Wix | Live Podcast: SERP’s Up Goes Live: 100th Episode Special

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPS Up. Aloha, mahalo. Welcome to the Serb Saw podcast. We're supposed to have some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm morty overseen the M Brand here at wix, and I'm joined by. Insert action adjectives here, our head of communications, Crystal Carter.

What's shaking all you hip cats out there on the Internet, yo?

I love those sunglasses, by the way. In case you listen. You don't listen to the podcast normally? Usually I do a whole, like, intro. Like, the fabulous, the amazing, the incredible, the unparalleled head of communications here at Wakes, Crystal Card. I just want, you know, insert adjectives here.

Yeah, he's run out of adjectives. And also maybe, maybe. I don't know. I do my best, but maybe I'm not as smart Barclay is.

Oh, no, I'm sorry again.

No, it's totally fine. It's all.

You sure?

It's fine.

It's fine. The.

The pandering for compliments, Crystal Carter. No, no.

From now on, that could be, like, your ex, like, name handle thing, but

yeah, 100 episodes is a long time to try to keep up that many adjectives.

It's a lot. It's a lot of episodes. We talk a lot.

We. A lot. And. And it's not even all the things we talk about. That's the thing.

The truth behind, like, the, you know, like, the. The Hot Takes episode, the things we don't publish. Well, welcome, everybody, to a live, special edition of the Surf Stop podcast. We're celebrating 100 episodes, and to do that, we're doing it live. We're doing it live, which is a deep cut because I'm old, so you basically get to hear me flub the intro a thousand times and see, like, what actually happens and how many times it takes me to get it. Usually two or three.

Yeah, I mean, like, we do our

best, but to be fair, you have. You got that radio sound, which. Which is. Which is second to none, really.

Living my dream. I've always wanted to be a sports announcer or radio host. Dude, here I am.

Yeah, here you are. And. And yeah, the. The intro normally goes pretty smooth. Give yourself more credit than that.

No, it does. It does. Well, let's see the king. We'll find out. Yeah, I don't have those plans, so we'll see how those go. Sometimes they don't go well. Let's see. Well, anyway, we have some amazing guests today. Chimaej is here. Darren Shaw, Joy Hawkins, Eli Schwartz, Kevin Indigs, and a very special rendition of the Snappy News with none other than Broadway Barry himself, who will be here later. But before that, thank you for joining us and welcome. Here's how it's going to work. Okay. If you listen to the show each week, we have segments. Nothing changes. We still have segments, except this time there's a different guest or set of guests for every segment. During the last five minutes of each segment, we're going to take questions from you. So please plop your questions into the chat and to help us curate the questions. Yeah, plop is a good additive for putting questions in there. Just plop them in.

Just plop.

Think about all the things that go plop. And to help us curate the questions is going to be our head of SEO editorial. George Wyndham's Mr. SEO Hub will be curating your questions. So throw the questions in. And by the way, let's give George a big welcome. Hi, George.

Hi.

This is George. Of my involvement.

The podcast lives on the Hub. And you're. You're. You're the Hub. So appropriate to have you here. I feel like it is perfect.

But more important than me, I want to make sure that everybody listening understands that the more specific you are with your questions, the more likely they'll be answered. And be careful because sometimes when I'm reading your questions, it doesn't match up to what's being said. And so if you leave out that context, your question will not be answered. So ask good questions and I will do my.

My best.

So we want you to plop strategically.

Yes. Make sure your plopping is optimized.

Fully optimized.

Yeah, fully optimized. Flopping.

Hi, Piper.

Yeah. Does have an amazing donut shaped cushion, Jack. You're absolutely correct.

Thank you, Jack.

He does also, like, can we just, like, can we just appreciate the locks? Like, George doesn't normally have like all the locks on show. He's going of. Oh, my goodness.

This is getting too risky for our, for our podcast, George.

This is the wrong kind of webcast.

Okay.

Yeah, George, thanks so much and we'll see you in the, in the comments. Okay, now, since we're actually doing this live, we're also doing the production live. I don't. I feel like saying we're doing this live is kind of obvious. We're here, we're live. It's not Weekend at Bernie's. We're alive. And to help with the production, they who always do our production, Edge Media Studios or site Strategics Those fellows are also here because we're breaking the fourth wall. Right? The production. The production that happens on the show isn't magic. It's Aaron and Jacob. Mostly Jacob, I would imagine.

Pretty much.

Yeah. No, no. But I can't do that with my hair, so.

Excuse me, I thought we booked this room for Edge of the Web. I'm sorry, did I get my calendar confused here? Sorry.

That is appropriate because I go on your podcast and pitch this podcast, so kudos to you.

Exactly.

Had.

Had to do it. Had to do it.

Want to say thank you. You guys do a great job with the podcast every week and it's very much appreciated.

More than welcome, guys. And it's been proud to be able to do 100 episodes. Let's go for another 100.

Yay.

Thank you so much for all of your help.

You're more than welcome.

Okay, so let's get right into it. Well, oh, wait, wait. I didn't do the traditional WIX line. The Surf's up podcast. See, there's a flub. First flub of the day. First flub of the day.

Who's counting?

I'm counting. That's one. The Surf's up podcast is brought to you by WIX Studio, where you can only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, but where you can also be on the lookout for a new SEO course that's coming with folks like Aleyda Solis, Andrew Optimize, Debbie Chu, and so forth. But it's also also where you can push your SEO and marketing further with native tech and apps built together with Google, Bing, Amazon, mailchimp, Meta, Tickety Talk and more. Look for integrations inside of the WIX Studio SEO and marketing dashboards and in the WIX Studio app center. As today we're going all over the SEO universe, we're getting 100% fresh squeezed, 100% fresh squeezed SEO insights. Nay, I say knowledge schemes. As we look into, is SEO still the same powerhouse it once was? Are there new local ranking factors you may not know about? The answer obviously is yes. Could you imagine we did a segment and all it was was no, there's nothing new. And will AI get you across the finish line? Plus, the Walter Cronkite of SEO and source of many SEO memes, Mr. Happy Camper himself, Barry Schwartz, will be joining us for what is sure to be a carnival esque version of the Snappy news. Because on this episode of the Sur up podcast, we're keeping it 100. It takes me a while to figure like that last line, like, what should it be? It's like, I spend most of my week figuring it out.

Hey, man, you just gotta make it land. Just, like, stick the landing.

Like, whoosh, it's 100. Bam. Sound effect. All right, let's get right into it. SEO has changed a lot over the past, like, 30, I don't know, three seconds. There's been a lot of talk about how effective SEO is, whether or not it's still entirely its own discipline. It's sort of overlapping the marketing in all sorts of new ways. Let's explore the efficacy and boundaries of SEO with a deep thought with Crystal Morty and special guest Chima Medje from Moz. Welcome to the show, Chima.

Hi.

Number two. I forgot we're doing it live. There's a sound effect that we have to do.

Okay. Should I speak about the sound effects? The wild ways for the sound effects finish?

It was very long.

I should have brought you on after the sound effects. See how good I am at this. I've only been podcasting for, like, you know, a thousand episodes.

Big budget, production. You guys are good. Yeah.

You have the Moz Pod now. I saw you brought that back in studio.

But this is. This is fancy. This is really fancy.

Well, this is why we have such a fancy guest. Thank you so much for joining us.

Of course, of course, of course. I am glad to be here. And congrats on 100 episodes. That is insane. I think we did, like, 20 episodes of most part. And I was like, oh, God, do I want to do this again? You guys have done 100. Like, giving up at 20. You've done a hundred. I need to step off my game. I need to step up my game.

We've recorded a few more.

A lot of talking. Okay, so, like, let's, let's, like, get right into this. Google just finished rolling out the. The August 2024 core update, which we're going to talk about more later with Barry probably. And a lot of that had to do. A lot of the conversation that the narrative had to do with Fixing the. The September 2023 helpful content update. And there's all these questions about, like, you know, is Google doing the right by smaller websites? Which makes me. Or leads me to this question. Chima, is the SERP broken?

Look at my reaction.

Okay?

Like, I, I, I just, I feel like. I feel like I've been saying this for years, and I've made several rant posts on LinkedIn about it. In fact, I remember last year Speaking at Brighton SEO, a whole round about Google for 20 minutes and I've forgotten his name. But there was someone from Google that was literally going up right after me to do a presentation. It was awkward. This is how much I am frustrated with everything that Google has been doing with the steps, the helpful content updates. I'm saying this here live is a fast it. That whole thing is like one big pr. There was. There's nothing helpful about that update.

I.

Absolutely nothing. Nothing. And this is me right now working on a content audit website with over a million pages and spending hours on the SES every single day. There is nothing helpful about that update. I'm like I'm on a. I'm on a forum where there are lots of SEOs and people who own small businesses and many of them have had to shut down. Many of them have suffered tremendously from this. These are people that have been working hard to implement best SEO practices and are suffering and there is literally no explanation why their websites are suffering. It feels like, it feels like we are like coys or something. Just like, I don't know. And they're just like puppeteers just playing with us. You know, it's very frustrating. And the step is broken. The step has been broken for a long time. We've just been, I don't know, we've just been blinded by all of this whole rubbish period that Google is self serving. And Google is helpful. No, they're not helpful. They are self serving they business that exists to make profit. So nothing helpful about the updates. Yes, the step is 1000% broken. If you even compare between the USPS and the UK SEPs, the distinction is insane. The USPS is cluttered. It is. There's ads here at there this year. They're trying to push something on you. It doesn't make sense. And then you look at the UK se cluttered but it's not as bad as the uss. And I'm like, how does anybody even use the sex. How does anybody even use Google in the us? It is insane. I'll stop here because I could do this forever.

So you've got a lot of people chiming in, in the comments here. You know, Wendy Marrow saying the serpent's been broken for a long time. Amen. And Simon Cox saying that he thinks you're skirting around the issue,

Simon, trying to stir things up.

I will say it, Simon, tell me, what is the issue? Look, I work at most now so I have to be very diplomatic. If I was still working for myself, I would have probably been using a lot more colorful words than what I'm using right now but I'm trying to be very, very diplomatic but you can see how frustrated I am with the steps. I don't think they're going to release any updates that is going to fix any of these issues.

There are people and I agree with there's no update, there's no one thing like adding Going back to plopping plopping Reddit all over the SERP was because they saw the content trends that okay, people are looking for like first hand knowledge, experiential content and they looked around the web and they said we don't have any sort of. So we're just going to throw Reddit there. It was a default solution and it wasn't a long term thing.

It was lazy. It's lazy to have Reddit on the search. It's like as content folks as a rule of thumb we don't link to Wikipedia because Wikipedia does not have authors. Anybody can go on Wikipedia and write information. It's literally the same thing with Reddit. Nobody uses their real names. Anybody can go in Reddit and put answers to questions and then you see these answers to populating in people also ask populating future slippers populating everywhere on the steps as correct information. It is dangerous at worst and I don't even know what the best is.

There is no best, there's no good solution.

So I, I'm not, I wouldn't say calling it devil's advocate but let's for argument's sake.

Yes.

Do you think that one of the reasons why we've seen so much upheaval and so much, so much volatility in the SERPs which I certainly agree with in the, in the, in the last year. Do you think part of it is lots and lots of variables like lots of new features coming in so the, the alignment with red with Reddit, the AI overviews, the sge, the you know, more machine learning do you think it has to do. Do you think it is just too many things being thrown in at the same time and it messing up lots of SERPs like as a result or do you think it's something else?

Krista, this is not playing Devil's advocates. You are supposed to be telling me why Google is better or making a case for for them not being a up child. You are basically just proving my points. Releasing too many features that they did not test properly. Futures that were rushed. SG did not even last up to a year and now they brought Google Overview. I still don't understand why we have AI overview And sep and feature snippets on the same step. I feel like it's, it's counteractive. Like pick one, make a choice.

You know that, yeah, that to me is like the problem. I feel like a lot of the things are knee jerk reactions. Like again like your knee jerk reaction to want first person content. Throw the Reddit thing there. Knee jerk reaction. We need to keep up with co pilot and OpenAI and blah blah blah blah. Let's roll out with the. With basically is a featured snippet but it takes longer to load. I. It's just interesting. But okay, so at the, at the same time then you have all this volatility. You have things that you can't. Like what's in your locus of controls in SEO. None of this, none of this is how are you supposed to like as an SEO, how are you supposed to do this?

I've.

Listen, I'll say this like I've heard like things to be like, yeah, I, I don't know what to do. I can't produce the kind of results that I, that I've always wanted to. Can you still be effective as an SEO in an environment like this?

I am going to be honest. We are suffering as in, we've been, we've been suffering for a while because the steps are so volatile that even when you do a technical audit you don't find the reason why your traffic is tanking and the visibility used to get on SE is lost. There's no reason for it. And it's. I feel like I'm being honest. I feel like we're just trying new stuff. Oh, okay. First person content. Let's try to see if we can get more first person content in there. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. You don't have enough data to even tell you that this is the right decision that you're taking. You know, it just feels like, it feels like we are trying our best with what we are seeing on the set because there is no clear guidance. And to be honest, a lot of us are playing a guessing game right now and that is the best that we can do if we're being honest. It's all, it's all, it's all a guessing game based on what we've seen one or two variables work and this is not a long term strategy if we're going to be realistic. It's not going to work in the long term. I honestly, I don't know what the answer is mod because I'm thinking about it now and the Way we used to do SEO that used to drive results. That was like mathematics. If you did this, you did this, this would happen. Is not working anymore because you're fighting against Reddit. How do you compete against Reddit? Nobody has figured that out yet.

No. And it's not even consistent. I think the one thing that I think bothers me the most is a lack of consistency. Right? So Google will say, like, write content for users, yada, yada, yada, and it'll work in sometimes, in some cases, and then you'll go to another query and like the same old schlock, you know, five best ways to whatever is still ranking. And you're like, okay, so I did what you wanted. It worked here, but it didn't work there. And if you're somebody who's doing a strategy, it's hard to work at a strategic level. You don't have that consistency. And by the way, I'm not coming right down like raining hellfire on Google for that. Like, it's an algorithm. It's hard to get all of that right. But that doesn't take away from the complexity at the same time.

Yeah, I think it's a great conversation. I think, though, we have so many guests, we could talk about this literally all day long. And Chima, everybody in the comments, Gagan

Gotra SERP spotter extraordinaire has said thanks

for saying it out loud.

Chima, you've been an incredible guest.

We've got our next group of folks

coming on, so thank you so, so much.

Thank you so much, guys.

Thank you.

More tactics.

Thank you for giving me. I really appreciate that. Enjoy the rest of you. Bye bye.

Bye. Wow, that was like the most honest take on that I think I've heard in quite, quite a long time now. So not only, not only if, if Chima's hot take was new, I guess something else that's a little bit new for you as well because not only do we have a daily news series on the SEO Hub with Barry Schwartz and Greg Finn, who Barry will be here shortly, actually called It's New. We have an entire segment of this podcast named after the folks like yours truly who take the social media asking, Barry, is this new and slightly irrelevant thing on the SERP new? So let's take a look at what might be unknown in the local ranking factor space as Sterling Skies, Joy Hawkins and White Sparks Darren Shaw join us for a local ranking factor version of It's New. Oh, I'm sorry.

Hey, morning.

So this is like, here on the podcast.

Thanks for having us.

No, thanks for.

Oh, I feel like I see you all both because I follow you on. On TikTok and you're always like the first ones on my tick tock being

like, local pack thing. I'm like, yeah, local pack, do it.

Well, I'm glad that my content is making it into your feed. It's not making it into too many people's feed, but you must have engaged with me at some point.

The best, the best thing about that,

the struggle is real. The struggle is real. But I see yourself everywhere.

Trying to be everywhere. Trying to be everywhere. Hey, it's Darren Shah. Local SEO tips. You want to hear some tips? I got tips.

But between you and Joy, like, I feel like the local SEO space is killing it with like social media videos. For SEO, we.

Yeah, Joy's videos are great too. She's doubled down on videos past little while as well. It's, you know, it's the way it's. It's gonna. Eventually we're all just be making videos. No more text content. Who wants to read these days?

I still read.

I know, I'm joking.

I just read headlines and I just draw conclusions from that. Who needs to read the rest of the content? We were talking before the show, like, what should we talk about for this segment? And then through our various emails, it came up like, wait a second, there's a bunch of new stuff in the local space, in the local ranking factor space. So like, hey, Darren and Joy, what's new?

What's new? Well, yeah, there are some new things and this is really my fault because I'm a year behind with the local search ranking factor survey. So I usually put it out every year, but the last One was in 2023. And actually I partly blame Joy for this because it was like the week after I released the 2023 version, she publishes this post showing how services impact rankings. I was like, oh, Joy, I just launched the local search ranking factors and we missed your awesome tip. And so, you know, I mostly just report the news, but we gotta give credit to Joy for doing the research and discovering the actual ranking factors. So, you know, I'm always like, oh, my God, Joy Hawkins blew my mind again because she discovered this awesome new thing. So same.

It's an effort here, but Darren gets to tell it from inside his fridge. So if you haven't seen his newest video, it's like you get footage from inside his fridge.

But I'm sorry, guys. Totally talk over each other.

Yeah, it's hard. I know. It's four People, do you want to hear some things that are new?

I mean. Yeah, the name of the segment is it's new.

Okay, Joy, why don't you tell us about how services currently impact rankings?

Yeah. So there's a little services section inside the Google Business Profile dashboard that's easy to miss. But you can add anything you want in there. You can make your own. You can add ones that Google has. We've done a lot of testing on it and they do impact ranking. But I should clarify, it's like a small impact. So usually we see it for longer tail queries that maybe don't match a category or things that are not super competitive. But like if you're a plumber and you just go add plumber as a service, you're probably not going to rank for plumber if you didn't rank before. So it is a small ranking factor, but still one that is worth filling out.

And can you. So this is the question that a lot of people ask. We know that if you go into the services section of your Google business profile, Google will suggest predefined services. And you just, they're like little pills. You just click them and you're like, yeah, I do that. Yep, I do that. I do that. You just click the ones. Right. And so Joy's original research was focused on those predefined ones. And it definitely said, you know, identified that when you do put those on your profile, you now rank better for those terms depending on how competitive they are, as Joy had mentioned. Now what about there is a place where you can add your own custom services. Have you done any testing around that? Have you found that the custom ones that you put in there, you know, you know, haircuts for, you know, long haired dogs. So you put some weird long thing in there. Will you rank better with the pre, with the custom services?

Yes.

Hold on a second.

Running this down so I can figure out how to manipulate this.

So they both work. The one on custom services I think we talked about later, like it was this year and I think the other one was earlier and I want to say like trying to remember the keyword that Colin tested it on. It was something like super niche, like vampire facials or something. Something weird. I was like googling like, what the hell is that? So really, really niche again. Right. But he just wanted to know if there was any impact whatsoever. And there was. Uh, so again, good way to go after like longer tail. Keywords that don't have like crazy high search volume or aren't super competitive, are

Y' all worried about manipulation? I wasn't joking before. I'm writing it down so I can manipulate it because that's, that's how you do local SEO, right?

Well, I would say, I would not call it manipulation. It's basically optimization. Like let's say you have a web page on your website and you want it to rank for a specific page term, but you never mentioned that term in your web page. Well, Google's gonna have a hard time connecting the dots. So this is the similar thing with your Google business profile. You wanna make sure that you're telling Google what you do. Tell Google what you do. It would be really helpful if Google can rank your business for the things that you do. And so that's basically what the services section provides. And you know, it's not a huge ranking factor, but it's just another step in the local optimization process. You should fill out your services, you should add any service that you have. And the fact that custom services work is really valuable. And have a tip for custom services because customer services often get pulled into the local results as justifications. It'll say, this business provides vampire facials, right? Well, did you know there's a vampire emoji? So if you put the vampire emoji in the title, so it's like vampire emoji, vampire facials, then in the local results you'll see a whole panel of businesses that all provide that service. But yours has that little vampire emoji which will draw people in and, and help and make them click it. They'll be like, oh, look at that one. It just, it's just like a little eye catching thing in the search results for more clicks, more conversions. And you know, we all believe that if you get more clicks and more engagement, then that'll help you rank too. So it's, it's mostly a conversion tip, but it may have a side benefit of ranking boost as well.

And I think also like, that's a really a prime example of like one of the things that I love about like local SEO and the local.