency a gazillion questions a gazillion times a day. They shouldn't be sending you a million different things. Piecemeal, piecemeal, piecemeal, piecemeal. Boundaries, respect, expectations, alignment, all that needs to be considered if you're going to take a client on and if you're going to take an agency on or a consultant on. To help us qualify or better qualify taking on big clients and how they might differ from taking on smaller clients. We have the CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, to help us help you take on the right clients. Sydni Craig-Hart: One of the biggest differences between qualifying big clients versus small clients is that big clients often have more stakeholders involved in the decision-making process than small clients. For example, the person that you are speaking to, who is super excited to have met you, is really interested in your product or service and thinks you're so cool, may not actually be the final decision maker and may not be controlling the budget that will be needed to actually invest in what it is that you're offering. So it's really, really important that when you're having these conversations that you are digging in and understanding who are all of the people involved in making this decision? Who needs to sit at the table? Who needs to be involved in the conversation and what's their perspective? What's their role? What is their impact in this particular project or initiative? Because if you don't involve those folks in the conversation, you might find yourself in a situation where the person that you're speaking to is then left with the task of trying to sell you to the person who is actually making the decision. And in no circumstance is that individual going to be able to sell you as well as you will be able to sell yourself. Now, when you're selling to smaller clients, you don't really have this issue. Usually, the person you're speaking to is the decision maker. They are crystal clear on what they need, what their expectations are, what their budget is, and they can say yes or no pretty quickly to what it is that you are offering without jumping through any hoops or having to go through procurement or legal or what have you. They can just say yes and sign the contract and you can be on your way. But with larger clients, there's usually a lot of other departments and steps that are involved. It's just really, really critical that you're digging in and asking a lot of questions, still respectfully of the person that you are speaking to because you want to honor their role and their contribution to this process, but you really need to understand what their position is and are they the final decision maker. And find out is there someone else whose opinion you would value or is there someone else who's going to weigh in on this decision? Is there someone else's viewpoint that we need to consider? Who is finally going to make the decision about whether this is initiative you're going to move forward with? When you ask those kinds of questions, you understand are there more people that you need to be inviting to these conversations as you and this individual are discussing whether or not this is an opportunity that you're going to pursue. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much for that Sydni. Crystal, kind of your point there about bigger organizations have different people you don't know who you're working with and who's going to do what and what's going to happen on the client side also. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, I think you have some really great points there, particularly with larger clients. I think that what she talks about not expecting that the person that you're talking to is the last person that's going to see the document or your presentation or whatever. I think that is such an important tip and it's such an important part of leveling up. I had a great conversation with Sydni about how she went from working with smaller clients to working with people like Facebook and other folks like that and stuff. I think that understanding that if you're making a pitch deck for instance, it should include enough information for anyone in the organization to understand so that the person you're speaking to, for instance, can pass it on to the CEO, the CMO, the whoever, operations, whoever it is, and that they can understand it. That your website is accessible for all of that sort of stuff and has enough information on it to make sure that you look legit. That you look like you know what you're doing and that you're ready for the job. She's got some great insights on that and, yeah, I think it's a great advice. Mordy Oberstein: Now, we could talk about grabbing leads forever, and we can talk about grabbing lots and lots of leads and qualifying, taking as many as you possibly can, but it's one thing to take all the leads and qualify them. It's something else to understand how to qualify them the best way. To help us with this and to make sure that you're spending your precious time getting as much value out of qualifying leads as much as possible, we decided to go a little bit deep into the weeds in terms of qualifying leads with Foxwell Digital's founder, Andrew Foxwell. So, here's a look at how will qualifying leads change in the future. We actually asked Andrew that very question, how will qualifying leads change in the future? Here's what Andrew Foxwell had to say about how qualifying leads will change in the future. Take it away, Andrew. Andrew Foxwell: First of all, I guess I think qualifying leads isn't going to change at all. It's going to be totally, exactly the same forever. Obviously, I'm making that up. Qualifying leads as an agency, how is this going to change over time? I think that it's going to change over time by, number one, having probably more AI being part of the game. Right? Having more automation being part of the game, and people not being sure whether something is automated or real is likely going to be true I think as leads get qualified over time. I also think that going through and looking at the lead itself, and if you're really looking to qualify a lead, looking through and doing more research on that particular person is going to be more available. That's something that I think people have been doing a little bit more of. But if you're really qualifying lead, there's so much social media out there and where people are talking and presenting themselves. It's going to source all that together and allow you to see a more full picture of what's taking place with that person in their life and why they're submitting their information along to bring them through being an MQL as it stands. I think that would be a part of it, is knowing more about the person. I think the other thing that's probably going to change as it relates to qualifying leads over time in the future is really looking at that whole person. I think that if you really want to do lead qualification properly, you can do all this automation and fancy stuff, but in order to win, you need to make sure that you're understanding the stages that the person has gone through. You're understanding what they've clicked on in all your properties, what they've read and why. And you're going to want to bring to them a conversation with vulnerability of, "Hey, we noticed you were looking here and that might be a thing you're struggling with. Here's something that we think could help." Leading with that empathetic, less salesy tactic, but knowing that you are the person that can help solve their problem. You're a person that potentially can help solve the problem. So, I think those are probably the ways that things are going to change. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much for that, Andrew. Make sure we check out Andrew on social media. We'll link to his profile in the show notes. Of course, Sydni as well. Meant to mention that before. I love, by the way, he went from AI to, yeah, use automation, but where you're really going to win is actually digging deep. I meant to bring this up earlier of going and looking at the social media accounts and really understanding who that person is. Such a great point. Forget just taking on the client and qualifying them, but understanding what the best way to work with them might be. What kind of personality they are and maybe where have some common ground so you can work better with them once you do qualify the lead, get them on board and now actually have to work with them for the long term. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it's really important to know your clients. To actually know your clients. I used to spend a lot of time doing a lot of the what seems like nothing. The small talk stuff before the meeting starts where you say, "Oh, what'd you do this weekend?" and things like. All of that intel is really, really useful. Like, "Oh, well, you got any plans for the weekend or something?" "Oh yeah, I'm taking the kids." Note they have children. Right? "Oh, and I'm going to here and, oh, I just got back from this concert." Okay, they're a music person. There's things that are really, really useful for this. For one, for instance if they have kids, then you know that wherever you live, there's going to be school vacation time. Right? So chances are during school vacation, they're going to be less available or at least slightly less focused maybe than they will be during the other times. So, you should plan your stuff accordingly. Right? If they've got a particular interest with music or sports or something or other or things like that, that's really useful for the kinds of metaphors and things that you can use to help them to understand what you're talking about. Mordy Oberstein: Touchdown. Touchdown. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly. You can use things like that. Mordy Oberstein: A home run, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Right, just to make things more relatable to them and to build more trust with them. It's really, really useful. So, yeah. I think he discussed how things kind of change but they kind of stay the same. You still have to interact with people. Mordy Oberstein: People are people. That hasn't changed fundamentally ever. I don't know. I'm not a psychologist. Crystal Carter: Automation will help or whatever, but eventually you've got to get your hands dirty. You've got to get involved. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you got to really get to know them. Take them for a picnic. I don't know. Go for a long walk together or something. Crystal Carter: Break some bread. Have a drink. Whatever you need to do. Mordy Oberstein: Go on vacation together. Something that's not... Crystal Carter: We're not going on vacation together. Mordy Oberstein: I was like, when were you going to catch? I'm like, go for a picnic, go for a long walk. Crystal Carter: Look, who's clients are these? Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: My favorite clients. I take them on a picnic. We play softball. I will say that if you're qualifying based on social media, be careful or be cautious because who people are on social media, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, are not who they are in real life to a certain extent. Or it's like a caricature of that person. Like I'm very sarcastic on social media. I am sarcastic in general but I'm not that sarcastic. Crystal Carter: I mean, what? Mordy Oberstein: Well, all right. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: I might be a bad example. I might be a very bad example. Crystal Carter: But I think that there's definitely tools you can get. For instance, one tactic I've seen is that people will take LinkedIn posts, for instance, and they'll analyze them for tone of voice and style and things like that. You can also figure out that this person is not somebody that likes a very, very long email, for instance. If lots of their posts are fairly concise and things like that, of course cover the details and things, but maybe put them in bullet points. Maybe put them in a little list. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's a great tip right there. Crystal Carter: Things like that. If somebody's writing longer ones, then they're probably somebody who likes to have more detail, more nuance, more et cetera in the email, for instance. So, there are tools that you can use like AI tools and other tools that can help you to understand, for instance, more about your client even before you get involved with them. Mordy Oberstein: You know where you can learn a lot about someone? By reading their news articles each and every week. I really feel like you really get to know them intimately and who they are and what they're about. Whoever your favorite journalist is. Mine is Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: We do love Barry. Shout out to Barry. Mordy Oberstein: So with that introduction and, well, let's get to know Barry a little bit better now as we get into some Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Well, an old friend has gone away. No, not referring to Carl Weathers, though that is really sad. Although on the same time, there's a new Billy Joel song that's really happy, because I'm a massive Billy Joel fan. I am off track on this. We're talking about the cash link on the SERP. Per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, Google search officially retires cash links. So when you went to the SERP, you could see the cash version of the page where you could until now. Now it's gone. Is it a big deal? I don't know. I liked it. SEOs, we really liked it. I have used it a few times to look at what was going on on a page relatively recently. I've actually used it for some social media stuff before, to see how people related to their social media profiles. I found it really helpful at certain moments in time and I'm actually sad that it is gone. However, if you would like to see an old version of the page, you should check out the Wayback Machine. We'll link to that in the podcast show notes. We actually talked about it on a previous podcast episode. It's a great tool. Make sure to donate to it because they always need our support. Okay. Next up, this from next week's guest, a little sneak peek there, Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land, and Google Bard Ads Image Generation. It is what it says. Google Bard now can create images. I love it. It's really, really, really, really good. I've basically been using a combination of the Wix image AI Generator within the image upload tool and Bing's version of it. Bard is really good. I'm adding Bard to my little AI image repertoire. I love AI images. It's way easier looking for stock images. I think it's a great use of AI technology as opposed to just creating blog posts, which I am not a big fan of. So, Bard offering great images is great for the web in my opinion. Just to have a quick look, head over to Bard, generate whatever you want. It is really good. It does, interestingly, surprisingly to me, it will actually create images for entities like sports teams or sports stadiums or other sports stuff. Because I like sports. Besides Billy Joel, I like sports. You're really getting a little insight into what I prefer, but not that you actually care. But I was a little bit surprised that it does that. It won't do actual people. So for example, you could say, "Hey, create an image of the New York Yankees." But then if you said, "Hey, create an image of Lou Gehrig giving a speech at Yankee Stadium," it says, "No, I can't do that." If you try to fool into doing that, it knows what you're trying to do and it won't do it. So, check that out. It's really cool. I like it. Next up, also from Barry Schwartz but now we're moving on to SERoundtable.com, but we're not moving away from AI. It's Barry, right? Google Maps has AI-generated answers for local questions with local guides. I actually also love this. I'm somewhat of an AI curmudgeon, and this is two AI things that I really like. Okay, let me explain what this is before I get overly excited about it because I think it's really cool. So basically, you're on Google Maps and you want to, I don't know, I'll give you Google's example. They show a GIF and the article link to it in the show notes. You're looking for, I don't know, a restaurant or a cafe or whatever it is. You want a vintage vibe. So, you go into the AI little pop-up thing that a slider thing that it has there, and you say, "Hey, looking for a cafe with vintage vibe. Find me a place," and it shows you a bunch of places. "Find me a record store nearby," and that kind of thing. So, it's an interactive way of being able to move from one local query to the next local query and expand your local maps journey. The reason why I like this, I was just having this problem the other day. It's my anniversary coming up soon. Wow, you're really getting a look into my life with this little news segment here. I was looking for a cafe. The cafe that my wife wanted to go to does not have great desserts, but I really wanted dessert. So I'm like, "Okay, show me a cafe." I went to Google, I found the cafe that she wanted, and I went to look for a dessert place and it was really annoying because when you look for the dessert place, you lose the pin. So now, how far away is the dessert place from the cafe? I don't know. It got really confusing and really annoying. But if you can use an AI assistant within Google Maps and say, "Okay, show me cafe whatever it is on the map. Great. Now, show me a great dessert place that serves fudge, whatever, whatever, within a two-minute walk." That would be really, really helpful and really, really useful. So I think with Maps, the way that Maps works, it can be very, very difficult to go from one search to the next search while keeping the context of the original search. If this SGE kind of experiment that Google is showing within the local maps can help solve that problem, that is a great place. A fabulous place to use that sort of SGE-ish experience within the Google results. With that, and now knowing about all of my life and life preferences, that is this week's Snappy News. The best part wasn't the news. The best part was getting to know Barry better and doing the news. Crystal Carter: Precisely, and I hope that wherever he is, whether it's sunny or not sunny, that he's enjoying himself. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: I hope he's having so much fun. Mordy Oberstein: And enjoying a nice butter sandwich. Which brings us to our follow of the week. What the butter sandwich has to do with the follow of the week, I don't know, but we're just going to run with it. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Our follow of the week this week is Chase Freezman, who maybe he enjoys a good butter sandwich. Chase, do you? Let us know on social media. Chase is a fabulous person. He's a great SEO, worked at Seer. You could follow him on, which is a great SEO agency by the way, Digital Marketing Agency, you can follow him on X@ChaseFreezman, that's F-R-E-E-Z-M-A-N. Of course, we'll link to Chase in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's a great SEO. Super friendly, super nice and super clever. So yeah, do follow him to find out lots more great information and also what's happening at Seer. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and ask him. Maybe he likes butter sandwiches. Crystal Carter: Does he ever run with a butter sandwich? This is the question. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Well, you would run and... Would you just be running and holding it or running and eating the butter sandwich? Crystal Carter: I've definitely walked around eating a butter sandwich. Well, I'm not sure if I've eaten a butter sandwich. I think I just had bread with butter on it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Right, right. I know. Who makes a sandwich out of it? I'll be honest with you, I don't really know the last time I've ever ate butter and bread. It's got to be years. Crystal Carter: I like carbs. Mordy Oberstein: You like the butter and the bread? Crystal Carter: So, I will regularly. I mean, if it's good bread, I don't need anything else. Mordy Oberstein: Right. No, it's true. No, I enjoy it. I love bread and butter. I just don't think I've sat down and ate bread and butter in the years. Is that weird? Crystal Carter: You've never been to Olive Garden? Cheesecake Factory? Mordy Oberstein: It's not Kosher. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Okay. I see. Mordy Oberstein: No, but first off, okay, yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: We could go to my whole history of eating and bread and butter and restaurant visits and so forth. Crystal Carter: You don't have it all with butter? Is that not... Do you do that? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, people do. My kids, my 12-year-old twins, I have 12-year-old twins, loves bread and butter. He makes a little toast, he puts the butter on. I don't. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm almost surprised at myself. Crystal Carter: You should get involved. Crystal Carter: You should get involved with it. Gary loves it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. He loves chunks, rips the bread right up, makes a mean butter sandwich. But you know what it's like now? You ever, you think about yourself and you're really like, "Wow, what a blind spot I've had"? Crystal Carter: Yeah, man. Mordy Oberstein: What a blind spot. I've never had bread and butter for years? I feel disappointed in myself. Crystal Carter: This is the real deep thought. Mordy Oberstein: This is the real deep thought. Crystal Carter: What have I been doing with my life? It's like, yeah ... Mordy Oberstein: What have I been eating? What's wrong with me? Crystal Carter: Who am I? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know who I am anymore. Wow. I have to go make a butter sandwich now. With that, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into Google's Gemini and what it means possibly, maybe, who knows, for SEO. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on our SEO Learning Hub over at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Massive news in the SEO world on this special edition podcast! Wix’s Head of SEO Branding, Mordy Oberstein, and Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter give their impressions of Google I/O 2023 to deliver the inaugural SERP’s Up SEO Podcast BONUS episode. Google bounces back with its AI capabilities as a search engine. Taking a hard look at all the changes soon to come in search, Mordy and Crystal discuss their takes on the 2023 Google I/O conference while surveying what other notable SEOs had to say. Plus, the scary reality of AI, and some big changes in how Google rewards input with human ‘experience’. Dig into this exciting SEO news on this special BONUS episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back What’s up for SEO at Google I/O? Massive news in the SEO world on this special edition podcast! Wix’s Head of SEO Branding, Mordy Oberstein, and Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter give their impressions of Google I/O 2023 to deliver the inaugural SERP’s Up SEO Podcast BONUS episode. Google bounces back with its AI capabilities as a search engine. Taking a hard look at all the changes soon to come in search, Mordy and Crystal discuss their takes on the 2023 Google I/O conference while surveying what other notable SEOs had to say. Plus, the scary reality of AI, and some big changes in how Google rewards input with human ‘experience’. Dig into this exciting SEO news on this special BONUS episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Special episode | May 12, 2023 | 43 MIN 00:00 / 42:32 This week’s guests Google I/O Google I/O is an annual developer conference held by Google in Mountain View, California. The name "I/O" is taken from the number googol, with the "I" representing the "1" in googol and the "O" representing the first "0" in the number. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to a special episode of SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO and boy are some things happening in SEO this time. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the always up to date on all of the things happening in SEO, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. Hello, Mordy Oberstein. I am here. I am here with some original organic material intelligence rather than artificial intelligence. I'm coming with some authentic intelligence, I hope anyway. Mordy Oberstein: I'm artificial, but I'm citing. Crystal Carter: Are you grounded? Is your intelligence grounded in something? Mordy Oberstein: No, definitely not grounded. Crystal Carter: No? It's not? Mordy Oberstein: That's an easy question. You want me to cite you references? Crystal Carter: So large language Mordy is what we've got. Mordy Oberstein: This is better than foul language Mordy, I guess. Crystal Carter: Oh no, that's every other day of the week. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can subscribe to our newsletter, search light over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. And where you can now utilize our headless CMS. Crystal Carter: So excited about the headless. Mordy Oberstein: Check that out. Crystal Carter: Oh, yes. Mordy Oberstein: We've lost our heads. Crystal Carter: Lost our heads, but gained a friend. We gained a friend in Netlify. Just like launching with Netlify, but also get involved with your GitHub, like it's super exciting. Very exciting. Mordy Oberstein: Check that out. Now, if this is your first time tuning into the SERP's Up podcast, this is a bonus episode of the SERP's Up podcast. SERP's Up podcast usually, typically, comes out each week on Wednesdays. We have all sorts of wonderful guests, from John Mueller to Barry Schwarz to Cindy Crumb. Fabulous guests, fabulous topics. Check it out. But this episode is a very, very special episode because Google I/O 2023 was upon us and it left us with some impressions. Crystal Carter: Oh yeah, there's a lot to talk about and I think it's a really good example of them coming back from their previous conference experience. So they had a conference in February. Mordy Oberstein: In Paris. Crystal Carter: In Paris, Google in Paris, and it was less than optimal for them, if I can say that. And I think that this is the conference that I think they wish they could have had then. And I think that it's been a real good redemption for them to be able to come out and really show what they can do in terms of AI and where they're planning to go in terms of search. Mordy Oberstein: In Star Trek terms, this is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan after that disaster of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Just for the people who speak Star Trek, that's what it is. I don't know why every episode now, we always default back to Star Trek. I have no idea. I'm not even watching Star Trek at the moment. Crystal Carter: Resistance is futile. Mordy Oberstein: Link, nice. Good way to phrase that. Wait, so I think what we're going to try to do in this particular episode is run through I think some of the larger AI themes that we saw and then dive into obviously how it's going to impact search and kind of get a consensus and a roundup from the wider SEO community. So I'll kick this off. I was blown away by the AI ability to answer emails and to heavily handedly modify images. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And it scared the crap out of me, I'm going to be honest. Crystal Carter: I think that there's a lot of some of the familiar tools that people have gotten used to in the generative AI space of creating text, creating images and things like that. I think what Google has in this particular thing is an audience that's already engaged with a lot of their products and they are already so integrated into our lives and how we use the internet and how we create content, how we edit content, how we update content. So the idea that when you're in Google Slides and they demoed this, in Google Slides you can sort of say, "I would like to add in a picture of this," I mean, that is solving a pain point that so many people have had. When you're making a deck or you're trying to do a presentation and you don't have an illustration, but you need one so that people aren't staring at a blank page or a wall of text, it's solving a really real challenge. Mordy Oberstein: That was brilliant. I think one of the things you and I cry about every once in a while is trying to find things in Gmail threads. Crystal Carter: Yes. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: But now you don't need to do it. It will find it. I thought that's brilliant. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I think using the AI is information retrieval within their products, fabulous idea. What scared me is how do you know what's real at this point? And when I'm saying that I am not putting this on the tech providers, I kind of feel like they're just giving us what we want. I am putting this on humanity. Are we OK with things not being real? And then how do we handle that? And I'll give you an example from what they showed yesterday, yesterday from the day we're recording this, from Google I/O 2023. When they gave the example from Gmail, the scenario was you wanted a refund from a flight that you canceled, something like that, and you gave Gmail a prompt to write you an email and reply back to the answer that the airline gave you. And you can now expand, so not now, you will be able to expand on that answer. Say, "Hey, Gmail, make it longer. I feel like if this is a longer, more forceful email, I'll get the refund." And if you notice what the prompt returned was, "I am a loyal customer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Give me my refund." How do you know? Maybe I'm not a loyal customer. How did you know that? And are we OK with this? "Yeah. All right. Google will return that. I'm a loyal customer, it'll probably work. Let's just go with that." Is nothing real anymore? And the images, you're manipulating it and then it never actually happened that way. How do you know what's real? And that to me is scary. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So I think that we're kind of entering a space sort of now as well. And I think somebody writes something and you're like, "Did you write that though?" If somebody posts a picture and it's like, "Did you take that though?" And I think AI has been in our space for a long time, so on in Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok, there are tons of filters and people are going around. I have a cousin who whenever she posts anything on Facebook, there's like a million filters, I have no idea what her face looks like anymore because she always has so many filters on it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And so we've were like, "Oh my God, you look so young." It's like you look have a young person's filter, but they will completely change the bone structure of your face. And we've been in that space for a long time now. So one of the sections of I/O was James Manyika was talking about some of the guardrails that they had for helping us manage this reality. And he was saying that they're planning to add in and about this image panel as a guardrail and also giving meta tags for people to declare that something is an AI generated image. I think that these are great tools. My question is how many people are going to actually use them for these things? Mordy Oberstein: And that's sort of the problem. And I'm sort of summarizing a lot of sentiment that I saw out there. I know Kavi Kardos was interacting on Twitter a lot about this. She said, "This is my takeaway too. I feel like I'm the old man in the room." Because I said I feel like I'm the old man in the room. Do we not care what's real anymore as humanity? Jamar Ramos was jumping in there, he hit a line, "Yeah and I understand how loaded the phrase do our own research is." Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: But I think the person who summed it up best to me was Blake DeMond from Rickety Rue who said a quote from Edward Wilson, I don't know who that is by the way, "The real problem with humanity is the following, we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and God-like technology and it is terrifically dangerous and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall." That's from 2009. But it's a great way to sum this up because you can literally fake things and no one will know the difference. And I don't think we care. Crystal Carter: But I hate writing emails Mordy. I just... Mordy Oberstein: I'm OK with it writing the prompt. Crystal Carter: I think that I'm just saying that. I agree with all of those caveats. I think the challenge that we're facing though is that the technology is so, like they said, God-like technology. The technology is incredible. And so I think that we are going to be seeing more of this. And also there's that sort of singularity theory, which basically, if you think about where we are now compared to where we were when sort of ChatGPT kind of broke back in the autumn, miles, miles streaks ahead. We've moved forward so much, search has changed so much and the way we create technology and the way we create content and things has changed so much in just those few months. If you think about that compared to the rest of the web before, it's been a much, much bigger thing. So I think that it's true that these are challenging conversations, but I think we're going to have to keep having them. And I think that this is one of the reasons why Google's putting so much emphasis on experience, why they've added that experience caveat. But I think also, you say what's real, people lie on those emails all the time, like when they're trying to get, but anyway. Mordy Oberstein: The AI is just doing what we want it to do, which is lie, cheat and steal. Crystal Carter: So this is the other thing. So when you get generative images, it comes back, it's like a funhouse mirror kind of hodgepodge of various different things that it's seen. And this tends to be what you see on AI. I was talking about this, Garrett Sussman had a space which is on Twitter as well, you can play that recording. There's a few people talking about Google I/O hot takes there. And yeah, one of the troubles is that the models are based on what's on the web. So if what's on the web has some less than stellar content or opinions, then that's what we're going to get reflected back to us for, I think, there was somebody who was talking about Midjourney. Midjourney does a lot of, if you look up doctor on Midjourney, then you'll get a man. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Natalie Slater did a lot of this. Crystal Carter: Right. So she was looking at all of the things. Mordy Oberstein: Engineer and it's all white men. Crystal Carter: Right. And so you get all these sorts of things coming through and that's a reflection of what's been on the web before. So no, it's not great, but it's also a reflection of the work that we as humans also need to do because the models are trained on what we had. But that's the existential things. Let's look into some of the additional. Mordy Oberstein: Let's go to Search. You brought up the helpful content update, I really want to get into that a lot because I think Google fired a shot across the bow kind of thing. But let's just first talk about does the functionality, in case you haven't seen what happened or what Google announced, so Bard itself is, which I would equate Bard to ChatGPT and that ecosystem, it's a separate environment. There are links being more interspersed into it now. It's now open for all, but then there's Search itself. And that looked, I thought, amazing. That looked amazing. So in certain cases, Google will return an AI prompt back to you. They said they won't do it for YMYL, so health, finance, where the information, if the AI's hallucinating, you will die. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: That's not going to have an AI response. You'll have your initial summary. There won't be citations like you have in Bing, but there will be little cards of websites that you can go to. So it's a little bit more visual in a way. And then you can refine the questions. And what I thought was super, super cool and I stand corrected, I thought we were getting a whole bunch of things that were not going to make me happy about Search because I am a curmudgeon fundamentally. What we got back has literally been asking for for two, three years. You can expand the AI response that Google will give you into a deeper dive. What it'll do is it'll break down the answer that it gave and it will essentially cite along the way. So if it says, you ask, "Where's a great place to go on vacation?" And it starts talking about if you have kids and you're going on vacation, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. When you expand the chat feature, it'll take that chunk and show you results about places to go on vacation with kids. And if in the next sentence talks about if you're going in the wintertime, it'll then show you a bunch of things about going on vacation in the wintertime. What it lets you do is A, give you the opportunity to see more organic links. What it really does is is that it breaks down that topic so well. So if you ask, "Was Michael Jordan a good basketball player?" And you get all different aspects of Michael Jordan and his career, it'll break that down for you and then give you links to explore more about that particular subtopic within the topic of Michael Jordan, which is amazing. It'll let you explore topics, it'll let you explore subtopics and it'll give you the links in order to do it. I thought it was awesome. Crystal Carter: I mean, this is Google achieving their goals. So they say that their goal is to organize the world's information and to make it as accessible to as many people as possible. And that's what they say their goal is. And this is them working to achieve that. And I think that this is something that works really well for introductions to topics, for instance. When I think about how I use ChatGPT, my best to use for ChatGPT is Googling rules for games. So George Wynn, the editor of the Wix SEO Hub, very kindly gifted me a set of Magic: The Gathering cards and Magic: The Gathering has a lot of complicated rules. I was trying to play this with my kid and I did a turn and I was like, "Oh, I think my gargoyle or my guide can play." And my kid says, "No, he has summoning sickness and he can't do that and he can't do this. " And I tried to look it up online and there's all these massive posts of 3,000 words of how to do the whole thing of Magic: The Gathering and stuff. And I'm like I don't need to know every single thing about it, I just need to know can I play my turn. Right? So I can say in Magic: The Gathering for instance, can I do this with this card. And they can go, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's some links," some links, I'm like, "OK, but if it's like this, can I do that?" And then it can go, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and you can do this." And if my kid who can be very suspicious sometimes of these things, if he doesn't like what I've returned, we can click through to the link and then we can say OK, this is what it says on this website. And I think this will work with a lot of their systems because I think the way that they're looking at this is they're stacking a lot of their AI. So you'll be able to also go straight to the passage as well where it's quoted from most likely in order to verify the information. So they'll give you the summary, they'll give you the link and then you can verify it. And that is a really good workflow in terms of being able to corroborate information and see that you're getting the right information. Mordy Oberstein: So I'm going to run through, I just pulled it up on the screen, the exact example that they gave about the query was what's better for a family with kids under three and a dog, Bryce Canyon or whatever it was, another national park. Because I can't see the rest of the query, it's like too long. And when you expand out from the AI answer, so first, the answer is both Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks are family friendly. Stop. It gives you a link that talks about the park being family friendly. Next part of the prompt that it returned, "Although both parks prohibit dogs and unpaved trails, Bryce Canyon is two paved trails that allow dogs." Stop. It now gives you a whole bunch of links about pets and the two locations. It's letting you explore these topics in such an easy way. Because one of the things as a user, I don't always know what I'm actually looking for. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Tell me all the things I need to consider and then it's doing that and then it's giving me the links to do it. I think a couple of things about this from an SEO point of view, SEO tools, red alert. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: Red Alert because the blue links are not, as Cindy Crum pointed out on Twitter, David pointed out on Twitter, Nati Elimelech, our Head of SEO at Wix in my DMs, about this, Idan Segal was out there on Twitter talking about CTR is going to go down. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: For the 10 traditional blue links. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And what's going to matter more, I think it will use the expanded feature here because I will, are being featured in here. Now how do you track that? You might be able to give a tool the various long tail keywords that are relevant to you. I guess the tool can then run the scrape by running the query, seeing what the AI returns and then saying what URLs are in there, I guess is possible. But imagine organic research where you're not specifically telling the tool what keywords you want to track, but you want to research a competitor and see what keywords are they ranking for and where are they ranking. How is a tool going to do that? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's going to be tricky. I think that tools are kind of probably need to think more about entities because large language models have entities at their core and their understanding of entities is a sort of core sense of it. I think if you think about something like Kleenex for instance. Kleenex is a brand which is synonymous with tissues for instance. So if you have a brand, so I think that from an SEO point of view, I think those links are going to be getting few and far between. If Google understands that your brand is synonymous with a certain entity, if your brand is essentially that entity, then I think that you're more likely to show as part of those things and more likely to show more frequently. So I think that maybe pools might need to start thinking about how they're able to show the correlation between a certain brand or a certain website and certain entities. Mordy Oberstein: I think that's really interesting. I feel like it's a topic I haven't spoken about in a long time and trying to remember when I really was into this, it was when the core updates kind of came out back in 2018, of looking at your website as an entity. Because your website is an entity because it has a unique identity. Because I think if you're looking at how is Google going to decide what to rank or what to show, I hate to use rank in this case, what to show when it breaks down its AI response into smaller parts and then shows links associated with that. It's very entity based. If they're talking about pets and national parks, if your website is viewed as an entity that discusses, that is about, that is identified as parks and pets, national parks and pets, that's what's going to be, I would say not the difference maker, I don't know the algorithm, but it's going to be one of the very, very focused things that I think Google's going to use in order to say this URL should be here because as an entity it makes sense for it to be here. Crystal Carter: Right. So on that Bryce Canyon one, the results that they showed were from the national parks, that's what showed. It was national parks and pet friendly was one that was showing. And so those are all… Mordy Oberstein: So having a niche identity is going to be really important. Especially because, I'm a little bit worried actually, so is Nati about this, that yes, I'm so happy there are URLs and there's so many opportunity for URLs, but I'm a little bit worried that the big branch or the big websites are going to be the ones that show there are not the niche sites. Although maybe if you have really strong niche identity, you will. Crystal Carter: I think that for going forward, the kinds of opportunities that I think that this will present is the kind of content, and we've seen this, we've seen this, so Lily Ray has reported on this a number of times. So we've seen this over the few of the last few years. Google's not that into dictionary websites, encyclopedia websites. If you're encyclopedia website and you're not Wikipedia, what are you doing? And I think that these LLMs are kind of covering a lot of that stuff. If you want to know what is gee butter or something and they'll be like, "Oh gee butter is a clarified butter that's blah blah blah, blah, blah," they'll tell you that and that information will be fairly accurate. It's also not that sensitive. You just kind of need to know what it is while you're, I don't know, cooking or something. But I think the opportunities will lie in doubling down on your entity, on your brand entity, your website entity, the entities that are within your business, et cetera. But also I think that, potentially, there are opportunities around new ideas and around staying ahead of the curve. So where people are going to need to go to drill down into what's going on, it's going to need to be new content. So the historic content might be super competitive because Google, and I've seen this with Bing, bing is relying on very high authority sources, content that's been indexed for years in order to ground some of their LLM responses. So I think that for newcomers, for smaller businesses, being cutting edge, being on top of new ideas is going to be something that's beneficial to them. So for instance, trending topics is something that's going to be something that's really useful because when things are trending, people are looking for what's going on, what is happening, why is this a thing, what is this new term? And I think we're going to have a lot of new things going on anyway. So I think that where people are able to capture new ideas, they're going to be able to show in that space if they're a smaller business. Mordy Oberstein: I think I want to get back to that more, about the smaller business and all of that, because I want to talk about the helpful content update, which I think it's one of the more under discussed themes of what came out of there. My personal opinion. But before we do that, there's one in terms of the AI chat experience that Google has, we're going to have on the SERP. So Aleyda Solis made a great point, "Interesting how Google is highlighting the new AI search experience for commercial transactional queries rather than informational ones." And I think what she's referring to is all of the stuff they showed about the bicycles. So it's bonkers. So if you're searching for something related to getting a new bicycle, Google's going to give you an answer. I don't know, what do I need to consider when I'm looking to buy a new bicycle? I'm going to give you a bunch of information and then it'll show you a bunch of products. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: In the chat that you can click on and see a panel about and click on and go to and buy. And I thought to myself, "Holy cow, that is brilliant." Because if you're Google, there's no way, in my personal opinion, that you're going to be able to compete with Amazon and take them head on. Right? I'm looking to buy a product, I default many, many times, sometimes not, many, many times to Amazon and I bypass the SERP altogether, which is a problem for Google. But if I can catch you while you're in the research phase, then I've got you and you don't need to necessarily stop, now go to Amazon, I already got you in the research phase where Amazon can't get you. And I thought that was brilliant. If I was Amazon, I'd be a little bit concerned seeing that. Crystal Carter: I think also particularly the bicycle one that they showed, it's got a hybrid of there's also some of the search results there. So they've got the summary of your key points, they've got some deep dive blog posts and things and they've got the products there. And it's a pretty nice UX as well. It's not too cluttered, it doesn't feel overwhelming. It feels helpful. And I think the other thing that it highlights, and I started seeing this a lot more around product things, is unique content around products. So in order for the bicycles to show in different ways, having unique content around these things will be useful. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because the layer of content they're showing is one level deeper than you would normally see for let's say a product description. Crystal Carter: And I think also the connection with Google Merchant here is going to be absolutely critical here. So they're using that as essentially a knowledge graph for products and that's really, really important. So for instance, they show one, it's like Avinton level two commuter bike and it's saying, "Oh, it's listed here and it's listed in seven other stores as well." So it's important to be on that. Mordy Oberstein: The importance of Google Merchant Center just increased a hundredfold. Crystal Carter: Indeed, indeed. And it's super useful. And there's so many different ways, again, to define your entities and add structured data. They talked about structured data, they talked about being able to look at unstructured data as well when they're looking through content. And I think that they're kind of, after what happened in February and Bing came out very confident with their presentation. And I think Google's just like, "We have tons of bells and whistles. We've got lots of stuff," and they've put the full force of their AI might here behind this. And I think it'll be interesting to see. Mordy Oberstein: It's really interesting. But before we get into the, I want to round up some of the thoughts in the community. Before we do that though, I want to go back and touch on the helpful content update. By the way, if you haven't watched the keynote, we'll link to the keynote in the show notes of this episode. Also check out Search Engine Land, Barry Schwartz, it's like an unbelievable amount of content that he produced very timely, in a very timely manner, going through all of the major changes. So definitely check out that. We'll link to a bunch of that in the show notes. And one of the articles that Barry wrote was, "Google to update helpful content system algorithm in the coming months. Google said its update will help it understand content created from a personal or expert point of view as part of the release for Google I/O." On the Google product blog, whatever you want to call it, there's a post, "Learn from others' experience with more perspectives on search." And at the bottom of that post, and the reason why I'm saying this, this is part of the official release at Google I/O, and I've never seen this before, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think I've ever seen them talk about an algorithm update as part of I/O. And they're right. I think it's like the second or third H2 on the page, how we help you find the expertise you need. And I'm just going to read it real quick, the first paragraph or two. "In addition to making it easier to find authentic perspectives, we're also improving how we rank results in search overall with a greater focus on content with unique expertise and experience." By the way, the fact that expertise and experience are linked is because expertise is linked to experience. They're not separate things. Anyway, "Last year, we launched a helpful content system to show more content made for people and less content made to attract clicks. In the coming months, we'll roll out an update to this system that more deeply understands content created from a personal or expert point of view, allowing us to rank more of this useful information on Search. Helpful information can often live in unexpected or hard to find places," addressing my point from earlier, "a comment in a forum, a thread, a post on a little known blog," OK, good, we're going to see that, "on an article with unique expertise on a topic. Our helpful content ranking system will soon show more of these hidden gems on search, particularly when we think they'll improve the results." I kind of think this is a shot across the bow. It's a warning shot. OK? They're being far more specific about what they're trying to do with the helpful content than they ever been before, which is one difference to me. And also it's part of Google I/O, it's part of their official launch. You have to feel real confident in what you're about to do to announce it as a brand in that kind of way. So I think this is going to be legit and I think it's going to be impactful. I don't know if it's going to be one big update that's going to be, it might be a series of updates over time, but the net effect I think is going to be real and I think it's going to be legit. And if I could say, I think this whole time, back to your point like, "Oh, we looked at the Paris event link. Maybe Google's off its game." I think Google got off its game a little bit because Bing came out and had to respond to that. But I think if you take that little moment of time out, this entire time, Google has been playing three-dimensional chess with us. Go back to the product review update. What I think that they did there was they said, "OK," they knew the AI was coming because they were making the AI. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And they said, "OK, we need to figure out a way to handle this algorithmically." And they said, "OK, let's focus on one place on the internet where we can train ourselves to highlight expertise and experience in a very tangible way." What better place than product reviews where the actual firsthand experience is completely manifest in the content. It's not like an underlying theme, it's not latent or embedded. It's supposed to be actually manifest in the content itself and let's train ourselves on that. Crystal Carter: And also reviews, when people write reviews, it's full of all sorts of emotions and maybe might be good grammar, might not be the good grammar. It might be like, "This refrigerator sucks, it leaked and I didn't like it at all." Mordy Oberstein: It's the perfect place. It's the perfect close environment to train yourself on a particular thing. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And then what did Google do in April? It said, "Let's expand this. Let's go to all reviews. No more product review. It's review update." And now, and I called it, what's Google doing now? It's zooming out again and saying it's not just product and reviews, it's everything. Crystal Carter: Everything. Mordy Oberstein: Everything. Crystal Carter: Everything. Mordy Oberstein: And I think it's used a product review and now the review update in order to train itself so it could ultimately do this. I think Google knew they wanted to do this and they were training themselves the whole time for years. I think in 2021, the first product review, they came out, to do this, which is analyze content for experience and experience with expertise. Because it's one thing to say, "I went to Disneyland, it was fun." That experience has no value. Crystal Carter: Right. So I think the other thing that's interesting about that is that what I've seen when I look at reviews and pages, I've seen a couple of times where there was something that was reviewed and it was ranking, or one channel that was a review page and it was ranking and it didn't even have as many reviews as the other ones were below it. And I was like, 'Well, why is this? Why is this page? It's got fewer reviews." Then I looked at the reviews and the reviews were much more unique. The reviews there were much more nuanced, they had much more experience of actually interacting with that entity, with that actual thing. And I think the other thing is that I think we can think of experience as shorthand for human because we, in this space where everything's AI, the experience element is basically there was a human that touched this, there was a human that sat in this chair and said, "This chair is too small and I don't like it." Mordy Oberstein: It smelled weird. Crystal Carter: Right. Or I plugged this toy in and it was really noisy and it scared my cat. Mordy Oberstein: No AI is going to do that. Crystal Carter: They're not going to write that, but people who have cats want to know if the thing's going to be noisy. Mordy Oberstein: One of the pages I was looking at in my analysis on this February, 2023 product review update, they wrote, "Pro: Whatever, whatever. Con: It smelled funny out of the box." There's no way, either you completely made that up or you actually used it. So I think when Google says experience, it's interchangeable for AI, it's this code word. We don't want to say AI, so we're just going to say experience. Crystal Carter: Right. We're saying experience. So experience like we're saying this shows expertise, authority, trust and a human have something to do with this. And there's going to be, again, with YMYL things, it's going to be much more important that a human was involved with whatever was going on with, I don't know, that medicine or that particular tool or whatever that's to do with your money, your life, et cetera, et cetera. And the reason why they're mentioning in here, they're mentioning surfacing things from comments or from forums or from Reddit or from wherever is that's where humans are and that's where humans are speaking in a candid way, often unfiltered, often unedited. And I think that that's what they're trying to do. With regards to how you include that in your content, I think that's going to be an interesting thing, how we pull that in. The other thing that Google's doing, and they talked about this in Google Workspace, they're like, "Oh yeah, we're adding all these things so that you can just add a prompt and then it will write the essay for you. Or we're adding this thing so that you can take your notes and then format it." Mordy Oberstein: This is a cure to that disease, I think. Crystal Carter: Right. But I feel like people say, "Oh, can you find something that's 100% human written?" But I use Grammarly all the time and Grammarly... Mordy Oberstein: Right. 100%, well, I don't think, you can help me write it. I can write it, "Hey AI, make this better. Take out all of my weird syntax idiosyncrasies in my writing." Crystal Carter: But then it's less human. Mordy Oberstein: Well, in the case of my mind, let me better explain, I'm writing something that I want to be cold and generic. Crystal Carter: OK. Mordy Oberstein: And I am not good at writing cold and generic, so please do that for me. Whatever the use case actually is. Crystal Carter: I don't know, I can't imagine a time when you would ever write a thing that wasn't in your tone of voice. Mordy Oberstein: Right, see. So that's why I immediately thought of using AI to take my tone of voice out it of because maybe you don't want so much Mordy in your content. Crystal Carter: Everybody wants more Mordy, more Mordy-fication of their content. Mordy Oberstein: It converts. But I think you're right. I think it's going to change how we, I'm hoping it changes content fundamentally. For example, let's say you take a look, an SEO post. OK? How to do rank tracking. Crystal Carter: What is rank tracking? Mordy Oberstein: What is rank tracking? We talk about it in a vacuum. What I would like to see is, "What is rank tracking, blah, blah, blah?" And when I've done it, I've found that this did work or that didn't work or my clients or when we and then they and when we all... Crystal Carter: Do you know what? Actually, this brings me back to when I first had my kid, and you must have had this, you have children, and shout out to anybody who doesn't have children, but this is the experience that I found. What I found was that everybody had advice. People who had kids, people who didn't have kids, people who had kids 40 years ago or whatever. Everybody had advice for me. And I got very tired of advice from everybody about what I was doing, about whether I should, I don't know, let them cry, don't let them cry. I don't know, all the things. Eat this, don't eat that. Go to sleep here, go to sleep, all of that stuff. But what I did find was experience was useful. So whatever their experience was, if they were like, "Oh, when I had my kid, I would find that I could help them get to sleep if we did this, this or this." Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I know exactly what you're saying. Crystal Carter: Do you know what I mean? Mordy Oberstein: I know exactly what you're saying. Yes. Crystal Carter: If I hear their experience, I can take whatever nuggets... Mordy Oberstein: I want out of it and it's not forced on me. Crystal Carter: Right. It's just their experience. Their experience cannot be false, it can't be wrong. It's just their experience. And so I can say, "OK, well from what you've said, I can discern that actually I wouldn't do it that way, but this could work for this or that could work for that." So maybe that's a Google is trying to do, is less advice and more experience. I could give you advice on how to do parasailing, I have never parasailed in my life, but I could give you advice on it based on something that I've read. But I can't give you any of my experience because I've never done that. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. There's a post on the Wix S O about this, not about this, I think it was Sophie Brandt who wrote about SEO reporting, I could be misremembering the exact post, but I think what she did was she went through in different scenarios and you could tell the scenarios that she came across. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And I remember reading that post and being like, "I love this because it's different and it's hitting on a different level. It's hitting me in a different way." And I'm hoping that's where we all go in terms of content across the web. I think this is a good thing, net good thing. With that, it does bring up a lot of the E-A-T stuff and that was a wider consensus around what was happening in the SEO world. For example, John Luca for [inaudible 00:34:24] wrote, "So very hot takes. The fact that Google AI answers is presenting links above the fold, surely is important. That also means that everything we do to stand out according to the E-A-T principles is even more important now because we must suppose that the sites that Google considers the most expert with expertise, authority and trust are the ones that not only are going to rank better, but are going to be used as a source for the AI generated answer hence linked." That's a really interesting point. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And I think that we're going to see how that plays out in the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And it's an interesting point, you have to think what's the content that Google's basing the AI off of? You want to be that. I don't know how that works. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: As a concept, you want to be that. And Garrett Sussman chimed in with his hot takes, he wrote “keyword research is going to change, Entity research is the new keyword research. Crystal Carter: I agree. Mordy Oberstein: Everything depends, yes, we spoke about everything depends on when this replaces Google search and how there will be big problems when it's first rolled out, but they'll get it right. I think we both totally agree with that. And also, a good point, there's going to be problems when this rolls out. That's what happens when you release a new product. Crystal Carter: I mean, in the last few months, Google's been all over the place. There's been a lot of updates and there's a lot of changes where I've just been like, "What? Why is that?" Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: And stuff. So I think there's a lot of new things coming in. There's a lot of new features coming in. And I think the pace at which it's happening means that search is going to be very, very, very dynamic right now. Mordy Oberstein: So hard. Crystal Carter: Very dynamic. And I think also from a wider space, if people are accessing less of that sort of informational intent via Search, if people are using more generative things, like asking chatbots, "Oh, I asked about my plant," I was like, "What's another name for a mother-in-law's tongue plant?" And they were like, "Oh, it's a spider plant or it's a vipers thing or whatever. "And I'm like, "Oh, OK." Now, normally... Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it makes sense a mother-in-law's viper think. Crystal Carter: So that particular one, so I would normally have done that on a Google Search, but I did it on the Bard chat and I also asked it, "Oh, why are the leaves going brown?" Because I've killed this plant. I'm pretty sure I've killed this plant. I need help. And these are different. So as those searches change and people are needing different content. What I did find for that particular one, so I tested it on Bing, I asked that question on Bing, and what I found in the chat was that they were constantly referencing this same website. So I asked it, I was like, "What is this plant called? Why are the leaves wilting? Why are the leaves brown? Should I cut it?" And I kept getting the same website, was coming back and forth with the same thing. And that tells me that that website knows all about this plant and all about this drama that I'm having with this plant. And now I'm like, "OK, I can go to that website to get good information about this thing." So I think that understanding the entities and understanding the flow of information and the kinds, people who have done topic clusters that flow all the way through the user journey. And Jonas Sticklers done a good article on the SEO Hub about this as well, but people who have a good understanding of the customer journey of, "I have a plant. I have a problem with my plant. How do I fix this problem with my plant?" That sort of thing, that flow I think will still be valid. And understanding the entities that are related to those queries will help us to rank and to perform and go forward on the web. Mordy Oberstein: And look, there's going to be so much change. There's going to be so many things that you're going to have to think about in totally new ways. All this raises all sorts of new questions and how are things going to happen? It's going to be very, I think, confusing in the beginning. Before we spoke about SEO tools, I think that's going to fundamentally change in a lot of ways. I know on Twitter, Caitlin Hathaway was saying, "Very keen to see how SEO tools are going to track the new developments, including clickable boxes with images and citations using generative name AI. Also keen to see," check this out, " if Google Search Console will let us track follow-up questions to the queries." Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's a good question. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Good question. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lily Ray was saying that it's important to remember that not all searches will spark an AI answer. So it might be the case that, and I know Semrush recently launched an extra feature that said that there were SERP features or how many SERP features there are on a particular query. So it might be that they count it as a SERP feature. So whether or not this particular keyword or this particular question triggers an AI response, and if it does trigger an AI response, that's something that you should be aware of. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And just there's so many questions, so many larger questions still have to be unanswered. Brian Freiesleben was saying very in to see Google's approach for noting AI generated content with metadata and watermarking, which Google mentioned they're going to do, will let you do in images, you brought up before the guardrails. Will Google make this bold in their search results? Will they require publishers to note this? Also, a good question. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I mean, is this something that we're going to need to add into some of our systems and stuff? So for instance, on Wix, we automatically add meta tags, are we going to need to add that as a meta tag, for instance, for people to update. Also, what counts as an AI modified image. If I make myself look a little bit younger, is that the same? What if I dye my hair in my AI image? That's definitely an AI image. But I don't know. Where is the line? Mordy Oberstein: Right. And I'm kind of adverse to the whole thing. Which by the way, Lily Ray up a great point. Google's announcing all these features, what if there's backlash? What if people don't like them? Will they use them? That's also still left to be unanswered. In the SEO space, Brandish we're saying very interesting. I wonder how they'll incorporate local results and how accurate they'll be. Crystal Carter: Right. So it's very interesting as well though because they talked about Chrome and how Chrome's going to be super personalized and all of that sort of stuff. And I think that they're going to be using personalized results potentially for some of these AI things as well. So potentially, they'll know more about where you are. And so for instance, if you say, "Where's the best place to get a taco?" It's no good you telling me that I can get a taco, that the best taco is in Santa Fe, New Mexico if I'm not in Santa Fe, New Mexico. So it's going to be interesting. And also from the AI point of view with regards to entities and with regards to reviews and with regards to demonstrating experience and all that sort of stuff, they are all over Google Maps. The other big takeaway from Google I/O was like that they're just doing tons of stuff on Google Maps. Google Maps, they're doing as much as they possibly can. It was a meta-fication of Google Maps. They were like, "Oh, look at this sort of AI thing." And I'm like, "What?" .. Mordy Oberstein: That's bonkers. Crystal Carter: So they have a lot of proprietary stuff within Google Maps. You put your content into your Google GBP profile and they have access to that, to understand it through the reviews that are left on GBP and they can access that when they're figuring out what things are, and people check in and people review and people do all of those sorts of things. So I will guess that Google's going to add a lot of AI to local. And I think that... Mordy Oberstein: Local. I think it's one of the better places for the AI actually. I want to get into it, but we promise ourselves, because we could go on for hours with this. We literally said, "OK, we have to cap this off at around 45 minutes," and we're just past 45 minutes. So if you want to hear more of our thoughts, find us on Twitter, I guess. Crystal Carter: Yes. Find us on Twitter and thank you to everybody who shared their hot takes on Twitter. Yeah, really happy to hear from everybody. Mordy Oberstein: It was one of those moments of there's so much going on, there's so much conversation and made Twitter enjoyable again for a few moments. Crystal Carter: Awe. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Nice. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, y'all. You guys are great. Well, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. There are future episodes, our regular scheduled episodes are back next Wednesday. We're talking about Momentum and SEO with Erica Schneider. So if you want more SERP's Up awesomeness, well, go check out previous episodes and keep up with the podcast with our upcoming episodes released every Wednesday over on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars we have on the Wix SEO Learning, I bet you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. If you like the podcast, don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time we see you, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Nati Elimelech Idan Segal Garrett Sussman Barry Schwartz Brian Freiesleben Lily Ray Aleyda Solis Caitlin Hathaway Gianluca Fiorelli Kavi Kardos Jamar Ramos Brandon Schmidt Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Google i/o 2023 Keynote Google I/O Wix Headless The new Google search generative experience: Here’s what it looks like Google to update the helpful content system algorithm in the coming months Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Nati Elimelech Idan Segal Garrett Sussman Barry Schwartz Brian Freiesleben Lily Ray Aleyda Solis Caitlin Hathaway Gianluca Fiorelli Kavi Kardos Jamar Ramos Brandon Schmidt Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Google i/o 2023 Keynote Google I/O Wix Headless The new Google search generative experience: Here’s what it looks like Google to update the helpful content system algorithm in the coming months Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to a special episode of SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO and boy are some things happening in SEO this time. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the always up to date on all of the things happening in SEO, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. Hello, Mordy Oberstein. I am here. I am here with some original organic material intelligence rather than artificial intelligence. I'm coming with some authentic intelligence, I hope anyway. Mordy Oberstein: I'm artificial, but I'm citing. Crystal Carter: Are you grounded? Is your intelligence grounded in something? Mordy Oberstein: No, definitely not grounded. Crystal Carter: No? It's not? Mordy Oberstein: That's an easy question. You want me to cite you references? Crystal Carter: So large language Mordy is what we've got. Mordy Oberstein: This is better than foul language Mordy, I guess. Crystal Carter: Oh no, that's every other day of the week. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can subscribe to our newsletter, search light over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. And where you can now utilize our headless CMS. Crystal Carter: So excited about the headless. Mordy Oberstein: Check that out. Crystal Carter: Oh, yes. Mordy Oberstein: We've lost our heads. Crystal Carter: Lost our heads, but gained a friend. We gained a friend in Netlify. Just like launching with Netlify, but also get involved with your GitHub, like it's super exciting. Very exciting. Mordy Oberstein: Check that out. Now, if this is your first time tuning into the SERP's Up podcast, this is a bonus episode of the SERP's Up podcast. SERP's Up podcast usually, typically, comes out each week on Wednesdays. We have all sorts of wonderful guests, from John Mueller to Barry Schwarz to Cindy Crumb. Fabulous guests, fabulous topics. Check it out. But this episode is a very, very special episode because Google I/O 2023 was upon us and it left us with some impressions. Crystal Carter: Oh yeah, there's a lot to talk about and I think it's a really good example of them coming back from their previous conference experience. So they had a conference in February. Mordy Oberstein: In Paris. Crystal Carter: In Paris, Google in Paris, and it was less than optimal for them, if I can say that. And I think that this is the conference that I think they wish they could have had then. And I think that it's been a real good redemption for them to be able to come out and really show what they can do in terms of AI and where they're planning to go in terms of search. Mordy Oberstein: In Star Trek terms, this is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan after that disaster of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Just for the people who speak Star Trek, that's what it is. I don't know why every episode now, we always default back to Star Trek. I have no idea. I'm not even watching Star Trek at the moment. Crystal Carter: Resistance is futile. Mordy Oberstein: Link, nice. Good way to phrase that. Wait, so I think what we're going to try to do in this particular episode is run through I think some of the larger AI themes that we saw and then dive into obviously how it's going to impact search and kind of get a consensus and a roundup from the wider SEO community. So I'll kick this off. I was blown away by the AI ability to answer emails and to heavily handedly modify images. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And it scared the crap out of me, I'm going to be honest. Crystal Carter: I think that there's a lot of some of the familiar tools that people have gotten used to in the generative AI space of creating text, creating images and things like that. I think what Google has in this particular thing is an audience that's already engaged with a lot of their products and they are already so integrated into our lives and how we use the internet and how we create content, how we edit content, how we update content. So the idea that when you're in Google Slides and they demoed this, in Google Slides you can sort of say, "I would like to add in a picture of this," I mean, that is solving a pain point that so many people have had. When you're making a deck or you're trying to do a presentation and you don't have an illustration, but you need one so that people aren't staring at a blank page or a wall of text, it's solving a really real challenge. Mordy Oberstein: That was brilliant. I think one of the things you and I cry about every once in a while is trying to find things in Gmail threads. Crystal Carter: Yes. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: But now you don't need to do it. It will find it. I thought that's brilliant. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I think using the AI is information retrieval within their products, fabulous idea. What scared me is how do you know what's real at this point? And when I'm saying that I am not putting this on the tech providers, I kind of feel like they're just giving us what we want. I am putting this on humanity. Are we OK with things not being real? And then how do we handle that? And I'll give you an example from what they showed yesterday, yesterday from the day we're recording this, from Google I/O 2023. When they gave the example from Gmail, the scenario was you wanted a refund from a flight that you canceled, something like that, and you gave Gmail a prompt to write you an email and reply back to the answer that the airline gave you. And you can now expand, so not now, you will be able to expand on that answer. Say, "Hey, Gmail, make it longer. I feel like if this is a longer, more forceful email, I'll get the refund." And if you notice what the prompt returned was, "I am a loyal customer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Give me my refund." How do you know? Maybe I'm not a loyal customer. How did you know that? And are we OK with this? "Yeah. All right. Google will return that. I'm a loyal customer, it'll probably work. Let's just go with that." Is nothing real anymore? And the images, you're manipulating it and then it never actually happened that way. How do you know what's real? And that to me is scary. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So I think that we're kind of entering a space sort of now as well. And I think somebody writes something and you're like, "Did you write that though?" If somebody posts a picture and it's like, "Did you take that though?" And I think AI has been in our space for a long time, so on in Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok, there are tons of filters and people are going around. I have a cousin who whenever she posts anything on Facebook, there's like a million filters, I have no idea what her face looks like anymore because she always has so many filters on it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And so we've were like, "Oh my God, you look so young." It's like you look have a young person's filter, but they will completely change the bone structure of your face. And we've been in that space for a long time now. So one of the sections of I/O was James Manyika was talking about some of the guardrails that they had for helping us manage this reality. And he was saying that they're planning to add in and about this image panel as a guardrail and also giving meta tags for people to declare that something is an AI generated image. I think that these are great tools. My question is how many people are going to actually use them for these things? Mordy Oberstein: And that's sort of the problem. And I'm sort of summarizing a lot of sentiment that I saw out there. I know Kavi Kardos was interacting on Twitter a lot about this. She said, "This is my takeaway too. I feel like I'm the old man in the room." Because I said I feel like I'm the old man in the room. Do we not care what's real anymore as humanity? Jamar Ramos was jumping in there, he hit a line, "Yeah and I understand how loaded the phrase do our own research is." Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: But I think the person who summed it up best to me was Blake DeMond from Rickety Rue who said a quote from Edward Wilson, I don't know who that is by the way, "The real problem with humanity is the following, we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and God-like technology and it is terrifically dangerous and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall." That's from 2009. But it's a great way to sum this up because you can literally fake things and no one will know the difference. And I don't think we care. Crystal Carter: But I hate writing emails Mordy. I just... Mordy Oberstein: I'm OK with it writing the prompt. Crystal Carter: I think that I'm just saying that. I agree with all of those caveats. I think the challenge that we're facing though is that the technology is so, like they said, God-like technology. The technology is incredible. And so I think that we are going to be seeing more of this. And also there's that sort of singularity theory, which basically, if you think about where we are now compared to where we were when sort of ChatGPT kind of broke back in the autumn, miles, miles streaks ahead. We've moved forward so much, search has changed so much and the way we create technology and the way we create content and things has changed so much in just those few months. If you think about that compared to the rest of the web before, it's been a much, much bigger thing. So I think that it's true that these are challenging conversations, but I think we're going to have to keep having them. And I think that this is one of the reasons why Google's putting so much emphasis on experience, why they've added that experience caveat. But I think also, you say what's real, people lie on those emails all the time, like when they're trying to get, but anyway. Mordy Oberstein: The AI is just doing what we want it to do, which is lie, cheat and steal. Crystal Carter: So this is the other thing. So when you get generative images, it comes back, it's like a funhouse mirror kind of hodgepodge of various different things that it's seen. And this tends to be what you see on AI. I was talking about this, Garrett Sussman had a space which is on Twitter as well, you can play that recording. There's a few people talking about Google I/O hot takes there. And yeah, one of the troubles is that the models are based on what's on the web. So if what's on the web has some less than stellar content or opinions, then that's what we're going to get reflected back to us for, I think, there was somebody who was talking about Midjourney. Midjourney does a lot of, if you look up doctor on Midjourney, then you'll get a man. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Natalie Slater did a lot of this. Crystal Carter: Right. So she was looking at all of the things. Mordy Oberstein: Engineer and it's all white men. Crystal Carter: Right. And so you get all these sorts of things coming through and that's a reflection of what's been on the web before. So no, it's not great, but it's also a reflection of the work that we as humans also need to do because the models are trained on what we had. But that's the existential things. Let's look into some of the additional. Mordy Oberstein: Let's go to Search. You brought up the helpful content update, I really want to get into that a lot because I think Google fired a shot across the bow kind of thing. But let's just first talk about does the functionality, in case you haven't seen what happened or what Google announced, so Bard itself is, which I would equate Bard to ChatGPT and that ecosystem, it's a separate environment. There are links being more interspersed into it now. It's now open for all, but then there's Search itself. And that looked, I thought, amazing. That looked amazing. So in certain cases, Google will return an AI prompt back to you. They said they won't do it for YMYL, so health, finance, where the information, if the AI's hallucinating, you will die. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: That's not going to have an AI response. You'll have your initial summary. There won't be citations like you have in Bing, but there will be little cards of websites that you can go to. So it's a little bit more visual in a way. And then you can refine the questions. And what I thought was super, super cool and I stand corrected, I thought we were getting a whole bunch of things that were not going to make me happy about Search because I am a curmudgeon fundamentally. What we got back has literally been asking for for two, three years. You can expand the AI response that Google will give you into a deeper dive. What it'll do is it'll break down the answer that it gave and it will essentially cite along the way. So if it says, you ask, "Where's a great place to go on vacation?" And it starts talking about if you have kids and you're going on vacation, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. When you expand the chat feature, it'll take that chunk and show you results about places to go on vacation with kids. And if in the next sentence talks about if you're going in the wintertime, it'll then show you a bunch of things about going on vacation in the wintertime. What it lets you do is A, give you the opportunity to see more organic links. What it really does is is that it breaks down that topic so well. So if you ask, "Was Michael Jordan a good basketball player?" And you get all different aspects of Michael Jordan and his career, it'll break that down for you and then give you links to explore more about that particular subtopic within the topic of Michael Jordan, which is amazing. It'll let you explore topics, it'll let you explore subtopics and it'll give you the links in order to do it. I thought it was awesome. Crystal Carter: I mean, this is Google achieving their goals. So they say that their goal is to organize the world's information and to make it as accessible to as many people as possible. And that's what they say their goal is. And this is them working to achieve that. And I think that this is something that works really well for introductions to topics, for instance. When I think about how I use ChatGPT, my best to use for ChatGPT is Googling rules for games. So George Wynn, the editor of the Wix SEO Hub, very kindly gifted me a set of Magic: The Gathering cards and Magic: The Gathering has a lot of complicated rules. I was trying to play this with my kid and I did a turn and I was like, "Oh, I think my gargoyle or my guide can play." And my kid says, "No, he has summoning sickness and he can't do that and he can't do this. " And I tried to look it up online and there's all these massive posts of 3,000 words of how to do the whole thing of Magic: The Gathering and stuff. And I'm like I don't need to know every single thing about it, I just need to know can I play my turn. Right? So I can say in Magic: The Gathering for instance, can I do this with this card. And they can go, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's some links," some links, I'm like, "OK, but if it's like this, can I do that?" And then it can go, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and you can do this." And if my kid who can be very suspicious sometimes of these things, if he doesn't like what I've returned, we can click through to the link and then we can say OK, this is what it says on this website. And I think this will work with a lot of their systems because I think the way that they're looking at this is they're stacking a lot of their AI. So you'll be able to also go straight to the passage as well where it's quoted from most likely in order to verify the information. So they'll give you the summary, they'll give you the link and then you can verify it. And that is a really good workflow in terms of being able to corroborate information and see that you're getting the right information. Mordy Oberstein: So I'm going to run through, I just pulled it up on the screen, the exact example that they gave about the query was what's better for a family with kids under three and a dog, Bryce Canyon or whatever it was, another national park. Because I can't see the rest of the query, it's like too long. And when you expand out from the AI answer, so first, the answer is both Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks are family friendly. Stop. It gives you a link that talks about the park being family friendly. Next part of the prompt that it returned, "Although both parks prohibit dogs and unpaved trails, Bryce Canyon is two paved trails that allow dogs." Stop. It now gives you a whole bunch of links about pets and the two locations. It's letting you explore these topics in such an easy way. Because one of the things as a user, I don't always know what I'm actually looking for. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Tell me all the things I need to consider and then it's doing that and then it's giving me the links to do it. I think a couple of things about this from an SEO point of view, SEO tools, red alert. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: Red Alert because the blue links are not, as Cindy Crum pointed out on Twitter, David pointed out on Twitter, Nati Elimelech, our Head of SEO at Wix in my DMs, about this, Idan Segal was out there on Twitter talking about CTR is going to go down. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: For the 10 traditional blue links. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And what's going to matter more, I think it will use the expanded feature here because I will, are being featured in here. Now how do you track that? You might be able to give a tool the various long tail keywords that are relevant to you. I guess the tool can then run the scrape by running the query, seeing what the AI returns and then saying what URLs are in there, I guess is possible. But imagine organic research where you're not specifically telling the tool what keywords you want to track, but you want to research a competitor and see what keywords are they ranking for and where are they ranking. How is a tool going to do that? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's going to be tricky. I think that tools are kind of probably need to think more about entities because large language models have entities at their core and their understanding of entities is a sort of core sense of it. I think if you think about something like Kleenex for instance. Kleenex is a brand which is synonymous with tissues for instance. So if you have a brand, so I think that from an SEO point of view, I think those links are going to be getting few and far between. If Google understands that your brand is synonymous with a certain entity, if your brand is essentially that entity, then I think that you're more likely to show as part of those things and more likely to show more frequently. So I think that maybe pools might need to start thinking about how they're able to show the correlation between a certain brand or a certain website and certain entities. Mordy Oberstein: I think that's really interesting. I feel like it's a topic I haven't spoken about in a long time and trying to remember when I really was into this, it was when the core updates kind of came out back in 2018, of looking at your website as an entity. Because your website is an entity because it has a unique identity. Because I think if you're looking at how is Google going to decide what to rank or what to show, I hate to use rank in this case, what to show when it breaks down its AI response into smaller parts and then shows links associated with that. It's very entity based. If they're talking about pets and national parks, if your website is viewed as an entity that discusses, that is about, that is identified as parks and pets, national parks and pets, that's what's going to be, I would say not the difference maker, I don't know the algorithm, but it's going to be one of the very, very focused things that I think Google's going to use in order to say this URL should be here because as an entity it makes sense for it to be here. Crystal Carter: Right. So on that Bryce Canyon one, the results that they showed were from the national parks, that's what showed. It was national parks and pet friendly was one that was showing. And so those are all… Mordy Oberstein: So having a niche identity is going to be really important. Especially because, I'm a little bit worried actually, so is Nati about this, that yes, I'm so happy there are URLs and there's so many opportunity for URLs, but I'm a little bit worried that the big branch or the big websites are going to be the ones that show there are not the niche sites. Although maybe if you have really strong niche identity, you will. Crystal Carter: I think that for going forward, the kinds of opportunities that I think that this will present is the kind of content, and we've seen this, we've seen this, so Lily Ray has reported on this a number of times. So we've seen this over the few of the last few years. Google's not that into dictionary websites, encyclopedia websites. If you're encyclopedia website and you're not Wikipedia, what are you doing? And I think that these LLMs are kind of covering a lot of that stuff. If you want to know what is gee butter or something and they'll be like, "Oh gee butter is a clarified butter that's blah blah blah, blah, blah," they'll tell you that and that information will be fairly accurate. It's also not that sensitive. You just kind of need to know what it is while you're, I don't know, cooking or something. But I think the opportunities will lie in doubling down on your entity, on your brand entity, your website entity, the entities that are within your business, et cetera. But also I think that, potentially, there are opportunities around new ideas and around staying ahead of the curve. So where people are going to need to go to drill down into what's going on, it's going to need to be new content. So the historic content might be super competitive because Google, and I've seen this with Bing, bing is relying on very high authority sources, content that's been indexed for years in order to ground some of their LLM responses. So I think that for newcomers, for smaller businesses, being cutting edge, being on top of new ideas is going to be something that's beneficial to them. So for instance, trending topics is something that's going to be something that's really useful because when things are trending, people are looking for what's going on, what is happening, why is this a thing, what is this new term? And I think we're going to have a lot of new things going on anyway. So I think that where people are able to capture new ideas, they're going to be able to show in that space if they're a smaller business. Mordy Oberstein: I think I want to get back to that more, about the smaller business and all of that, because I want to talk about the helpful content update, which I think it's one of the more under discussed themes of what came out of there. My personal opinion. But before we do that, there's one in terms of the AI chat experience that Google has, we're going to have on the SERP. So Aleyda Solis made a great point, "Interesting how Google is highlighting the new AI search experience for commercial transactional queries rather than informational ones." And I think what she's referring to is all of the stuff they showed about the bicycles. So it's bonkers. So if you're searching for something related to getting a new bicycle, Google's going to give you an answer. I don't know, what do I need to consider when I'm looking to buy a new bicycle? I'm going to give you a bunch of information and then it'll show you a bunch of products. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: In the chat that you can click on and see a panel about and click on and go to and buy. And I thought to myself, "Holy cow, that is brilliant." Because if you're Google, there's no way, in my personal opinion, that you're going to be able to compete with Amazon and take them head on. Right? I'm looking to buy a product, I default many, many times, sometimes not, many, many times to Amazon and I bypass the SERP altogether, which is a problem for Google. But if I can catch you while you're in the research phase, then I've got you and you don't need to necessarily stop, now go to Amazon, I already got you in the research phase where Amazon can't get you. And I thought that was brilliant. If I was Amazon, I'd be a little bit concerned seeing that. Crystal Carter: I think also particularly the bicycle one that they showed, it's got a hybrid of there's also some of the search results there. So they've got the summary of your key points, they've got some deep dive blog posts and things and they've got the products there. And it's a pretty nice UX as well. It's not too cluttered, it doesn't feel overwhelming. It feels helpful. And I think the other thing that it highlights, and I started seeing this a lot more around product things, is unique content around products. So in order for the bicycles to show in different ways, having unique content around these things will be useful. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because the layer of content they're showing is one level deeper than you would normally see for let's say a product description. Crystal Carter: And I think also the connection with Google Merchant here is going to be absolutely critical here. So they're using that as essentially a knowledge graph for products and that's really, really important. So for instance, they show one, it's like Avinton level two commuter bike and it's saying, "Oh, it's listed here and it's listed in seven other stores as well." So it's important to be on that. Mordy Oberstein: The importance of Google Merchant Center just increased a hundredfold. Crystal Carter: Indeed, indeed. And it's super useful. And there's so many different ways, again, to define your entities and add structured data. They talked about structured data, they talked about being able to look at unstructured data as well when they're looking through content. And I think that they're kind of, after what happened in February and Bing came out very confident with their presentation. And I think Google's just like, "We have tons of bells and whistles. We've got lots of stuff," and they've put the full force of their AI might here behind this. And I think it'll be interesting to see. Mordy Oberstein: It's really interesting. But before we get into the, I want to round up some of the thoughts in the community. Before we do that though, I want to go back and touch on the helpful content update. By the way, if you haven't watched the keynote, we'll link to the keynote in the show notes of this episode. Also check out Search Engine Land, Barry Schwartz, it's like an unbelievable amount of content that he produced very timely, in a very timely manner, going through all of the major changes. So definitely check out that. We'll link to a bunch of that in the show notes. And one of the articles that Barry wrote was, "Google to update helpful content system algorithm in the coming months. Google said its update will help it understand content created from a personal or expert point of view as part of the release for Google I/O." On the Google product blog, whatever you want to call it, there's a post, "Learn from others' experience with more perspectives on search." And at the bottom of that post, and the reason why I'm saying this, this is part of the official release at Google I/O, and I've never seen this before, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think I've ever seen them talk about an algorithm update as part of I/O. And they're right. I think it's like the second or third H2 on the page, how we help you find the expertise you need. And I'm just going to read it real quick, the first paragraph or two. "In addition to making it easier to find authentic perspectives, we're also improving how we rank results in search overall with a greater focus on content with unique expertise and experience." By the way, the fact that expertise and experience are linked is because expertise is linked to experience. They're not separate things. Anyway, "Last year, we launched a helpful content system to show more content made for people and less content made to attract clicks. In the coming months, we'll roll out an update to this system that more deeply understands content created from a personal or expert point of view, allowing us to rank more of this useful information on Search. Helpful information can often live in unexpected or hard to find places," addressing my point from earlier, "a comment in a forum, a thread, a post on a little known blog," OK, good, we're going to see that, "on an article with unique expertise on a topic. Our helpful content ranking system will soon show more of these hidden gems on search, particularly when we think they'll improve the results." I kind of think this is a shot across the bow. It's a warning shot. OK? They're being far more specific about what they're trying to do with the helpful content than they ever been before, which is one difference to me. And also it's part of Google I/O, it's part of their official launch. You have to feel real confident in what you're about to do to announce it as a brand in that kind of way. So I think this is going to be legit and I think it's going to be impactful. I don't know if it's going to be one big update that's going to be, it might be a series of updates over time, but the net effect I think is going to be real and I think it's going to be legit. And if I could say, I think this whole time, back to your point like, "Oh, we looked at the Paris event link. Maybe Google's off its game." I think Google got off its game a little bit because Bing came out and had to respond to that. But I think if you take that little moment of time out, this entire time, Google has been playing three-dimensional chess with us. Go back to the product review update. What I think that they did there was they said, "OK," they knew the AI was coming because they were making the AI. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And they said, "OK, we need to figure out a way to handle this algorithmically." And they said, "OK, let's focus on one place on the internet where we can train ourselves to highlight expertise and experience in a very tangible way." What better place than product reviews where the actual firsthand experience is completely manifest in the content. It's not like an underlying theme, it's not latent or embedded. It's supposed to be actually manifest in the content itself and let's train ourselves on that. Crystal Carter: And also reviews, when people write reviews, it's full of all sorts of emotions and maybe might be good grammar, might not be the good grammar. It might be like, "This refrigerator sucks, it leaked and I didn't like it at all." Mordy Oberstein: It's the perfect place. It's the perfect close environment to train yourself on a particular thing. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And then what did Google do in April? It said, "Let's expand this. Let's go to all reviews. No more product review. It's review update." And now, and I called it, what's Google doing now? It's zooming out again and saying it's not just product and reviews, it's everything. Crystal Carter: Everything. Mordy Oberstein: Everything. Crystal Carter: Everything. Mordy Oberstein: And I think it's used a product review and now the review update in order to train itself so it could ultimately do this. I think Google knew they wanted to do this and they were training themselves the whole time for years. I think in 2021, the first product review, they came out, to do this, which is analyze content for experience and experience with expertise. Because it's one thing to say, "I went to Disneyland, it was fun." That experience has no value. Crystal Carter: Right. So I think the other thing that's interesting about that is that what I've seen when I look at reviews and pages, I've seen a couple of times where there was something that was reviewed and it was ranking, or one channel that was a review page and it was ranking and it didn't even have as many reviews as the other ones were below it. And I was like, 'Well, why is this? Why is this page? It's got fewer reviews." Then I looked at the reviews and the reviews were much more unique. The reviews there were much more nuanced, they had much more experience of actually interacting with that entity, with that actual thing. And I think the other thing is that I think we can think of experience as shorthand for human because we, in this space where everything's AI, the experience element is basically there was a human that touched this, there was a human that sat in this chair and said, "This chair is too small and I don't like it." Mordy Oberstein: It smelled weird. Crystal Carter: Right. Or I plugged this toy in and it was really noisy and it scared my cat. Mordy Oberstein: No AI is going to do that. Crystal Carter: They're not going to write that, but people who have cats want to know if the thing's going to be noisy. Mordy Oberstein: One of the pages I was looking at in my analysis on this February, 2023 product review update, they wrote, "Pro: Whatever, whatever. Con: It smelled funny out of the box." There's no way, either you completely made that up or you actually used it. So I think when Google says experience, it's interchangeable for AI, it's this code word. We don't want to say AI, so we're just going to say experience. Crystal Carter: Right. We're saying experience. So experience like we're saying this shows expertise, authority, trust and a human have something to do with this. And there's going to be, again, with YMYL things, it's going to be much more important that a human was involved with whatever was going on with, I don't know, that medicine or that particular tool or whatever that's to do with your money, your life, et cetera, et cetera. And the reason why they're mentioning in here, they're mentioning surfacing things from comments or from forums or from Reddit or from wherever is that's where humans are and that's where humans are speaking in a candid way, often unfiltered, often unedited. And I think that that's what they're trying to do. With regards to how you include that in your content, I think that's going to be an interesting thing, how we pull that in. The other thing that Google's doing, and they talked about this in Google Workspace, they're like, "Oh yeah, we're adding all these things so that you can just add a prompt and then it will write the essay for you. Or we're adding this thing so that you can take your notes and then format it." Mordy Oberstein: This is a cure to that disease, I think. Crystal Carter: Right. But I feel like people say, "Oh, can you find something that's 100% human written?" But I use Grammarly all the time and Grammarly... Mordy Oberstein: Right. 100%, well, I don't think, you can help me write it. I can write it, "Hey AI, make this better. Take out all of my weird syntax idiosyncrasies in my writing." Crystal Carter: But then it's less human. Mordy Oberstein: Well, in the case of my mind, let me better explain, I'm writing something that I want to be cold and generic. Crystal Carter: OK. Mordy Oberstein: And I am not good at writing cold and generic, so please do that for me. Whatever the use case actually is. Crystal Carter: I don't know, I can't imagine a time when you would ever write a thing that wasn't in your tone of voice. Mordy Oberstein: Right, see. So that's why I immediately thought of using AI to take my tone of voice out it of because maybe you don't want so much Mordy in your content. Crystal Carter: Everybody wants more Mordy, more Mordy-fication of their content. Mordy Oberstein: It converts. But I think you're right. I think it's going to change how we, I'm hoping it changes content fundamentally. For example, let's say you take a look, an SEO post. OK? How to do rank tracking. Crystal Carter: What is rank tracking? Mordy Oberstein: What is rank tracking? We talk about it in a vacuum. What I would like to see is, "What is rank tracking, blah, blah, blah?" And when I've done it, I've found that this did work or that didn't work or my clients or when we and then they and when we all... Crystal Carter: Do you know what? Actually, this brings me back to when I first had my kid, and you must have had this, you have children, and shout out to anybody who doesn't have children, but this is the experience that I found. What I found was that everybody had advice. People who had kids, people who didn't have kids, people who had kids 40 years ago or whatever. Everybody had advice for me. And I got very tired of advice from everybody about what I was doing, about whether I should, I don't know, let them cry, don't let them cry. I don't know, all the things. Eat this, don't eat that. Go to sleep here, go to sleep, all of that stuff. But what I did find was experience was useful. So whatever their experience was, if they were like, "Oh, when I had my kid, I would find that I could help them get to sleep if we did this, this or this." Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I know exactly what you're saying. Crystal Carter: Do you know what I mean? Mordy Oberstein: I know exactly what you're saying. Yes. Crystal Carter: If I hear their experience, I can take whatever nuggets... Mordy Oberstein: I want out of it and it's not forced on me. Crystal Carter: Right. It's just their experience. Their experience cannot be false, it can't be wrong. It's just their experience. And so I can say, "OK, well from what you've said, I can discern that actually I wouldn't do it that way, but this could work for this or that could work for that." So maybe that's a Google is trying to do, is less advice and more experience. I could give you advice on how to do parasailing, I have never parasailed in my life, but I could give you advice on it based on something that I've read. But I can't give you any of my experience because I've never done that. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. There's a post on the Wix S O about this, not about this, I think it was Sophie Brandt who wrote about SEO reporting, I could be misremembering the exact post, but I think what she did was she went through in different scenarios and you could tell the scenarios that she came across. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And I remember reading that post and being like, "I love this because it's different and it's hitting on a different level. It's hitting me in a different way." And I'm hoping that's where we all go in terms of content across the web. I think this is a good thing, net good thing. With that, it does bring up a lot of the E-A-T stuff and that was a wider consensus around what was happening in the SEO world. For example, John Luca for [inaudible 00:34:24] wrote, "So very hot takes. The fact that Google AI answers is presenting links above the fold, surely is important. That also means that everything we do to stand out according to the E-A-T principles is even more important now because we must suppose that the sites that Google considers the most expert with expertise, authority and trust are the ones that not only are going to rank better, but are going to be used as a source for the AI generated answer hence linked." That's a really interesting point. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And I think that we're going to see how that plays out in the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And it's an interesting point, you have to think what's the content that Google's basing the AI off of? You want to be that. I don't know how that works. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: As a concept, you want to be that. And Garrett Sussman chimed in with his hot takes, he wrote “keyword research is going to change, Entity research is the new keyword research. Crystal Carter: I agree. Mordy Oberstein: Everything depends, yes, we spoke about everything depends on when this replaces Google search and how there will be big problems when it's first rolled out, but they'll get it right. I think we both totally agree with that. And also, a good point, there's going to be problems when this rolls out. That's what happens when you release a new product. Crystal Carter: I mean, in the last few months, Google's been all over the place. There's been a lot of updates and there's a lot of changes where I've just been like, "What? Why is that?" Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: And stuff. So I think there's a lot of new things coming in. There's a lot of new features coming in. And I think the pace at which it's happening means that search is going to be very, very, very dynamic right now. Mordy Oberstein: So hard. Crystal Carter: Very dynamic. And I think also from a wider space, if people are accessing less of that sort of informational intent via Search, if people are using more generative things, like asking chatbots, "Oh, I asked about my plant," I was like, "What's another name for a mother-in-law's tongue plant?" And they were like, "Oh, it's a spider plant or it's a vipers thing or whatever. "And I'm like, "Oh, OK." Now, normally... Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it makes sense a mother-in-law's viper think. Crystal Carter: So that particular one, so I would normally have done that on a Google Search, but I did it on the Bard chat and I also asked it, "Oh, why are the leaves going brown?" Because I've killed this plant. I'm pretty sure I've killed this plant. I need help. And these are different. So as those searches change and people are needing different content. What I did find for that particular one, so I tested it on Bing, I asked that question on Bing, and what I found in the chat was that they were constantly referencing this same website. So I asked it, I was like, "What is this plant called? Why are the leaves wilting? Why are the leaves brown? Should I cut it?" And I kept getting the same website, was coming back and forth with the same thing. And that tells me that that website knows all about this plant and all about this drama that I'm having with this plant. And now I'm like, "OK, I can go to that website to get good information about this thing." So I think that understanding the entities and understanding the flow of information and the kinds, people who have done topic clusters that flow all the way through the user journey. And Jonas Sticklers done a good article on the SEO Hub about this as well, but people who have a good understanding of the customer journey of, "I have a plant. I have a problem with my plant. How do I fix this problem with my plant?" That sort of thing, that flow I think will still be valid. And understanding the entities that are related to those queries will help us to rank and to perform and go forward on the web. Mordy Oberstein: And look, there's going to be so much change. There's going to be so many things that you're going to have to think about in totally new ways. All this raises all sorts of new questions and how are things going to happen? It's going to be very, I think, confusing in the beginning. Before we spoke about SEO tools, I think that's going to fundamentally change in a lot of ways. I know on Twitter, Caitlin Hathaway was saying, "Very keen to see how SEO tools are going to track the new developments, including clickable boxes with images and citations using generative name AI. Also keen to see," check this out, " if Google Search Console will let us track follow-up questions to the queries." Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's a good question. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Good question. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lily Ray was saying that it's important to remember that not all searches will spark an AI answer. So it might be the case that, and I know Semrush recently launched an extra feature that said that there were SERP features or how many SERP features there are on a particular query. So it might be that they count it as a SERP feature. So whether or not this particular keyword or this particular question triggers an AI response, and if it does trigger an AI response, that's something that you should be aware of. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And just there's so many questions, so many larger questions still have to be unanswered. Brian Freiesleben was saying very in to see Google's approach for noting AI generated content with metadata and watermarking, which Google mentioned they're going to do, will let you do in images, you brought up before the guardrails. Will Google make this bold in their search results? Will they require publishers to note this? Also, a good question. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I mean, is this something that we're going to need to add into some of our systems and stuff? So for instance, on Wix, we automatically add meta tags, are we going to need to add that as a meta tag, for instance, for people to update. Also, what counts as an AI modified image. If I make myself look a little bit younger, is that the same? What if I dye my hair in my AI image? That's definitely an AI image. But I don't know. Where is the line? Mordy Oberstein: Right. And I'm kind of adverse to the whole thing. Which by the way, Lily Ray up a great point. Google's announcing all these features, what if there's backlash? What if people don't like them? Will they use them? That's also still left to be unanswered. In the SEO space, Brandish we're saying very interesting. I wonder how they'll incorporate local results and how accurate they'll be. Crystal Carter: Right. So it's very interesting as well though because they talked about Chrome and how Chrome's going to be super personalized and all of that sort of stuff. And I think that they're going to be using personalized results potentially for some of these AI things as well. So potentially, they'll know more about where you are. And so for instance, if you say, "Where's the best place to get a taco?" It's no good you telling me that I can get a taco, that the best taco is in Santa Fe, New Mexico if I'm not in Santa Fe, New Mexico. So it's going to be interesting. And also from the AI point of view with regards to entities and with regards to reviews and with regards to demonstrating experience and all that sort of stuff, they are all over Google Maps. The other big takeaway from Google I/O was like that they're just doing tons of stuff on Google Maps. Google Maps, they're doing as much as they possibly can. It was a meta-fication of Google Maps. They were like, "Oh, look at this sort of AI thing." And I'm like, "What?" .. Mordy Oberstein: That's bonkers. Crystal Carter: So they have a lot of proprietary stuff within Google Maps. You put your content into your Google GBP profile and they have access to that, to understand it through the reviews that are left on GBP and they can access that when they're figuring out what things are, and people check in and people review and people do all of those sorts of things. So I will guess that Google's going to add a lot of AI to local. And I think that... Mordy Oberstein: Local. I think it's one of the better places for the AI actually. I want to get into it, but we promise ourselves, because we could go on for hours with this. We literally said, "OK, we have to cap this off at around 45 minutes," and we're just past 45 minutes. So if you want to hear more of our thoughts, find us on Twitter, I guess. Crystal Carter: Yes. Find us on Twitter and thank you to everybody who shared their hot takes on Twitter. Yeah, really happy to hear from everybody. Mordy Oberstein: It was one of those moments of there's so much going on, there's so much conversation and made Twitter enjoyable again for a few moments. Crystal Carter: Awe. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Nice. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, y'all. You guys are great. Well, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. There are future episodes, our regular scheduled episodes are back next Wednesday. We're talking about Momentum and SEO with Erica Schneider. So if you want more SERP's Up awesomeness, well, go check out previous episodes and keep up with the podcast with our upcoming episodes released every Wednesday over on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars we have on the Wix SEO Learning, I bet you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. If you like the podcast, don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time we see you, 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

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