How to tell if Google loves you

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo. Welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights into what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head SEO of brand here at Wix. And I'm joined by she who is always transparent, clear, and crystal. Our own head of communications, Crystal Carter. There's no doubt when it comes to Crystal.

Crystal Carter:

I get charged up in a full moon. I find water really easily as well. That's another thing.

Mordy Oberstein:

You have the two pronged stick that finds water?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, yeah. I'm very reflective in my general demeanor and I like to think that I bring a nice warm glow.

Mordy Oberstein:

You always know where you stand with Crystal.

Crystal Carter:

It's true. It's true.

Mordy Oberstein:

For better or for worse. I'm just kidding.

Crystal Carter:

Mostly for better, I hope.

Mordy Oberstein:

Only for better. The SERP'S Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also use our built-in Google Search Console Insights to see just how much Google does love you. As today we're diving into the gray area of the algorithm, how to know the signs of whether or not Google does or doesn't love you. What are the telltale signs that Google is infatuated with your website? What are some of the signs that they maybe are not infatuated with you, and how do all of those reversals you see in algorithm updates factor into this love triangle?

HREF's Despina Gavoyannis will join us to share her tips on how to shore up those pages that might be wavering in the rankings. Plus, Orbit Media co-founder, and all around great digital marketer star, Andy Crestodina stops by to chat about what you can do while you're waiting for Google to fall in love with you. So turn up your Ace of Base because today we're showing you the sign of algorithmic love on this the 104th episode of the SERP'S Up Podcast.

Full disclosure, I had a moment in time where I actually liked the Ace of Base for five minutes.

Crystal Carter:

Dude, I totally had that CD. I mean, that introduction definitely opened up my eyes. I think.

Mordy Oberstein:

What's the other song they had? They have another one, one other song.

Crystal Carter:

The, All That She Wants.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, right, that one, right. What the hell were we thinking with that crap.

Crystal Carter:

Dude. Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's terrible.

Crystal Carter:

They've gone a little bit off the rails in recent times, but in 1998 or whatever-

Mordy Oberstein:

It made sense in the moment. I remember as a kid being like, "Oh, this is great," and an older friend is like, "No, don't say that. It's not good."

Crystal Carter:

You had to be there, man. You had to be there. Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's kind of like Hanson but worse. Hanson I thought was a good... like, Hanson was good.

Crystal Carter:

MMMBop is a bop.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's a good song.

Crystal Carter:

I'm sorry. MMMBop comes on and I am singing every single word. And the breakdown.

Mordy Oberstein:

There are only three words in MMMBop. What do you mean all words?

Crystal Carter:

No, I mean there's lots of parts that aren't words like, du dubi dop, ba du bop.

Mordy Oberstein:

Di dibby dop dop, the du ap. That's the...

Crystal Carter:

Then there's all of the verses. It's very-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, come on.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's a great song.

Crystal Carter:

You say you can, but you don't know.

Mordy Oberstein:

Bob Dylan, it is not.

Crystal Carter:

No, of course not. It's a bop. It's a bop.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's like a word. Is it a word?

Crystal Carter:

It's like, the quintessential bop.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, no, it's great. I'm all for the MMMBop, I'm all for the Hanson. They played their own instruments like, win.

Crystal Carter:

Hey, I mean, all this nineties nostalgia. It was a beautiful life. Whoa, oh, oh, oh.

Mordy Oberstein:

How do I pivot this into SEO? I'm just not... just whatever. It's not... Not every day to win is a win, and not every loss is a loss. There's a lot to read into it. And sometimes Google demotes a site's rankings, but you may not know that's going to be a real long-term problem. Maybe these are signs of signals, Google's having a real issue with your website. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just the ebb and flow of the rankings on the SERP these days, although it's always been volatile, but pretty, especially these days.

For example, you can have a prolonged slow ebbing of the rankings over time. That to me is usually a very serious issue. For me, that's usually something where Google has a quality issue with your website and it's slowly eroding away at your rankings over time. I know we're used to looking at a quality issue with your website as, oh, algorithm update, goodbye, but sometimes it's not like that. Sometimes you might see a downtrend with the algorithm update and then it slowly ebbs and erodes from there.

At the same time, there are signs that maybe Google does like your content, and those could be really important for you to realize what those are because then you can improve upon them and build upon them. For example, one case that I saw back with the March 2024 core update was it was a certain keyword and the only website that was ranking... all of the websites that were ranking were pages that were specifically built to target that keyword, meaning the only topic that those pages dealt with was the topic represented in that keyword.

There was this other page though that showed up around position like three, four or five, forgot exactly, and that was about the topic overall, but it dealt with as a subtopic, that one aspect of the page dealt with the keyword. That to me was a signal looking at that page and then how that page ranked and how the website ranked overall where Google's like, you know what? This website is so strong that we're even going to rank you for instances or keywords where the page isn't specifically targeting just that keyword, and even though the only other pages that are ranking are targeting that keyword, we're going to rank you anyway 'cause the content overall is so great that you now have the power to rank... in this case, this website had the power to rank, even though it wasn't particularly targeting that keyword, but just dealt with the topic tangentially. That might be a sign.

In this case, it was a sign that the site was really showing favor and love in the eyes of Google, so it's really important, I think, to know what those signals and signs might be. I don't think it's an exact science because sometimes you just don't know. Having a look and seeing what the signs are that Google really does have an issue with your website or that Google doesn't, and really is loving your website. Knowing those signs and signals or trends can really be important guiding what you do for your SEO strategy.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, because I think it determines how much risk you take with different topics and whether or not you, as you said, go into the sort of tangential ones, whether you try something that maybe is very long tail and whether or not you... and whether or not you go for some of those head terms. Because if Google is generally into you, then you'll know because you'll have a couple of big ticket, big search volume pieces of content, and if you're able to give them something that's similar to some of your rock star pieces of content, then they're going to come back for more, and so if you can prove that users appreciate your content and that you have a good experience for users who come to the website, things aren't glitchy, that it all works well, that it's superfast loading, that kind of thing, then yeah, Google's probably going to send you some more traffic because I think what people forget is that Google's into you because users are into you.

What's it called? Danny Sullivan was talking about the user signals. We have a podcast on user signals and stuff previously, but he said that people were like, oh, Google uses user signals. He's like, we've always said that. We've always paid attention to that. Not new.

Mordy Oberstein:

Not new. Old.

Crystal Carter:

Old, not new. And it's not a question of just doing it for Google, which I think Google has been trying to get into people's brains for the last couple of years. It's not just about doing it for Google, it's also about doing it for users, and then Google will see that works and then they will send their users to you.

Mordy Oberstein:

By the way, you were talking about profiling the types of keywords that you're ranking for. That's a huge thing, by the way, to take a look at because you should really be breaking down, not just, am I ranking? Am I not ranking? That's way too broad. Am I ranking or does Google love me? Is too broad of a question. You should really be looking at where does Google rank you? Where do they not rank you? Meaning where do they love me? Where do they not love me? How do they understand me? Because being understood is really what it means to be loved, but really looking at what folders or what types of keywords or topics am I ranking for, and those sort of things are really important to understand so that either you can double down on that and build on that or say, you know what? Or cut off what's not working. It's like a bad limb on a tree. It's dying. Just cut that off. Just happened to me with a tree.

Crystal Carter:

Because like any relationship, there's going to be things that are annoying. Mordy, you've been married for a while, I've been married for a while. You're in a long-term relationship, there's things that are annoying about yourself and about your partner and Google will know what things they don't like about your website, but they'll know the things that they do like about your website and just if you're in a relationship and you know that maybe they don't like when you leave your shoes in the doorway or maybe they don't like it when you, I don't know, play your music really loud or something like that. If you're trying to carry favor with someone, you wouldn't do the things that you know irritate them. You would do the things that they like. So if you know that they like it when you make that particular dinner for them, you know that they really love that lasagna that you make, give them more lasagna. That's the thing. So you look at your keywords and you're like, what are the things that they like, give them more of that.

Mordy Oberstein:

Sometimes it's very clear that they don't like that. You just don't rank for that no matter what you do and how many links you've built from high DA sites, you're not ranking for that. But sometimes it's a little bit tricky. For example, sometimes you could see with every algorithm update official and unofficial, you get thrown into the volatility fire. That's probably a sign that you might be okay in the end, you might not be okay in the end, but Google's clearly looking around at other partners.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Right, right, right, right. I had a client and they used to have a lot of competitors, so they'd have loads of competitors for particular keywords, and it was really spicy. Basically for this particular SERP, there was up and down, who was in one, who was in three, and the top five would switch around a lot depending on who had updated what most recently and stuff. In those situations, you really need to give Google your attention in order to make sure that you're able to stay on the side of having that SERP visibility, and that can include, it's sort of a quid pro quo. You want traffic, you have to give them more opportunities to give you traffic. It's one of the reasons why I'm such a big fan of schema markup and structured data because it gives you more opportunities to get on the SERP because you have more opportunities to get more rich features, for instance. And if your competitors are not optimized in that way, then they have fewer opportunities to get on there.

It's another reason why I'm a big fan of using multimedia because that also gives you more opportunities to get in there. It also gives Google more opportunity to show you to different folks, and it helps them to understand your content better. So if you want them to help you, you also have to help them, but there's that saying, what is it? "The Lord helps those who help themselves," and you need to help yourself to let them help you. And I'm not saying that Google's Lord or whatever, but I think that it's worth thinking about it in that way anyway.

So yeah, multimedia is something that can help you. Structured data is something that can help you. Obviously having relevant, well-written, well-researched and well-known, as in you're distributing it to people who need to know about it. You're getting people enthused about it. The content that's getting people hyped up is really useful as well because Google can take those signals and go, oh, okay, this sample of people liked it. Then we can show it to other samples of people.

The other thing about that kind of thing is today, so historically speaking, when we think about content distribution, we think about it from a sort of opportunities for clicks and things like that, but in today's space where Google is not just a publisher, but Google also is a web browser and Google's also a phone manufacturer and Google is also, they have data on my wallet. I use Google Wallet all the time. They've got all of that data. They store my phone, my phone photos and all that sort of stuff. Google also, when you're sending signals out, when you're sending your content out on social, for instance, you're also giving them signals for which users to send your content to. I don't have the exact technical links between all of the content that they store and all of the data that they store, but they're going to be getting signals from, even if it's a small amount.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, that's the semantic analysis, that's the semantic web. It's like showing how it's all connected and making those links.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And like the For You feed essentially from Google that comes up... the Discover page, sorry, that shows up.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. For you is Twitter.

Crystal Carter:

And also on TikTok as well, but it's basically, it's a similar kind of thing. So,-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, for sure.

Crystal Carter:

... if I-

Mordy Oberstein:

They know what I want.

Crystal Carter:

Right, exactly. And so-

Mordy Oberstein:

They know what I want. Yankees and SEO.

Crystal Carter:

So for instance, if you send content to a few people and then they're like, okay, this kind of person likes this content, that gives more opportunity to filter down those bespoke queries, which are going to get more and more bespoke as we get into a more AI assisted search space. So I think that we need to show them that we care about our content before we expect them to care about our content.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. And the last thing I want to say, I agree with that a billion percent. The last thing I want to say before we get into Despina is, I'm not always big on rank tracking. I think sometimes it could be a little bit of a... you run into the problem of being a little bit of vanity or a little bit too micro-analytic. But looking at rank tracking patterns over time is a great way to get an understanding of how much Google is into you and how Google is not into you, where they're into you and where they're not into you. So if you are using a rank tracking tool, I would highly recommend you go back and look at the rank tracking trends over an extended period of time to take a look at volatility within your keywords and break them down into subcategories or tags, as they're traditionally referred to in SEO tools and to really get an understanding of where Google is into you, where they're not into you, and how in into they are.

Crystal Carter:

And I think also, I think you need to think about the variables of content creation and all of that sort of stuff. One of the things that you also want to think about is, let's say you're tracking this stuff and you're seeing the patterns and you're seeing the way that Google's looking at the way your content is created, etc. One of the things you might also want to think about is, is it my domain or is it the content? Right?

So sometimes if you serve the content on a different domain or if you serve similar content in a different platform, and let's say it goes off, so let's say you've been writing your blog, writing your blog, and maybe you're not getting that much traffic, but let's say you do a guest post on a different blog and that gets loads of traffic and you've taken the same approach that you always do, that's a really positive signal, that's a really positive signal that if you keep going in the way that you're going, that you'll eventually get the traffic. It doesn't mean that you'll get it right that second, but it means that the content itself is good, and that means that the technical things that you do might need to change, but the content itself is solid. And you see this on social a lot where you'll have some creator will do a video or something and then some bigger platform like Lab Bible or something will share it on there and that will go really big. And if it goes off on there, you're like, okay, the content is good.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. That's a great point. It's such a good point.

Crystal Carter:

Distribution, whichever, might be the technical, it might be whatever that might need to change, but the content itself is good. And so I think it's important to do that not just for link building, but also to understand what it is that you need to tweak in order for Google to-

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a great point. Yeah, is it your authority? Is it the content, is it the technical aspect of it? All that diagnosing where the problem is? That's a great point. Speaking of shoring up that content and finding out what you should be doing and how to go about doing it, we spoke to HREF's Despina Gavoyannis about how to shore up a page or pages that seemed to be wavering between ranking and not ranking. Here's what she had to say.

Despina Gavoyannis:

So like anything with SEO, it depends on your situation, like what you're seeing and what kind of positions your page is wavering between, because I've seen pages, they just don't stick in the SERPs at all like your targeted keyword, but then in the top 100 they'll show up sometimes and then just drop out of the top 100. So if you're seeing that sort of thing, that's a really big kind of flickering. And to me that is a hundred percent about topic alignment and intent alignment. It means you're targeting the right keyword, sure, but you're not really matching your content with what Google and people expect to see. So when you fix that up, the intent misalignment there. Generally what you'll see is that the page will stick in the SERPs.

Now if you wanted to rank higher and stick higher, so for example, it'll land somewhere generally in the top 50 results is what I see, maybe even in the top 30. But then you want to get it ranking and if what you are seeing is that it's wavering between say the bottom of page one and page two, so you can't quite crack position 10 and stay there or higher. So in that case, it could be a topic or an intent misalignment. It could also be a topic depth thing. Maybe you don't have as many sections in your content that cover the subtopics that are relevant to the keyword, and your competitors might be doing a better job of that. So looking at their content and any kind of gaps in terms of the content topic depth perspective.

Also looking at any gaps in your core fundamentals of SEO, things like, on-page and links. A lot of SEO depends on doing these small things that on their own don't move the needle much or even at all, but in combination can have a big impact. So for example, if your competitors have much more solid on-page optimization than what you do, that's a big gap. So they're doing it and they're doing a lot of little things that can add up and have a big impact in total. Whereas if you are not doing any of it or very little of it, then that creates a huge gap right there and it's a pretty easy gap to fix. So making sure that you've got your keywords in your headings, you've got keywords in your URLs, that you've got image alt texts and things like that, and providing a great user experience with the page itself, make sure that's all sorted.

Also with links, don't look at it just from your whole website. Get links to the individual page and close those gaps. This includes internal links. So if you're covering the topic in other articles on your website, make sure you are internally linking to the page you're trying to support. And also I suppose if you can't internally link because you don't have enough content or any kind of mentions about the topic, then in that case you need to create supporting content so that it works as a hub or a bit of a content cluster that can support each other. And that helps in terms of closing topical gaps across your whole website, not just within one article.

And finally, if you've tried all these things, and you're still not seeing much movement. Evaluate the recency of your content. Is the advice relevant to people right now? Even if you add new sections and technically the date on your content might be written in this year, the advice you're giving might still be outdated or not providing great user experience or things like that. So look at, is it relevant to people right now? Is it providing the best experience to people right now? Are your competitors potentially doing a better job there? And if you're not sure, if you can't be unbiased about it, you can use a website like user testing and get real people's feedback, get them to compare your competitor's content to yours and to give you their thoughts on which one they think does a better job of answering a particular question or for a specific keyword. It helps you overcome biases in your own thinking of what's working and whether your content is actually good compared to competitors or not.

So those are a few of the things that I think can help. In summary: check your intent misalignment, cover any topical gaps, cover any really basic SEO gaps like, on-page and links. Those have been fundamentals for ages for a reason. Make sure that you're doing internal linking and topical gaps are covered across your whole website. And then also check the recency in user experience of the content for people searching today.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much, Despina. Look for Despina out on social media. Link to her profile is in the show notes. Yeah, it comes back to we're talking diagnosing. Diagnosing what the problem is, what you should be doing, have a methodical approach. Also running through the options like she's talking about. You don't always know exactly what it is. You have to roll through them and throw the kitchen sink at it in a way. So diagnose, throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, and also I think she was talking about testing as well. So one of the things she mentioned was user testing. So getting people to look at it and why do you think this content is better? Or why do you think this content is good? Why do you think this content is struggling or whatever? And I think she's totally right because you see this a lot. And Glenn Gabe is a big advocate of user testing for websites and particularly for user journeys because sometimes if you are in it all the time, you don't know how difficult it is to find the things that people need to find. Or maybe you do know how difficult it is, but you've gotten so used to having to navigate it in the way that you do that you're not conscious of it.

So I think that getting someone with a fresh set of eyes can be really, really useful, even if, I think she mentioned that it can be a bit painful sometimes. You might have to eat a little bit of humble pie, but it is really important to do and really, really valuable both for publishers who are doing it directly and also for agency folks who are managing clients.

Mordy Oberstein:

And humble pie is fine because pie is pie. Pie is good.

Crystal Carter:

I love pie. I'm a big fan of like-

Mordy Oberstein:

Pie is the best-

Crystal Carter:

I do love Pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the best dessert. I'm sorry, hands down, it's pie.

Crystal Carter:

I also like a savory pie, like-

Mordy Oberstein:

Like shepherd's pie?

Crystal Carter:

Shepherd's pie, cottage pie, chicken pot pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

Chicken pot pie is delicious. Oh, love chicken pot pie.

Crystal Carter:

Right. In England there's a lot of savory pies. It's really common. Also in America, you get chicken pot pie. Chicken pot pie is the classic one. I don't eat meat anymore, but when I did, I was all about the chicken pot pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

Tofu pot pie.

Crystal Carter:

Which one?

Mordy Oberstein:

Tofu pot pie.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No, no. There are lots of delicious, lots of delicious veggie pies that I'm a big fan of. So yeah, pies are good. I just generally like things that are pastry with yummy stuff in the middle of it.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the best. It's literally the best. I don't have access to a lot of pie where I live, which means we don't live in a perfect world and while we're not living in a perfect world and you're sorting out your love or Google's love for you, to make sure your content is bringing in the traffic and the conversions and yada yada yada that you want, while that's all being worked out, you might want to try other marketing activities to drive that awareness, traffic, leads, and conversions instead. It's a crazy idea. Which is why we're going down a rabbit hole in a little segment we call, from the top of the SERP, as in this case, we're looking at not what gets you to the top of page one, but what other activities can get you traffic while you work your way there. And to help us, we have special guest, the co-founder of Orbit Media, Andy Crestodina.

Andy, welcome to the SERPs Up Podcast.

Andy Crestondina:

I am glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thanks for sticking with us by the way, because the audience doesn't know this. I've known your name for many, many years, but I couldn't get it out of my mouth the right way.

Andy Crestondina:

I stumbled on it myself. No trouble at all.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you with us today.

Andy Crestondina:

Yeah, thanks for having me, Crystal. I'm glad. This will be fun. I've been looking forward to this. I'm psyched.

Mordy Oberstein:

So I know it's a little bit like heresy to the SEO folk listening to this. If you're not an SEO folk, this makes obvious logical sense. But putting all of your eggs in one algorithmic basket, whether you're still trying to get Google to love you and whatnot, or in general, Google does love you now, they might not love you tomorrow. What do you recommend sites do? Let's say there are an established website, they have traffic, they have some brand awareness. What do you recommend they do to really increase that, diversify their channels and get some momentum beyond the SERP?

Andy Crestondina:

I love this question. I think that it's important for SEOs to consider this because there is such a thing as topic channel fit, and there are lots of articles and web pages and service we offer different things that have no keyword opportunity. Only about half of the articles that I write are actually relevant for search. And that's fine. I'm not a keyword first marketer. I'm trying to connect a piece of content to a target audience. So my first thought is, I'm making this thing, is there a keyword opportunity here? If no, no problem, I can use other channels. Everything can be promoted in email and social, through influencers, and other ways. So it's really important to keep that in mind. And I sleep well at night knowing that I am not totally beholden to Google for all of my traffic and that I can be kind of a dual threat marketer. There's more to life than search and many things that we all make really are not relevant for that channel whatsoever.

Crystal Carter:

I think that's a really interesting way to think about it because I've definitely seen people go, oh, well, we shouldn't write this blog because it doesn't have a good search volume. We shouldn't write this piece of content because no one's going to find it on Google or the search volume's low or that sort of thing. And I think it's really interesting that you're like, this is a thing that people need to hear. We can get it to them in a different way. If it's not for search, it can go another way. Is there a way that you sort of figure out which is the best channel for a piece of content that you think people need to hear?

Andy Crestondina:

For sure. The job of the search marketer is to basically meet expectations. The searcher has an information need and your job is satisfy that information need. The social media marketer, the job is to be a little bit unexpected. See how that's actually the opposite channel? So there are lots of topics where social is the proper channel. Let's say you want to put out a counter-narrative perspective. No one's looking for counter-narratives, they're looking for confirmation or they're looking for an answer. And thought leadership. Another way to say that, op-ed content, anything that is a perspective where you're trying to start a conversation or you're saying something that's maybe contrarian to the conventional wisdom. That stuff crushes social media. It's great in social, it starts big conversations, right? Say something interesting.

So search, if your content meets expectations, search. If your content is a bit unexpected, social. And by the way, these channels, understanding the difference between social and search, it's so fascinating. In search there's actually a ceiling to the amount of demand in the market. There's only X number of people searching for a topic each day, but social media, there is no limit. I have seen things... If you've never seen the analytics for a mini viral event, you're missing out. It is breathtaking how many people are on the internet.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, yeah, totally true.

Andy Crestondina:

And if you're exhausted, just long form content, long text pieces, Hey, guess what? The short, punchy, pithy thing, the highly visual thing, the collaboration with an influencer thing, social's perfect. So you don't have enough in your content mix, and Mordy, thanks for saying diversification because that's the perfect perspective. If you are not first thinking of the topic, what does my audience need? What's the most interesting thing I can do today? And then asking what is the proper channel for promoting this thing? The answer is not always search.

Mordy Oberstein:

So when you're thinking of diversifying those channels, okay, I am not going to write for search. Where do you start? What are you looking at? Is there like, okay, I want to do something on social. Does the channel drive the strategy itself or the type of content drive the strategy, trying to build a brand awareness? What's driving the overall strategy for you?

Andy Crestondina:

Well, I am a fifteen-year content strategist, and I often think to myself, this is something new, interesting, helpful, valuable to me, working for me, I should share this with the world. Next question. Is this something that could work in content marketing or maybe I'm just make this as a sales enablement piece. By the way, there's bottom of funnel content that you can share with prospects that is 100X the value of that new weird top of funnel, high search volume phrase. Make something for your prospects first. I'd say let's all prioritize the bottom of the funnel. And then whatever that thing is, whatever you're making, does it relate to other pieces of content? Is there already a conversation happening about this? Is this part of a trend? Is this content evergreen? What is the proper format? Should this be a video or long form text or is it an infographic thing here?

Give you an example. Two weeks ago, I've always been thinking about this, you know how every chart in marketing is like a log scale curve. There are no straight lines. The top performers are... search especially, top performer gets most of the clicks. Number two gets half as many. Number three gets a third as many. That mathematical distribution is called the Zipfian distribution. Okay, you've never heard of that? No one's heard of that. I get it. But actually it's super interesting that that Zipfian distribution applies across topics and formats and channels. Click-through rate by search position, and a tiny percentage of things go viral, and a tiny percentage of social accounts gets most of the engagement. And a tiny percentage YouTube videos get most of the views. That's a really interesting way to think about marketing and it's valuable because you can focus on trying to make top performers and avoid making the medium quality stuff , but there's a practical takeaway. Okay, you get the idea.

I'm making this article, right? I want to do this. I want to show the charts. I want people to see the alignment between this math thing and their marketing, and I want to make strategic recommendations based on that. Focus on the 10X things. No keyword opportunity at all. No one is searching for log scale pattern-

Crystal Carter:

Zipfian.

Andy Crestondina:

... marketing. Yeah, George Zipf. So no problem. I'm making it anyway. I feel strongly about this. I think the world needs the article. It's a failure of the internet that this article doesn't exist. That's how passionate I am about creating it. Who has all the data? Pete Caputa from Databox. Let's talk to Pete. Great, Pete and I have a call. He shares a bunch of data. I overlay my little chart thing on it. He starts a conversation on LinkedIn. I jump in, I write the article, I publish on LinkedIn, he jumps in. It got huge results. Nothing to do with search.

What did I do? I found something that was visual. I collaborated with a subject matter expert. I didn't hesitate to write the cool, weird, fun headline with no keywords in it. It's liberating, by the way, to not have to worry about keywords sometimes, right? In search, I'm all in or I'm all out. If that thing's keyword relevant, I'm totally focused on making something that is the best page on the internet for that topic. But if it's just an unusual thing, a weird thing, a visual thing, a surprising thing. It's kind of like working with, if you've ever worked with an innovator or an inventor or someone who makes new things, no one's looking for new things. It doesn't exist yet. Those people should still start those companies.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Exactly.

Andy Crestondina:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

I think it's like, if you were cooking for, I don't know, 500 people, if you were cooking for, I don't know, the family reunion or something like that, you're not going to do an artisanal ceviche or something with heirloom tomatoes from here, there and there. You're going to do the macaroni and cheese. You know that the macaroni and cheese is going to get the most people and they're going to enjoy it and they're going to be happy. Whereas, I don't know, if it's some special dinner for your anniversary or whatever, and it's a special person and you know that they'll appreciate that you've spent all of this time, but it's a different audience. You're still cooking, you're still making whatever you're making, but it's a different kind of situation and they'll appreciate it more. And both audiences will appreciate that you've taken the care to give them the right thing, in the right space.

Mordy Oberstein:

I love that.

Crystal Carter:

... really important.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a great example.

Andy Crestondina:

Yep. Mac and cheese, that's the highest search volume key phrase. And my daughter loves it. But the heirloom tomato, like the fancy Caprese salad that people weren't expecting, like, whoa, dude, pine nuts. Wait a minute, that's a different... you get it, right?

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Andy Crestondina:

So, it's really kind of a boring content strategy both for your readers to consume and for you to create if you think that everything's got to be a keyword. Come on.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, a thousand percent.

Crystal Carter:

And I think also, so there's a couple of things that I come for that. So people who have just discovered you on our podcast might not know that you are also speaking from the point of having a massive social media following. So I think that that's something that's worth thinking about as well. If you're not following Andy on LinkedIn, you should do that because it's absolutely worth doing. And all the other channels as well-

Andy Crestondina:

Thank you.

Mordy Oberstein:

Link in the show notes.

Crystal Carter:

So I think that that's something that's really important to think about as well, is that you have spent time cultivating an audience that you know is interested in the thing that you found really fascinating this week. The thing that you found really fascinating today or whatever it may be. And I think that in order to do some of the things that you're talking about in order to speak to some of that more creative, more out-of-the-box content, do you think that it's worth building that community first before you start doing that? Or do you think the two things go together?

Andy Crestondina:

I'm not sure if... community building and in some ways search rankings, these are not... they're more like outcomes than they are a strategy in a way. That's what happens if you did everything else well. So what did I do on LinkedIn? I wrote an article every two weeks for 12 years. I never write an article without collaborating with a subject matter expert or influencer. I made sure that my articles were highly visual. I promoted those things in many places as well as on LinkedIn. I used LinkedIn for all kinds of other activities, for research and collaborating and connecting with people. I started a LinkedIn newsletter, which is my number one tip for B2B marketers today, started a LinkedIn newsletter.

Crystal Carter:

It's fantastic. I was talking to Andy about this at MozCon. It really is a masterclass. It's fantastic. Subscribe to Digital Marketing Tips on LinkedIn.

Andy Crestondina:

Give it a boring name like Digital Marketing Tips. Actually, this is common across channels. Specificity correlates with engagement, conversion, search rankings. I think that a lot of things, a lot of... one of the common mistakes that marketers make is just writing sort of vague headlines and subheads. So Digital Marketing Tips. I've seen people launch LinkedIn newsletters that's like, What's in Brian's Brain? What would I get if... no, I'm not. You can subscribe to a LinkedIn newsletter with one tap of your finger that explains the growth. But why would someone tap? Who's Brian? I don't get... there's no specificity. Be specific about the benefits, right? It's like a call to action in anything. Tell them what they're going to get if they do it. But yeah, LinkedIn newsletters, you can repurpose old content. It's going to reach a much larger audience. It's a lot of tableau funnel stuff, but it's great for brand.

Mordy Oberstein:

This is SERP's Up Podcast, we ask the hard questions. I don't think I've ever asked a hard question in this podcast before, but this is the first time. If we're saying, okay, wait a second, be careful with the whole Google thing. You're beholden to the algorithm. Who knows what'll happen? Is it the same thing to play devil's advocate on social media? Like, look what happened with X.

Andy Crestondina:

Excellent point. No social and search are algorithm marketing. And no one really uses that term, but that's exactly what you're doing if you're marketing in those. And those marketers have a bit of anxiety all the time anyway. Oh, what will I do if I... It's like LinkedIn, I've never done it. But some people on LinkedIn, they make a post promoting an article, then they put the article link in the first comment. Oh, because LinkedIn doesn't like if you have a thing that sends people... Who cares?

Mordy Oberstein:

I'll tell you on that, someone once said, I'm... because I would play around with doing this thing, what worked, what didn't work? And then someone said, "I hate when people put the link in the comment. You never find the damn thing." I'm like, "You know what? I don't care about the algorithm anymore. People who are reading what I'm writing are annoyed by it, then I'm not going to do that."

Andy Crestondina:

People first, no matter what channel you're in. But then, yeah, I mean a diversified marketing strategy should have more than search and social because you will be forever beholden to those algorithms and they will change. You don't own your LinkedIn newsletter subscribers or your followers or your search rankings. Email, live events, where Crystal and I first met. Webinars, podcasts, we're doing right now. These are all where word of mouth crushes it. They're relationship based. They cause greater loyalty. There are higher touch formats. But now I have to say that Google, LinkedIn, and YouTube and our listeners know this, but those should be in the mix. I'm just saying those shouldn't be the only things in the mix.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right, right. And I think also platforms come and go. TikTok, there's a lot going on there at the moment, but people remember, gosh, I can't even remember the name of it, the audio one, Clubhouse, everyone was crazy for Clubhouse for about 20 minutes.

Mordy Oberstein:

Blast from the COVID past.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And there were people everywhere. I'm doing that Clubhouse, and then it was really blowing up and people were desperate to get invitations and stuff like that. But again, not putting everything in one basket, it's kind of like a ghost town now.

Mordy Oberstein:

It’s still there. Come on.

Andy Crestondina:

I remember, I guess I'm old, but Google+.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Yeah, I was on Google+.

Andy Crestondina:

There were a lot of people who invested time to build a network, and so yeah, the people who invested in email, they aren't disrupted. You're just prone to disruption. Think of it this way, if you're doing algorithm marketing, big tech sits between you and your audience. Email marketing, webinars, podcasts, live events…

Mordy Oberstein:

Resources. You have to sign up and download the thing. Submit your email.

Andy Crestondina:

Yeah. Yeah. Gated content. That's disintermediation. You're taking big tech out from in the middle of between you and your audience. I've always thought of email as just a disintermediation. So as soon as that person who lands from search and loved with the thing and shared their address. You got permission to talk to them directly, that is special. And that means you are not forever beholden to the algorithm. You've diversified your traffic sources. I think also algorithm marketers, they get very focused on top of funnel metrics. It's really hard not to obsess over some of these numbers, even if the number has a very low correlation with real business impact.

Crystal Carter:

I've had this before, so I've worked with clients before and I've done the SEO, we did the audit, we did the updates, we did the thing, we did the blah, and we looked and they're like, "But our traffic went down." I was like, "Yeah, but you had traffic two pages that were trash. They were trash pages. They meant nothing to what you were doing. So yes, the traffic did go down, but your conversions went up. That means that we're more specific. That means that we're more targeted. That means that we are getting to the right people instead of just some random people."

And I've had it where I had ads that we were running, for instance, and we were getting tons of traffic in the middle of the night, but none of the people who were looking at the website between midnight and 3:00 A.M. were buying anything. So I turned off all the ads for the looky-loos, and we concentrated it for all the daytime people, and then suddenly we got more conversions. And it's not just about traffic. It's not just about those top of funnel metrics as you're saying, it's about being smart about what you're doing.

Mordy Oberstein:

Why I hate rank tracking on the SEO side. Yes, you rank number two, one, whatever. Okay, that's nice.

Andy Crestondina:

I once did a piece, it had no conversion opportunities or keyword opportunities, but I made the case that there's an inverse relationship between the visibility of a metric and its importance. The most important things in your business: net promoter score, net margins, revenue, these things you need an expert to help you create, even to find the metric. Net promoter score is very hard to measure, it takes a big effort. The most visible things in your marketing: number of followers, your rankings for a keyword, have very low correlation with business outcomes.

So all the way from the top to bottom, I had this list of 37 metrics and I purposely ordered them in a way where you could sort of see the more visible the metric, the lower the business impact, the less visible the metric, the higher the business impact. It's strangely true. These platforms want us to obsess over them. Social media has gamified engagement and followings, that's why they made the... it's the availability heuristic. We pay attention to things we can see. Those big numbers, even LinkedIn now, remember they used to be like 500+. They show followings. They've gamified engagement and it helps them a lot, but it gets marketers distracted.

Mordy Oberstein:

LinkedIn as a side note, it's been interesting when the whole X thing was happening, I feel like they boosted engagement on purpose because they knew, okay, people were flocking over from X, let's get them hooked. Whereas I felt like that's why Threads failed or I don't want to say failed, I don't think that Threads caught on the way that it should have because when people were moving from X to Threads, the engagement was garbage, they'd be like, "Ah, what am I doing here?" Which is funny because I think it's an important point to realize that when you're on these platforms, you're right, they are gaming you and they are playing with you a little bit and it's distracting.

Andy Crestondina:

It is, and junior marketers and less informed executives alike pay a lot of attention to those things. It's also sort of true in analytics because if you only click on the high level report in analytics, you see top line numbers. To really get any, and I strongly believe this, you are using GA4 wrong if you don't add another dimension or drill down to a certain audience. Oh, my search rankings are down. To which pages? From which phrases? Visitors who have what kind of intent? And Crystal, we've all, anybody who's done this for half an hour will know, sure, there's tons of URLs that will attract a ton of visibility with a 0%. They don't see a single other page, they don't subscribe. They don't engage with the offers. So those are vanity. We've all heard the term, vanity metrics, so that's part of it. Don't put all your eggs in one algorithmic basket, Mordy love how you said that. And then don't put all your focus on a single metric.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right, right. I think it's really important, and I think it's really important to keep track and to understand what actual metrics matter to your business.

So I had a client once who was really concerned about brochure downloads, and I was like, why? They were really into these brochure download things. No matter what I did. In the end, we parted ways because no matter what I did, we didn't get the brochure downloads. I was like, nobody's going to download your brochure, which is the same thing that the website says. And they were like, "We needed the brochure." I was like, there are other things we can do. We can do a webinar, we could do something else, and it just wouldn't line up. But I think that it is really important for people to be conscious of those data points and maybe not so distracted by the shiny things, by all of the followers, by the things.

There was a company I was talking to, or it was a talk I was at, and he was someone who worked with big influencers, people like Ronaldo, the football player, and various different things like big sports teams and stuff. And Ronaldo literally had a thing where he went viral wearing their product and they got tons of views on this video and they got tons of traffic to the site, but they got hardly any sales. Then, and this goes back to your point of the things that aren't visible or the things that really make the difference. They did a postmortem and they figured out that they needed to sort out their funnel so that when these kinds of viral things happened, they were able to actually monetize the funnel so that they were ready for it. So the next time there was a big sports player who was seen with one of these things, they were able to actually monetize it and it wasn't even as big as the first spike, but they were able to get a lot more revenue out of the instance because they spent the time doing the boring...

Mordy Oberstein:

That's so funny. I feel like that's one of those things where brand and performance people always silo those things separately, but they're not separate. There's just marketing and there's just awareness and there's just revenue and conversions. It's all one. It's a Neil Young song. They all sound the same because it's all one song. It all has to work together. So yeah, you could have that viral moment, but if they can't get through the funnel to buy the actual thing. They're like, great.

Andy Crestondina:

Yeah. So if you carry that thinking through and you conclude like, Hey, I need to fix the mousetrap before I make cheese. So here's a way to use the analytics, go look at analytics and figure out which of your landing pages converts visitors into subscribers at the highest rate of all  in your content marketing.

And that's that same Zipfian thing again, right? I have pages where 3% of visitors who land subscribe. I have pages where 0.003% of visitors who land subscribe. This is zero rounded up to zero in GA4. Now that I know that, I know which articles to optimize better for search, which articles to keep in heavy social media rotation, which articles to put back on my home page or to link to from my email signature or to put back on the top of the blog. Once you know where your best mousetraps are, now go make the cheese. This is the problem with SEOs right, they're all cheese and no mousetrap. You're not going to drive results.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't think there's a better phrase to end this interview with than it's all cheese and no mousetraps when it comes to SEO. Andy, where can people find you?

Andy Crestondina:

Crystal mentioned LinkedIn. I'm of course very active there. Orbitmedia.com is where I write one article every two weeks. That's been my frequency forever. I will never send more than one email every two weeks if you sign up there. I don't know, YouTube. I wrote a book, it's on Amazon. You can find me at conferences, that's where Crystal and I hang out, so I'm easy to reach.

Mordy Oberstein:

Nice. Well, thanks for joining us and I guess we'll see you out there at the next conference.

Andy Crestondina:

Thanks, Marty.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, make sure you follow Andy on social media. He is absolutely fabulous, almost as fabulous or maybe the opposite way around, maybe this person is almost as fabulous as Andy is Barry Schwartz, which means that it's... is it really fair to compare Andy and Barry. I feel like it's two different things all together.

Crystal Carter:

Hey, there's plenty of room in the SEO universe for everyone to shine.

Mordy Oberstein:

Mount Rushmore, only four people. Who do you put on top?

Crystal Carter:

Oh no, we don't put anything on Mount Rushmore. Leave that mountain alone.

Mordy Oberstein:

Who's like the Mount Rushmore of Yankees greats? It's always a big argument.

Crystal Carter:

Honestly, I think leave the mountain alone. My personal opinion is like, let the mountain be a mountain. It doesn't need a face on it.

Mordy Oberstein:

It doesn't need to be an artwork. You know what's artwork? The way Barry covers the SEO news, which means it's time for this week's Snappy News.

Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, two articles for you from Barry Schwartz and from SE Roundtable or from Barry on SE Roundtable. They're not from two different people, Barry is SE Roundtable. First up, this comes from September 27th. Spike in remove Google Reviews on September 17th. A lot of sevens in there, on September 27th Barry was reporting about a review removal spike on the 17th. Lucky number seven, I guess. Anyway, this comes from a little bit of a consensus across the local SEO space. Tim Colling posted this in local search forums. He basically asked like, Hey, seems like there's a spike in the number of legitimate favorable reviews inside of Google business profiles. Then again, Michel van Luijtelaar, saw the same sort of thing. Claudia Tomina jumped in the conversation and saw, yeah, there seems to be a bigger spike in September with more deleted reviews. So if you are in the local space, or if you are yourself a local business and you're seeing, hey, some of those great reviews are gone, you're not alone, doesn't solve the problem, but you're not alone.

Also from Barry and also from SE Roundtable, but not from September 27th but from September 26th, Google Search Ranking Movement Heated, Volatility Continues 9/25. There's so many dates, so many dates this week Barry. Okay. Basically in a nutshell, the SEO weather tools are still bonkers, still reporting an incredible amount of rank volatility. I think we're approaching at least on the Semrush Sensor. By the time you listen to this and the rank volatility on the Semrush Sensor is still high or very high, you are looking at the longest period of elevated rank volatility in history, or in the history of tracking these things the way that we do. But it sounds better to say in history. But again, all of the tools are kind of bonkers and off the rails.

Some of them have reset a little bit and they're showing less volatility the way these things work, there's no such thing as high or low rank volatility, there's just relative high or relative low volatility. Think of the weather itself. If the normal was a million degrees Fahrenheit like we were living on the sun, if it was a hundred degrees Fahrenheit outside, wow, that's a pretty cool day. So it's all relative. It does mean, by the way, you have to be looking at what's happening in your rankings and your traffic and yada yada, yada, go Barry, yada, yada yada. There have been reports from folks like Glenn Gabe, I've seen this myself, where a lot of the rewards in the August 2024 update have been reversed. Maybe there have been reversed back since, who knows by the time you listening to this? Who doesn't love a good reversal? Anyway, that's this week's Snappy News.

Barry, the Picasso of SEO News.

Crystal Carter:

What? Are you saying he's all over the place. Is that what you mean?

Mordy Oberstein:

I didn't call him Jackson Pollock or anything. Can you imagine? You ever seen the movie Pollock where it was Ed Harris plays Jackson Pollock and it goes through the whole thing and like, wow, imagine that's how Barry wrote articles, on the floor smoking cigarettes.

Crystal Carter:

No, I could not imagine Barry doing that, ever. Just not a thing.

Mordy Oberstein:

Someone should make a meme of that. Instead of Ed Harris in the movie it's Barry's face. Love that. That's a good idea. Someone should do that. Anyway, you know who else is a master of painting the fine arts of SEO?

Crystal Carter:

Who's that?

Mordy Oberstein:

Darth Autocrat, Lyndon NA. Darth is a... first of all, he's brilliant, but we also don't know who he really is, so it's an like an air of mystery.

Crystal Carter:

He's mysterious. Like a man of mystery, and yeah, he's got this fantastic collection of Threads talking about technical SEO and talking about integrating content and talking about the way you should think about content in a really nuanced way. If you follow him, he is got a really, really great perspective on all of this stuff, and it's really, really nuanced, and it doesn't just stick to standard SEO practices, but he doesn't stay just in the SEO lane. He goes into a lane that includes thinking about the business objectives, thinking about what actually moves the needle for actual businesses, and he's somebody who works with clients and who does a lot of research as well. So honestly, a great follow

Mordy Oberstein:

Super conceptual, really gives you frameworks that you can operate out of. I used have a standing bet with him. I used to do SEO chat. It was like a Twitter chat that I no longer do. If he could answer a question in one tweet, I gave him 20 bucks.

Crystal Carter:

Everything is a thread, but they're delightful.

Mordy Oberstein:

But they're really good. It's a fresh take. It's not the same thing regurded a thousand times over, which is why he's the follow of the week, this week. Props to Darth Autocrat, Lyndon NA. The man under the mask. Links to his profiles in the show notes. He's now available on LinkedIn.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, I did not realize that.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh yeah. He's on LinkedIn now.

Crystal Carter:

There we go. Follow him on LinkedIn.

Mordy Oberstein:

So I'll try to link to both of those in the show notes and quite a collection of people this week.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I mean, it's been great, but I think as Rihanna said, we want everyone to love us like a hot pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. It's really one of those, it's a stew, but in pie form, the stew-

Crystal Carter:

Stew pie form. And everyone-

Mordy Oberstein:

Stew pie. It's stupendous.

Crystal Carter:

We want Google to appreciate the delicious pie that we've made.

Mordy Oberstein:

And give us a larger piece of the traffic pie.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. And put it on a chart.

Mordy Oberstein:

With a dollop of whipped cream.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And the dollop needs to go up into the right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh yeah. Can I get a good dollop, by the way, that's all... You think AI creates fake things, commercials have been creating fake things for a long time. No one can get a dollop that looks like that, okay. It's ridiculous.

Crystal Carter:

Yo, dude, I used to work in that industry. I used to work in that industry. Do you know anytime you see an apple pie, it's actually a potato pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

Potato pie?

Crystal Carter:

It's a mashed potato pie. Because what happens is if you have an actual real apple pie, you cut it and all the apple oozes out.

Mordy Oberstein:

It oozes out. Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

So what they do is they bake a mashed potato pie, and then they stick the apples on the side. So when they cut it, the apple stays in, nestled into the mashed potato, and then they just cut the-

Mordy Oberstein:

You're saying my whole life I've been like, it's been a lie, we're living a lie?

Crystal Carter:

It's mashed potato pie. I've got other secrets as well. It's like a whole thing.

Mordy Oberstein:

Mashed potato pie is also delicious. I'm not upset. Okay.

Crystal Carter:

I've never had a mashed potato pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, me neither. But it sounds like it's delicious. It's pie.

Crystal Carter:

I mean like…

Mordy Oberstein:

Are potatoes good? Is pie good?

Crystal Carter:

Best pie. Best pie, Mordy. Best sweet pie?

Mordy Oberstein:

Cherry pie is the best pie.

Crystal Carter:

What?

Mordy Oberstein:

Hands down the best pie.

Crystal Carter:

Sweet potato pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

And you have cherry pie on top of pudding. Or no, key lime pie is also delicious. I'm sorry. Lemon pie is also good. Pumpkin. I can't decide.

Crystal Carter:

Sweet potato pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's also delicious.

Crystal Carter:

Pecan pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

Pecan pie is also delicious. Pineapple. I like pineapple pie, which is a weird thing, but-

Crystal Carter:

No.

Mordy Oberstein:

Tell me one... Marshmallow pie. Good. Skittles and pie, that would probably taste good.

Crystal Carter:

Marshmallow. You put marshmallows on your sweet potato pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

Cereal pie. You just put Lucky charms to a pie crust.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. I think we should end with that. I think that's enough now.

Mordy Oberstein:

I think it's kind of ridiculous.

Crystal Carter:

We've reached the conclusion.

Mordy Oberstein:

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 the new episode, as we dive into, bored? Here's how to rejuvenate your SEO career. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio, SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check on all the great content and webinars on the Wix Studio, 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 and pie.