#H2HChat: How to Win on the SEO Battlefield with @Annebot

Hello, we are back for another HDA chat. Welcome back to another Monday. How are you guys? How are you doing?

I'm usually gonna say, but how are you guys doing?

How are you doing?

I'm no guy. I'm doing great. I'm doing great. I'm excited.

Yes,

this is a big week for us.

It is a great week. Can't wait to announce it tomorrow,

right?

Um, but

we're not here to talk about us.

No, we're not.

Hell no.

No, we're not. We are very excited to be here with our good friend Ann Ward. And just to give you a quick introduction on who Ann is, if you don't know her already, she is a growth scientist. Not that kind of growth. And the CEO of Circle Click Media, a leading digital agency and marketing lab in the Bay Area. As a futurist through and through, which we actually worked with at IBM. As a futurist, Ward spent— I'm just going to call her Anne from now on,

right?

Spent over 10 years mastering all things web development before transitioning into the field of SEO, search engine optimization. For those of you who don't know it yet, this is not the right place for you.

No, this is a masterclass. Are you kidding? This is the place to go to learn about it.

If you don't know what SEO is these days, though, I'm not sure you should be watching.

You're a loser.

She quickly became an SEO trailblazer by applying her love of analytics to digital marketing. In 2014, Anne was named as one of Entrepreneur Magazine's 27 Top Masters of Marketing that Everyone Can Learn From. In 2015, Anne was named again as one of their Top 50 Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2017. And the list keeps going on. She's written O'Reilly's latest book on the topic of SEO entitled SEO Battlefield, Winning strategies for search engine marketing.

Woo!

Dun dun dun!

I feel like we need rocky music or something.

Yes, always rocky music. We don't have it though. Always rocky music.

Google drop all of them.

So just to finish out, because this is really important, her personal writing has been included in Comedy Central's CC Social Scene as well as Funny or Die.

Dude, mad respect, girlfriend. Mad respect.

And her interests include robotics, AI, and virtual reality. How are you doing

now?

Yes, wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Kramer.

Good to see you. Good to see you. You just— we— well, we just finished, um, seeing you at South by Southwest where you were sharing your book with all kinds of fun people, including ourselves. How's the book launch been?

It's been quite a thrill ride, as thrilling as a technical book can be. But yes, I've had great reception. I've had a lot of people reach out to me on Twitter, which honestly is like everything to me. But this book seems to be helping a lot of people, and that's what I— that was the goal. So I'm very, very excited about it.

And so you're— you also talk about AI and virtual reality and all these other things, these future-forward things. Why? I'm curious, why SEO? What was the impetus behind choosing that as a path? You cover all kinds of things. What was the thinking behind that?

For the book? Definitely because the last 10 years of my life have been SEO. I it's it's a means to an end, and there are so many different ways to get there. And SEO is sort of the master umbrella that I operate under, but it's certainly not limited to that. I would argue that SEO is migrating into a new term which I've come up with, which is SSO, which is the science of search. I think it's becoming much more scientific, and this book is. meant to explain, you know, how we got here and where we're going. And I couldn't be more excited about it because it's, it's truly my passion, helping companies get found and helping them generate revenue from it. And so it made perfect sense for this book to be about that. But the next one, however, will probably be about something a little more future-y.

So I, I have a burning question. What is it about SEO that's so damn sexy?

Wow. Well, other than the practitioner.

I mean, that's a given.

Yeah. I think what it is is that when someone searches for something and they find it, it's very satisfying. But when you think you should come up for something and you don't, it's maddening. And I've seen CEOs wrestle with it, and it's something that none of us can directly control, but all of us want to manipulate. And so to have insights and inroads into that makes you feel like a wizard. I mean, people liken me to a sorceress or some sort of witch. Witch. But I'm not. I'm a data-driven marketer, retired developer who has a passion for it. And so I think that's the mystique of it is probably part of it because half of, I think sexiness is a little bit of mystery. And I think that's what keeps me excited and engaged in it because nobody can be on top forever.

Everybody has to work.

I knew you'd latch on to that, Courtney. I knew you would, and that's why I love you.

I'm curious, do you think that anyone who really is just starting out, um, how, like, you know, they're, they're up against such giants in their own mind? Um, what, and, and do you think that, that new, um, new places, new online, um, platforms, or even just a blog, um, can actually have or get to that, that spot? Or are they in it for the long haul and they're up against like these big giants? Like, how does somebody who's small and just starting out not get too intimidated?

Right. Well, there's, there's a lot of confusion in the marketplace about how to start, where to start. And I think that that is based on the vacuum of consultants and, and things that, that try to promise that this is an easy thing. But I think the key is specificity. Because if you are a small regional player and you're trying to go up against a national one, that may not actually make any sense. So I think the key is understanding the battlefield, like where, where should you really logically be? Yeah, you want to be page 1 for everything, but does that make sense? It often doesn't. If you're really resource constrained, if you're a tiny ice cream shop in Menlo Park, you know, You don't even necessarily have to have a page to get found. You can just have a great Facebook page, you know, get everybody to give you great Yelp reviews. You know, you, you have to use what you've got. So to think that you're going to, you know, waltz into the zeitgeist because you've written a blog is, is very misleading. I think where a lot of companies and individuals alike fail is that they, they don't do the research and they don't go very specific or regional with their business when really they should instead of trying to compete with much bigger players. You don't have to be the biggest. You just have to be specific and you have to be clever.

So can you go in more detail about the level of cleverness that people need to have? Give us an example.

Well, right. I think we see a lot of big brands pumping out the, pumping out the sales tweets all day long, I think is a great example. I think Twitter is often misused. Because we are, we're pumping out messages where we're talking at people, not talking to people, human people. I think that's— I was waiting for my applause, by the way.

Can you hear it? I'll put it over here.

Yes, thank you.

I

have to

move the applause, hold on.

Oh, don't. I'm gonna need a lot of it, don't worry. No, I think that's where I see a lot of companies mess up is They want the sales so badly that they're not putting the time in to build the relationship, or you know, oh, we're doing influencer marketing. Well, what does that really mean? Let's let's think about being an interesting. I I always liken Twitter to a party. Would you show up at a party day one and blast? I've got great solutions for you. Or would you say, oh, how are you doing? And be engaging. And so I think being clever and often. Oftentimes just means being empathetic. If you're interrupting someone's day, make it worth it.

Ooh, that's a quotable quote.

So, so what did— what have you— how have you seen it change? Because when people first started to build sites, it was a much different place than it is right now. What changes has happened?

Well, when I first started, my first webpage I developed in 1997, we were doing everything by hand. And now everything's done with tools. So today's developer has an arsenal of tools. That's why containers are a thing, right? Because we all want these environments where everything's set up for us. So, you know, I used to do everything by hand, and then I sort of tired of web dev because the tools became good. We had Dreamweaver. We had other things that helped us automate. And so now on the backend, everybody's using WordPress right now. That's kind of the hot CMS that everybody's excited about. But for years we've had Joomla, we've had Drupal. You know, everybody's— a lot of mobile developers are hot on Ghost. Like there's always going to be a bunch of tools. But the difference is that in terms of SEO, everybody can get a site up relatively easy— easily and quickly with WordPress. To get to the advanced levels still requires a developer to remove some of the bloat. A lot of WordPress sites that are— if you pre-purchase a theme, it comes with a lot of junk you don't use. A trend that I've seen now is where we're using developers to actually go and customize and debloat your themes. Minify your JavaScript, remove CSS that you don't need. Because performance is really the most important thing right now because mobile users will not hang out and wait around for your stuff to load. They'll just click away.

That's funny. My blog just told me it was feeling super bloated. I just told them, just, you know, wait. It'll go away. It's a real thing. You're eating too much salt.

Exactly. You've got to drink more water or go on medication. But yeah, no. Also hosting packages. That's something I tell people all day long. Do not cheap out on your hosting. Pay the money, get a better hosting package, and the performance— you'll reap the rewards.

Oh, wow. That's a good one. I'm curious now. So what is the first thing that somebody should be looking at when they're really trying? Everything's in place. They're writing, they're building, they're creating. But, you know, I'm sure as an SEO person, you're always walking in going, you know, but there's these 3 things you didn't do. What is it that people don't typically do that they should already be doing, or they don't typically think about as much as they should?

Great question. I definitely spend a lot of time talking to people about the 2 audiences we have for the web. So there's humans. Us, you know, people. Oh. That actually was not a— I wasn't— I welcome the applause, but I wasn't actually going for it that time. There's human people, right? But the audience we often forget are bots, crawlers, spiders. And so how that manifests in terms of SEO is, you know, let's say we put 10 images on the homepage. Well, did we remember to use and title those images appropriately? Or are they img_5557.jpg? Well, titling them appropriately, using the alt attribute to describe for a spider what is in the image, that's something that is so basic and a lot of companies overlook just because they don't— it doesn't— it's not second nature. But, you know, my appeal generally, if an organization doesn't understand, you know, I also think about 503 compliance. So for the visually impaired, if you don't care about bots, crawlers, spiders, at least, you know, think about the visually impaired people, because if we are more descriptive of what we put in our images and our source, that actually helps people who are using screen readers, et cetera, et cetera. And so just that sort of basic setup is something that a lot of big organizations miss because nobody thinks about it.

Mm-hmm. Well, and there's probably a huge disconnection between the people that are even prepping the images, the people that are Posting them. They probably don't even know what, what words to put in there. And so speaking of that though too, so as a writer of blogs myself, um, can you just tell us the relationship between choosing the right keywords to put into your blog and making sure that it doesn't compromise the actual storytelling and content?

Well, I think this is one of the, the great urban legend of— urban legends of SEO is that keywords are— can be stuffed and are effective. I, I think the trends are changing so much that natural language is actually— I would say natural language and context are more important than keywords at this point. If you want to rank for something specific and you know that that matters to you, then that's one thing. But often case, you just want to increase organic search. organic traffic. So in that case, I would use natural language and think about what is appealing to the human that will be reading this, not the bot crawler spider. Because in this case, if humans click, the index thing is going to happen.

So this whole thing is going to be bad.

I know, I know I'm bad. But so the thing is, I think Think about it from the perspective of a question. You know, if I was asking this question to my Google, my Google phone or my Alexa home device, natural language is where we're heading in terms of search, especially because of hands-free mobile, right, and then connected home. So I would think about it more in context of a sentence versus an individual keyword or phrase. And there are a lot of plugins that will kind of mislead you to think, like Yoast plugin makes you think, oh, I have this one focus keyword. This is great. I'm not saying to not do that. I'm saying that the future is, is in natural query, not in individual key terms. So I would avoid over-tagging as well because oftentimes if you're on a WordPress system, if you create tags with your post and let's say you get really quirky with it and you do 10 tags. Well, most, most sites are set up to where if you click on that tag, it takes you to a page that aggregates all of those posts. And if you're making 10 up each post, there's only going to be one. So that's not actually good for the user. So I think the emphasis should be what's better for the user rather than what's better for the robots, unless you're on that level. But overall, think about it in sentence form rather than individual keywords, because that, that trend is long gone. Keyword stuffing no longer works and it actually can lead to penalization.

Wow.

Wow. That's—

I didn't know that.

So

wait, you want to know how much time you just saved me in like trying to go through searching for the best keywords to put in there?

I mean, I don't think it's bad to be cognizant of what people are looking for. So by using Google Trends and other tools, it's not a bad thing, but I don't think that that in and of itself is going to push you forward. Thinking about it in the context of, of how someone will be searching for it is, is gonna do more for you.

Mm-hmm. Wow.

So, so could you, could you, um, go ahead and just give us the silver bullet to SEO? Is that all right?

There is no silver bullet. There's none. No. And I actually allude to that in, in chapter 1 of my book because I get asked that all the time, like, hey, what's that one thing? What's that one thing I can do? And, and true SEO is so individualized. And true SEO is so— there is no one-size-fits-all. There is no like, okay, do these 3 things, everybody. It's not a blanketed approach. I, you know, only general things I could say at this point are focus on performance, you know, be, be interesting to the people that you're bringing to your site. If you're thinking that there's one trick, then that, that's not how SEO works. SEO is a group of practices that over time are thought to, or should, are measured and improved upon and lead to more search. But, but there's not one quick, fast way you're going to get there. And if any consultant or book or whatever tells you to do that, then run far, far away.

Mic drop.

You're right.

How, um, what, let's say there were a couple things though.

Well, there, so there are a couple trends. There are a couple trends that I can say safely are gonna, you know, be going on for a while. The first would be performance, which I've talked about a few times. Performance on mobile especially. Actually, so, you know, making sure something simple as you have a mobile site that your tap targets are configured for different finger sizes. So most people don't do actual mobile optimization for a site. They just do a responsive theme and then they go call it good. But you actually need to, to test your site. So some tools can pick up some of the errors, but visual errors cannot be caught with tools at this point in time. So actually looking at your own stuff, testing it. is good because what's good for the user will be good for search. And then the other thing that I tell everybody I talk to is, if you have not already, deploy SSL. Deploy it. Do it. So SSL is— means Secure Sockets Layer. So that means that when you look at your URL in the browser, do you see a little padlock or do you see an eye with a question mark that says, oh, this page isn't secure? So you just call your web host and you say, hey, I want SSL, and they'll help you deploy it. And any site that does not have SSL is going to be fighting uphill at this point because Google has made it known, all the engines have made it known that they want you to be secure. And if you're not, then you're probably going to be down, moving down in the rankings in the near future.

Wow. Interesting. That's a, that's, that's a good one. I didn't know that.

Everyone is Googling their own site right now. Yeah. They're like, oh no, hold on.

Nobody's anticipating all of a sudden they're calling their host.

Why did the tweets stop? What's happening?

So, so let's talk about the future of SEO. Where, where do you think it's heading? Like, you know, that's— these are some great ideas and tips for what, what's happening. But you, you just mentioned like one thing, like If you don't have a secure site in the future, you're going to be hosed. What's— what is— what do you think? Where do you think everything's heading? Like, big picture?

I think usability, usability, UI/UX are going to be king if they're not already. So there are actual— what most people don't realize is that there are actually human checkers that Google hires. That, like, actual real people that check results to see if they're valid and if they're what they want to see, if they're trustworthy. So I don't think most people realize how much of machine learning is still— gosh, I'm not trying to say it on purpose. It's actually driven by humans. I do think I think the future of SEO is going to be more machine-driven. I think it is turning into, if not already, more of a developer's game than the content person's game. I'm sorry, content SEOs. I love you, but I think the developer and the more technical analytics-driven person is going to be the SEO of tomorrow.

You kind of alluded to it before. It didn't occur to me that there was a connection between search engine optimization and voice commands and AI and, you know, things like Alexa and Siri. How does that all work together?

Well, so each one is its own kind of discrete universe, but there's actually a group of students who are working on a VR search engine. So through the app atmosphere, so there's search within the App Store, right? So there's search within social media. So Alexa is going to be querying Amazon but also search engines as well depending on what apps you have configured and how it's set up. If you're using, let's say you have a Pixel phone and you're searching for directions, it's going to pull up your map. So it may, depending on how you're configured, it may pull up a browser that does pull up a local business which boom, you click on for a map. But the idea is that voice, if you're on voice and you're on mobile, chances are they want to give you your result the fastest. So it depends on which ecosystem you're starting from, but generally speaking, you're going through some type of search somewhere for any query. It's just a matter of how contained it is or not depending on platform, if that makes sense.

So, so, so how you, you're talking a little bit about AR, VR, and how search engine integrates into mobile. and all that kind of stuff. Do you think that search is going to evolve into those spaces, like into VR and AR?

Oh yeah, totally.

Where it's going to be voice-driven search and this is going to be a new— I mean, is that kind of what you're alluding to?

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And we've already seen it. There was a company that— there are multiple companies that are working on, for example, augmented reality motorcycle helmets. I work with one of them. I worked with another competitor that closed down last year, but, you know, that camera is going to give you live data that's feeding through. You're going to be asking for directions through your helmet. That helmet's going to, through Bluetooth, access to your phone. So, the quickest vehicle right now for AR/VR is the fact that your phone is the mechanism for it, but what you're— it's essentially another interface to your phone. most AR and VR applications, right? So anything that involves search is going to go through a device that's connected, and anything that's connected can therefore be searched. So it doesn't seem like a direct corollary, but it absolutely is. And like I said, there's research teams all over, students— there's a student project in Indiana where they're actually building a VR search engine, which I've been watching very closely. But right now I would just see it, you know, if you're using Oculus, you're using Gear VR, you're using your phone to do it. And so it's a hop, skip, and a jump to search for that. And, and so I've, I've even started doing smartwatch SEO a little bit because it's interesting to see how queries appear on your, your, your smartwatch versus your phone. And this is something I'm tracking very carefully as a search Right?

I do love that about you, by the way.

Thank you.

You fly your nerd flag high. I love it.

Yeah, I don't— I don't— I recently tried to come out to a friend like, I think I might be a geek, and he just ripped on me mercilessly. He was like, oh, you're an Anne bot? Oh, really? Anybody? Yeah,

like, what took you so long? We all knew, Anne. We all knew.

You've been AnneBot since 1996. We knew. All right.

Well, I'm just not—

I'm not pretending to hide it. Yeah, I'm not trying to hide it anymore.

So do you think that these skill sets that you're talking about, You know, the— it's almost like, like when you look at kids today that are building their, um, uh, skill sets, HTML is like one of those skill sets where, you know, they're learning maybe even beyond that. Um, do you think that search is another one that, um, will become just part of the skill set that you learn almost in school?

I would love that. Uh, that would, that would be like the ultimate to me. But right now, I think the only true courses that are being taught around that are either, you know, secondary education, like, you know, O'Reilly's asked me to do some training. I think they're sort of after-school specialization, unless you're a developer. I think in development, I'm starting to see more programs around it. I would love it, but I think the best vehicle to get to that point point to get to be a search is definitely the technical realm. So going through development or even design. I think design is, is the kissing cousin of SEO as well because what's good for the user is going to be good for the engines. Because if you can keep people on your site, then the engines are going to take note of that. So the two work very closely together. I don't want to, I don't want to say that content SEOs can't get there, but there's a highly driven analytical aspect to search that you have to have both factors present. You have to— it's not just all in the head, a little bit of it is the heart. And so that's why I love it, because I'm one of those whole-brained people. I have a very strong analytical and creative side. And so it's, it's hard to teach that. A lot of people that are SEOs started out as something else. Like, I started out as a developer. I've seen people go from PR to SEO. It's, it's not necessarily something that is being taught today, but I would love to see it. I would love that to happen. I would love to be professor of search. That would just—

someone, if you heard that, employ this lady right now, please.

Yes.

Totally. No, and I love it too, because even though it is Like technical in a way, it sounds a lot more strategic than anything else. I mean, you have to be able to see how all the pieces are fitting together and consider, you know, some of these other ramifications, like you said, the imagery search and, you know, even thinking about like what are common errors that Siri is not picking up what you're saying correctly, like it's going to search for the wrong thing. Yeah. You know, so even voice recognition is causing a glitch in that system.

Right, right. I wouldn't call it a glitch as much as an evolution, but as connected devices continue to grow in our lives, so will search. Because search is always going to be necessary to connect the glue, right?

Can I— can we— I don't know if this is something that you have studied or looked at or maybe just have an opinion on, but why is all search wonderful except for Facebook?

Oh, burn. Yeah, their search is awful. I think I agree, first of all, that their search is awful. I think, I think that their obsession is in creating a contained environment. It's a walled garden. versus Twitter, which is an open garden. And I think because of that, you know, they have very defined buckets of what you are. So you're either, you're a place, you're a page, you're an individual, you're an event. And so their search mechanism does not take into account all of these factors as you're searching. So if I search for my own company name, I'll get 10 different results and depending on the time or the browser or if I'm on mobile, I'll get 10 different results. And so I've never tried to optimize for Facebook because I think honestly they want advertising money. And if you want to come up, you got to pay them. And I don't think there's really much, I don't tend to optimize for them because it's too much pay to play. And I—

Bastards.

Well, right. And like I was looking for a picture from South by Southwest a couple years ago where Funny or Die stayed at my house and they, they built a beer throne of Old Milwaukee. And so I'm searching like beer throne, Old Milwaukee, like everything that I knew that picture was tagged with and I couldn't find it. And it was just like, ugh. And so I, that's just because of their siloing of data and their siloing of pages, places, people. They haven't really figured out, they should just give you a little checkbox like I am searching a person, I'm searching an image. But that doesn't generate them revenue in their minds, so they haven't, you know, directed their mega, mega resources to that yet.

They need to hire you is what they need.

Clearly.

We have so many questions coming in already, and so if you haven't gotten your questions in, feel free to still submit questions. We'll have plenty of time to address them all, but we have some great questions coming in which we'll start in just a second. You, if you're new or you're, uh, or you've been here before, you know to submit your question on #H2H, number 2, #HChat on Twitter, and we'll collect those. We've got Maya standing by collecting your questions and feeding them to us so that we can ask them on your behalf to Anbot Geek Person. So

I feel like, yeah, I want to make it— I want to make you like a little flag that actually is like says nerd on it. So you will have a real nerd flag. Why have you not had one of those yet?

I don't know, and I'm holding you responsible.

All right.

You heard it here. It's going to happen.

So just before we get into the questions, just kind of just want to wrap that up. What is it that you think that people can take away? Like, what's the one thing you want them to take away From your book? Like, why did you really write this book? Who is it for, and what was it that you wanted them to take away from it?

I wrote this book to help companies large and small increase their search presence and to demystify the practices of SEO, which I think have hidden in the shadows way too long. I have gotten way too business— way too much business over the years from shady consultants and people who have taken money from hardworking companies and startup founders, and it chaps my hide. It really does. I don't like that a lot of my colleagues don't disclose how they do what they do, and I think that has brought a cloud of doubt upon the industry. So my goal was to first of all help the little guy become the big guy because I'm all about the underdog, but secondly to demystify what It doesn't need to be. It shouldn't be a mystery what goes into SEO. It's all very practical. I wanted to transfer my knowledge into a book so that people could have access to my wealth of experience for a low price and be able to elevate our game as a whole as SEOs. Now I'm going to focus on some other weird, more futuristic stuff. Personally, but I really had to write this book so I felt like I could move on to the next level.

And I have a feeling we'll get into that weird futuristic stuff here in the questions. So I'm going to, I'm going to save that for the questions. But let's go ahead and get started. Let me start with, with Y Pro Digital. They asked, who do you optimize for? The bots or your potential customers?

It's both. Generally, humans come first because humans are able to indicate interest to bots, crawlers, spiders, but there are 2 audiences for everything that is SEO, always. There's no one or the other. It's both.

Awesome. Okay. So then Randy said, how will brands— Randy Theo, always a great H2H chatter— how will brands be able to take advantage of search in other universes? We kind of covered this a little bit in AR/VR, yet still be able to stay regional and local.

Those are not competing goals. Those are converging goals, not diverging goals. So, you know, I don't think region has anything to do with platform. So if you are highly regionalized, you would want to optimize for mobile because, you know, statistics and experience tell me that if I am looking for a business that is local, I'm likely on the go and I'm likely on my phone. Definitely. To optimize for local search is to optimize for mobile, and AR, VR, and everything, the kit and caboodle, is the current vehicle for that is mobile. So those are not competing goals by any means.

Fantastic. That makes it pretty clear. I hope that helps, Randy. Next question is from Glenda. She said, on the topic of VR, I'm sensing that people are really into VR. On the topic of VR search engines, I tried and liked Google Glass. Do you think that will come back? Maybe Google Contacts?

What happens if you lose one?

Yeah, exactly. Well, I think the applications of contacts for, you know, are very interesting for medical, right? I don't know if you've seen, Bryan, the— I forget who it is that's developing contact lenses for diabetics so that they don't have to take the— do the regular test that's painful. I don't think Google Glass is going to come back in its same form because people don't want to wear crap on their face. I'm just going to— that's the scientific answer. But then we have things like the Snapchat glasses, which are popular, but I think they're popular because they're I don't think that they really did much for Snapchat in terms of furthering the platform. I think it was just a cool ooh-ahh, and I'm definitely excited to see what comes next. But I think people are going to shy away from anything that obscures natural vision, which it seemed like Google Glass did because it was right here, so it kind of stole your focus of talking face-to-face. I think it's going to continue to evolve, whether it's Whether it's an earpiece, whether it's a smart contact, it's going to continue to evolve. But I don't think Google Glass was so universally panned that they're going to have to reinvent it to come back out to the market. And, you know, like so many people, I got the Snapchat glasses, I had fun for 2 days, and then I ditched them. So I don't think those really had the stickiness that Snapchat was hoping for. Right. But again, I'm curious to see what comes next. And I think the smartwatch is getting better adoption because it's on your wrist, it's not on your face. I think people, you know, it's used as a kind of an intermediary to your phone, which is a little more convenient. And I also, like, I have a Ringly, which I love. So like a wearable that just sort of— things that complement the phone seem to be what are doing better than things that are in and of themselves their own contained universe.

And why can't they be fashionable? That's what I'm saying. Like, why can't they make them, you know, looking a little bit like this? Or I'm liking the wearables that look more like a piece of jewelry.

Right, right. I think the hardware limitations, battery limitations— I think that was the other issue with Google Glass is that they died within seconds, you know, minutes. I think it's hardware and battery life that have really kept it from having a more advanced Glass. I think there are plenty of companies working on that, but in the meantime, I think companies like Ringly are doing a great job of making it fashion-forward without being too intense, but all it's really doing and all smartwatches are really doing is it's another way to get to your phone without having to take it out of your purse or your pocket.

Right?

Okay, so going on with the questions here, actually you answered Natasha's next question, which was any info on the stats for where SEO you've found that you can share with us. And so we just knocked that one out. Unless you had anything else on SEO as it pertains to wearables?

It's definitely something I do cover in the last chapter of my book. You know, it's projected to be a multi-billion, billion, billion-dollar industry, but there definitely is— and that's not the I can't remember the exact statistics I quote in the book, but I will say that the trajectory is pretty significant. But I think in terms of SEO, that's— there are really only a few, you know, the top 5-10% of companies are going to be at the level where it's going to make sense to do that in 2017. I think maybe in 2020 we can talk, but there's— until the smartwatch functions more like a phone itself instead of a rendezvous to the phone, I wouldn't worry too, too much about it. It's just cool.

Fantastic.

As Apple weeps silently.

I know,

right?

But even Apple might be coming out with something.

Clown tier.

All right, so Patricia says, is Internet of Things going to all tie in and be Unified when it comes to search?

I would argue that it already is. You just don't know it. You know, it's, it's, it just kind of works. We're just not aware of how it works. So to say that it all ties, I mean, by, by the nature of the internet, it is tied in because it's connected. I think most of us are not conscious of those relationships until something happens like high-profile hacking cases, which we've seen recently. With IoT devices. I definitely think that it's a more forward-looking thing than it is today, but, you know, by virtue of IoT, it is— connection is part of the deal. So, yes, and those devices are sharing data whether you know it or not, unless you are really militant about your security settings and monitor everything. I've actually had a neighbor spy smartphone appear on my Roku on my TV because they rolled out a new feature and didn't notify anybody. And so here I'm seeing my neighbor's smartphone and all his texts from his, I think, not very nice girlfriend on my television. So it's— we're already there. We're just becoming aware.

Like our connected refrigerators, we could search all the refrigerators in our neighborhood to see who had eggs. So we know who to go to to borrow one, like if we run out.

Exactly, or who has the most wine.

I didn't think of that first, what is my problem?

There's a new app. There is not an app for that.

Well, they clearly would not be coming to my house 'cause the wine is always gone.

What? Okay, so David Pepper asked, are there other ways to search on Instagram? Beyond hashtag. This is— so David, I'll actually say that that's a little bit of a different kind of search, but do you cover any, any Instagram search, or is that a part of SEO, I should say?

Um, I would say right now Instagram doesn't bring a ton of traffic to the sites that I work with because they don't allow a lot of links. Like, unless you're advertising, you can't really put links. I will say that, you know, I think sites like Pinterest I am using with clients to drive a lot of traffic. I'm having more fun with that right now. But Instagram is part of the Facebook ecosphere. So I wouldn't discount it. But, you know, Instagram in and of itself is part of a bigger strategy I think could be very useful in engagement for bigger brands. But again, you really have to be that top 5 or 10% for that to be a staple strategy unless what you do is photography or something very visual. But when I go to post or we're posting for clients at the agency, you know, I just do my research on, okay, what is trending right now? What are, you know, what are the hashtags that get the most pickup? You know, you always want to find a balance between what is, What is accurately tagging this picture versus am I stuffing to try and get more eyeballs? Because if you— So something I participate in every weekend on Instagram is Caturday. I was one of the early people who did. I can't claim that I invented it, but I'm the first person I knew that did, and this was many years ago. And so I see people tag Caturday that are just like pictures of women on beaches and stuff. Just tagging for the sake of it to get found doesn't really work on Instagram. If anything, it'll get people to block you. or not follow you because you're not being descriptive. So I think relevance should be your guiding principle on any kind of search program involving Instagram because users are very fickle on that platform, particularly because they skew younger. Sorry, millennials.

You're not, you're not at the top anymore.

Let's actually dive into video. Video is, is very I mean, I would call that very search optimized, if you will, depending upon the platform. But how do you see that integrating and then becoming a total part of the ecosystem?

Well, most people don't realize that YouTube is actually one of the largest search engines. People think of YouTube as its own thing, but it's actually a huge vehicle for search. I've had a lot of great results with YouTube SEO, but The resources have to be there to be pushing out fresh content constantly. I think in terms of YouTube SEO, what I see most companies fail at is, is filling out the description. You have a lot of space for text in those YouTube videos, more so than in a lot of other platforms. So use it, use it to describe or even do transcriptions of videos. I've had a lot of good results when I have transcribed or used a service to transcribe video. And put that along with it so that you're, you're hitting all those audiences and spiders, bots, and crawlers. But I do think the way that people are consuming content, and this was something Mary Meeker highlighted in her last report, which I love, I love the Mary Meeker annual report. She was talking about people are more and more consuming their content in video. And so I think this is definitely becoming a more viable SEO strategy to get eyeballs. Especially on social. I don't even remember what the question is anymore. I'm just kind of spitballing. About video. I would say that video is becoming more important now to SEO than it has been because people like especially those, those little Facebook videos. I mean, there's so many big content providers crushing it with those videos like BuzzFeed and their, their little, you know, stop-action Cooking videos, like, people like to see content in an easy, easily digestible format on mobile. And so I would, any, any video I would embark upon, I would take that audience into mind first, is mobile.

How do you, how do you coach people to approach content? Like, when, when, when you're looking at, because this is deeper than just an SEO conversation, Because you're talking about natural language. So you're talking about the entire body of your content, the entire body of your work. And oftentimes, you know, I just know because we also, you know, consult on content that when we walk in, you know, the content is very one-sided and often, you know, very marginalized in terms of a content calendar. But I think it goes even deeper than that, right? Like there's There's a lot of work that goes into planning before you ever get to SEO that drives SEO. Would you agree?

Absolutely. I mean, content is the largesse of what we're doing, right? And that's why I think content and SEO became synonymous a while ago. I would agree that most organizations I start with are caught in this sort of trap where they think they have to talk about themselves on their own site. And I'm always like, well, they're on your site. Quit. Now you have to catch their interest. Quit selling because they're already there, right? If they're reading your stuff, you've got them. Now make it worth it. I do think that content is, it's like an obsession for most marketers, especially marketers like us. And I think that when we have to ultimately Look at our resources before we can carve out any strategy. Because something that I hate to see is when an organization is resource constrained and they think they're going to bust out ten. They're like, oh, we're going to do ten blogs a month and da da da da da. When really, maybe one a week would suffice. I also think that the formats are changing with mobile user behavior, where longer posts are starting to do better with more pictures. Because people like to scroll up and down. I mean, listicles are still killing it and they always will. I've been doing listicles for over 10 years now and they still crush it. And it kills me because it's like they feel kind of cheap and tawdry at this point, but people love them because they know what they're gonna get. But—

Right.

I think the most important thing that a lot of organizations miss is consistency. If you're relying on someone who is otherwise busy most of the time to write, then backfill them. You know, getting things out on a regular cadence is much more important than blasting it out for the sake of it.

I would totally agree. Yeah, I think that's the secret to success for anything is just consistency.

Well, right.

Just show up every time, right?

Well, right. And so we do a lot of content calendars for clients because that, that, you know, sort of helps us plan ahead. And then your social dovetails with that content. And then you have a strategy in place that is doable versus, oh, we're just gonna, you know, the thing, the expression I hear a lot, which I'm not huge on, is boiling the ocean. It's like, no, we're not gonna, that one blog post is not gonna set the world on fire. However, consistently talking on topics that you are an expert of and Getting those in front of the right people, that will. But you have to be realistic about resources in order to carve out an appropriate plan. And that's where I just, I see a lot of crash and burning.

Yeah, I would totally agree. What are your top sites for searching for trends and like popular topics?

So I have an elaborate system of aggregators. that I use for— I have some that I do that are client-specific, and then I have some that are just sort of search industry stuff. So I— my new favorite thing right now is using Apple News, and I've got that tricked out to all the topics that I follow, and one of them is SEO. I write for Search Engine Journal occasionally, so I like them. I also like Search Engine Land. I like all the industry mags, but You know, there's, there's just a lot to wade through. So you can, you know, on your phone, whether you're Apple or Android or Windows, you can find a news aggregation app. And then I just try, I try to always be open to all the platforms, right? Right. So you can actually find, you can find the topics that interest you and then the ones that are valuable for business because, you know, staying on top of information is, is It's such a key part of SEO. And so I, I do it on the phone. I watch the morning news on CBS every morning. I'm constantly searching for information. I actually sign up for some LinkedIn groups, believe it or not, with people that are relevant. But I think again, specificity is key of what matters to you and your industry. And then also I always track my clients' competitors. Great. I was wondering.

That's a good one.

Yeah, see what they're putting out.

So, uh, Alan Berkson, good friend of, um, of HH Chat and ours, he's, he, uh, he is coming in from, uh, Freshdesk. And his— no, not Freshdesk.

FreshBooks.

Fresh something.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, Freshdesk. I'm— everything's, um Everything's fresh today. Everything's fresh. Okay, including the desk. So how do you manage content calendars across all channels is what he's asking.

Spreadsheet.

Not even in the cloud. Yeah, it has to be in the cloud.

Yeah,

no, a shared spreadsheet is generally a good way to do it. If you need approval ahead of time for social posts, Hootsuite or Buffer or one of those tools makes a lot of sense. I like to hand post when I can, but when I can't, I use a tool to do it just to not miss the cadence. But good old spreadsheet. Mm-hmm. There are tools that want to do it for you, and, you know, if you really want to trick out things and send things out in an automated fashion on certain topics, IFTTT is a good one. If This Then That. I've used IFTTT on a variety of my robo-slave things that I do. You can set up to retweet certain accounts. You can set to retweet certain topics from certain accounts. The sky's the limit if you want to automate. But if you don't, just a good old spreadsheet that's shared.

Mm-hmm. Actually, since Ellen is the one who asked this question, I'll throw out a company called Lately, who he introduced me to, who's a friend of his, Kate Chernin, I think is her name. And they're in beta right now. But I saw a demo of it. And it was frickin amazing, like combines, you know, keywords, and you can author blog posts, but also schedule and author social posts in there that are keyword driven. So it's pretty cool.

I'm thinking he was sending you a softball. Right. All right.

I'm picking up what you're laying down, Alan.

Okay, so, so just with the remaining few minutes that we have left, Anne, can you, can you kind of wrap things up in terms of where you see them going? We were, we were going to talk about the weird, strange stuff in the future. Give us some insights. What are some of the things that you're looking forward to? Definitely.

Something that I follow that I'm very interested in is haptics. So the idea that, you know, you can be riding your bike and you're using navigation and you get a subtle vibration on your left— on a belt on your left hip, you know, that you're wearing to turn left. I think what fascinates me are the interfaces that are going to take us beyond the phone. We're the generation that's going to have their face in a phone, but that's not how things are going to stay. There's a better way to live, and there's a better way to find and get information. Really, right now, we're just limited by hardware. The evolution of that is fascinating to me. I spend a lot of time using these gadgets, looking for these gadgets, but to me, they're just You know, we're just only really seeing the beginning of what we can do with man-machine integration.

Man.

You said man, so I'm gonna— I'll give you half of an applause.

Oh man, and we do have that. I mean, it's built into our, you know, Apple Watches and all our different devices. devices and the inner, you know, and our even our phones. And I mean, the haptic side of it is pretty, pretty fascinating, um, combined with, um, you know, all the things that are still coming. I mean, it's just, it's, it's a really cool time to be alive right now. So I, I couldn't agree more.

Let's hope it stays that way.

Yeah, well, in our lifetime.

And then couple that with the maker revolution and 3D printing and You know, what it's doing for so many people is just amazing, you know, from everything from organs to limbs to jewelry to just crazy things that we can do now with 3D printing. I think combining those two with connectivity is pretty amazing. And, you know, I love seeing how technology helps us be better as people, whether it's physical or emotional or otherwise. You know, a good friend of mine works with a company called RoboKind, that's robots that work with autistic children on improving their speech and understanding responses, because speech therapists tire out, whereas robots do not. And so this robot will work with the children and actually record so that the therapist can get data from it as well. I mean, it's just fascinating to me how life can And so this is, this is what I spend my time doing.

Yeah,

no, it's awesome. And I don't— you wish that we could just keep talking for another hour?

I know, right? Well, we are— we're out of time. And so, Anne, if you wouldn't mind just sharing with everybody where to buy your book, where to get your book, and where to find you.

Great. You can find your own very own

copy

of

Let me ask you, why did you choose the image? Is that an eagle?

Yes, this is the steppe eagle, which is a predatory and migratory bird. It's also called— they refer to it at O'Reilly as your colophon. I did not choose. I simply asked that the series of books prior to mine had a hummingbird, and I asked for a more badass bird. I just was like, can I have a more serious bird, please? And they gave me this. So I was like, cool, cool, that's awesome. So I'm very proud to have the steppe eagle on the COVID of my book. And it's O'Reilly's way of bringing awareness to endangered animals. Love it. So yeah, so that's why they do it. So I am available, my book is available on Amazon, Barnes& Noble, as well as oreilly.com. And the way to find me is probably Twitter. I spent half my life on it and I'm AnnBot at everything. A-N-N-E-B-O-T. I'm AnnBot at all the stuff.

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being a part of today's show. And there's a ton of people, great conversations. It's like a stock ticker here on Twitter. So thank you, everybody out there who has been tweeting alongside the chat here for joining us on another HTH Chat. We'll see you back here next Monday, same time, same place.

Yep.

And thank you so much, really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Chris.

All right, cheers, see you soon.

Bye.

Bye-bye.