Unsolicited SEO Tips with Mark Williams-Cook (Candour, AlsoAsked) | SEO Unplugged #23

Hello and welcome to another episode of the SEO Unplugged podcast. I'm your host, Itamar Blauer. Today I'm joined with Mark Williams-Cook, who's the co-owner of Kandor and also the founder of Also Asked. Mark, good to see you. How are you?

Very good, thank you. Very pleased to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure. Today, this is a bit of a fun episode. We're going to be talking all about pretty much a lot of the stuff that people will know you from on LinkedIn posting unsolicited SEO tips. So of course you've posted by this point like hundreds and hundreds of different tips at various points. So the first thing that I want to get to, which is quite interesting, and I'm going to start off with the big questions, like what is it that you found to be the most impactful? Like when, you know, when you're looking at different tips to share and it covers so many different types of areas. What have you found to be some of the more impactful things that you've sort of shared that you think people need to pay attention to?

Yeah, so frustratingly for me, it's not always what I think are the most valuable tips. So the way I actually come up with them is normally in my day-to-day work when I'm doing SEO and I see things. I'm kind of like, yeah, this is something I should probably let people know about, or this was a tricky kind of thing I worked out, or, you know, I found a new tool. So the things that get, depending how you want to judge that question, the things that get the most engagement are normally the things that, and the reason I started the tips, the things where most people disagree on. So I can guarantee you, if I put a post up saying that, like, bounce rate in Google Analytics is not a ranking factor, it will get hundreds of replies of people telling me like I'm wrong and it definitely is. Um, so there's, and there's obviously important nuance to, to these things because we know Google does use click data and like long clicks and SERP data, but I don't think they're using bounce rate from Google Analytics specifically. So it's normally things like that. Um, that get the most engagement or things where you tackle, um, like big platforms. So I recently reposted a tip about, uh, Shopify and how it can out of the box create a lot of canonical issues with collections. And again, that's been really popular, I think, just because it's something really common that lots of people are on Shopify and they may not have even considered that. And now they've looked at it and gone, oh yeah. And they've got a solution to it.

Yeah, I see for sure. So, so in terms of that, obviously these tips being unsolicited and, you know, because a lot of people will kind of look out, generally speaking, for SEO advice and something that a lot of people who've spoken to me in the past, they always want those quick wins and just like the things that they can do now that are gonna be most impactful. But from your perspective, you've kind of covered a wide range, an array of different types of tips covering from pretty much all sorts of areas, from your technical to content to links. And I'm wondering from your perspective, because within your day-to-day, and obviously you've got also asked you, also being a practitioner as well, what have been some of those more significant parts of SEO? Not necessarily the ones that may be the most interesting per se or complicated, but things that you've sort of noticed that are making a difference at this moment in time.

So again, that's a really good question. Um, at the— with the kind of work that I'm doing, And in terms of maybe differentiating how me and people like me do SEO, I think the thing that makes the biggest difference, and by that I mean in the long term, is actually the strategic approach to SEO, which comes from a good understanding of how all of those, whether it be technical bits or content bits, fit together to form a picture and how importantly that picture fits in with what Google is trying to achieve, both technically, both financially, because obviously a lot of what Google does has financial motivations for them. And you get some contradicting advice, like Google says they're trying to provide the best experience for users, right? And I would argue that best experience for users would be a site with no ads on it because they just slow down a page, right? But Google has some guidelines that like you're not allowed too many ads because that's part of how they make money, right? So there's this nuance in actually sometimes disregarding what is highly effective in the moment. So like my background before I was agency side was I mainly did affiliate stuff and mainly built built my own sites and my focus was essentially on whatever worked today in SEO and then doing that as hard as possible. And I got good results, but it was difficult because every— I became an expert essentially in getting sites penalized in Google because, you know, there would be a churn there. So from a— from my point of view and my perspective as an agency owner primarily and helping clients and by clients, they are established businesses that want to be there for the long term. So I think some of the best advice I give, which is again, probably some of the least attractive, is more about how to approach SEO and how you should think about SEO. Whether it be that, you know, I've posted a couple of times things like in general, you shouldn't be doing things for SEO. There's some exceptions, things like structured data and stuff that's invisible to users. But in general, most things you should be doing in terms of content, in terms of user experience design, should be, we're doing this for a business reason, for, you know, which is normally linked to an end visitor, customer, consumer, client reason. And the SEO is you're doing it in the most efficient, understandable way to search engines. I think that's important because you're aiming ahead of the algorithm rather than at where the algorithm currently is, because probably the only thing consistent about SEO is the change.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you're sort of touching upon that, the notion that SEO advice can typically then fall under 2 types of buckets, whereby one is the things that you can do at this very moment to get ahead. or to have some tangible changes in terms of your organic visibility. But then the other bucket is more of the, here's the things that make sense for you to be around in the long term, which you will have different audiences who would prefer one or maybe both of those different scenarios. But then also what you mentioned before is, is it worth people to disregard a lot of Google documentation and be more in favor of Unsolicited SEO tips from Mark Williams-Cook on LinkedIn. So, you know, that, that's also quite, quite interesting. But what, what do you sort of think in terms of the advice that you try to give out? Does, does it more fit in within the bucket of the long-term sustainable plays as opposed to the sort of things that are happening at the moment? Or just, just so I can try and get into your head a bit more in terms of how you actually think about the stuff they're posting, because obviously you have a big audience and people listen to you. And obviously people like yourself, me, other types of people who create content around SEO, it's hopefully to make the industry a better place and not a worse place, cuz there's gonna be terrible SEO advice out there anyway, just by nature, right? So how, how do you approach that?

So that's actually the reason I started doing the Unsolicited SEO Tips. I think it was 2019 I started posting them and it was because I was seeing lots of bad SEO information on LinkedIn that could damage businesses. And by that I mean like waste, at best case scenario, like waste their resources, right? So I think the straw that broke kind of my back on that was someone had loads of engagement on a post saying that your content to code ratio needed to be 50/50. And I was just like, what is this? And there are loads of, you know, small business owners being like, oh, this was really helpful. You know, we'll, we'll look into this kind of thing. And the difficulty I had was because again, we're at an agency and we deal with a certain type of client, certain type of organization. I can't professionally help these people because they don't have budgets maybe to work with an agency. But at the same time, it's beneficial for us as an agency and an industry, I think, to have good SEO information out there, which is why I started posting. So I was like, this can help all these kinds of people. And in terms of the ratio, I guess, of how much strategic advice and how much like specific advice, it's probably, I'd say about 10 to 1 in terms of for every 1 strategic post, there's like 9 or 10 very specific things. And the reason for that is primarily when I write the SEO tips, I'm trying And it's more difficult than it sounds to make them— the concept generally applicable. So like, I rarely look at someone's specific website and give a specific answer for their case. Anything that I'm trying to give advice about, for most people, it might just be for a category of a type of site, but anyone should be able to read it and kind of get something from it. Um, and I try and give examples of those things. And in terms of my advice or things like Google documentation. While I haven't got like any love for Google as an organization, I don't think even if you're doing Google Ads, they're certainly not your friend. You know, they're there to make money. They've got your agenda, their agenda. And if you get in the way of that, you generally get squished. But I don't think I really give any advice that's like contrary to say like Google documentation. And in fact, A lot of my advice would be that's where to start because I think too many people learning SEO don't bother reading the manual first. Like, don't look at the guidelines, don't look at the documentation, and they almost end up on like this conspiracy theory, um, like route where they assume everything Google's telling them is, is like, you know, lies or something, which like from my experience, I don't think that's true. Like, certainly there's very specific ways, uh, Googlers word things, and certainly there's things they don't tell us. You know, of course there's things they don't tell us. It would be absolutely wild if they just told us everything, right? And I think if you approach that with the correct mindset of, okay, they're not telling me everything, but the things they are very clear about I can treat as true, and things in documentation when it comes to like technical advice, they— that your motivation there, if you like, is aligned with Google because Google want to be able to index and understand web pages. So there's no reason, financial or otherwise, for them to be misleading you with that. So I think there's a line. And again, that's something I'm going to speak about soon is kind of how to decode the information you get from Google and turn it into something Useful.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the tricky point comes about where we know as SEOs who are, you know, we're in a niche within marketing, which is a niche, sorry, a niche within digital marketing, which is a niche within marketing. So it's like we're pigeonholed into this little corner and there's a bunch of people out there who don't have the time. You know, if you're like a marketing executive and you are basically running the whole show, right? You are not gonna necessarily have time in your day or in your weekend, cuz I'd imagine you have better things to do than to read Google documentation. And then I guess the tricky thing is, is that when people are going online and I see this on LinkedIn, even to this day, I see big accounts who will post content around SEO. And whenever I see it, I'm always a bit skeptical cuz I'm like, I know you are not an SEO person. Like you are a broader marketing person. Sometimes where I see information about SEO, which I look through and I'm like, actually this isn't fully correct. Like people shouldn't really be focusing so much attention on this. Then it gets tricky because then you've got sort of mass audiences there. So I guess my question is, what's the best approach for people when they come across SEO information and tips online, especially nowadays, and especially if they're coming from accounts that have thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of followers? What should the approach be by default in order to like help at least make sure that they're not being led into the wrong direction? And I hope there is an answer to this, right? Because it does sound like quite a tricky thing to navigate.

I mean, it's one of the reasons I'm not yet on TikTok for SEO. I just don't think I'm prepared to handle that. I think the biggest thing is the— and it's a great rule for life, which is if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Because a lot of the really popular marketing advice you see is when there's just an extreme claim. We saw it in bucketloads when we had kind of GPT version 3 released, people claiming they're making $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 a month doing 12 minutes work because of AI. And it's clearly not true. It's clearly not true. And you get similar claims with SEO of people claiming, oh, you can, the wording, you can dominate Google with things like this and rank number 1 for any keyword in 10 days. So my spidey sense would always be on if I'm seeing kind of wild claims like that. My advice would be, for people to actually be part of an SEO community. Um, and I would say don't, at least in the first instance until you know the people, I wouldn't pay to do that either. So there are some good paid communities. Um, but for every good one, I think there's probably 50, um, you know, membership type groups that essentially just want your money. The people in general that you see are quite visible in the SEO community that are doing conferences are a good place to start. They can introduce you to people, and in my experience, they're eminently helpful. You know, people are very generous with their time, and joining some Slack groups and things like that with other people who are actually working day to day in the industry can be a really good way to get a sounding board for if you see things. And I'm in a couple of different, uh, like Slack groups and WhatsApp groups with SEOs. And, you know, even for people that's experienced, they'll, they'll share things they've seen and just get feedback from, from other people. So I think that's realistically the only way you could insulate yourself if you're new, because part of the problem of being new is you don't have the experience to make these judgments about what is, is correct and what isn't. And working against you if you're, like you said, you are hired as part of your role to do SEO. You are going to be under pressure to get results. So people coming promising results are always going to be very, very attractive for you of, oh, I can just use ChatGPT to do all my keyword research and write my content, and then I've got loads of time to do this. So yeah, that'd be my advice there.

Yeah, no, that is really good advice. And I think it does come back to, I suppose, the more community aspect where like the more people you speak to, then you'll sort of get an idea in terms of saying, hey, I heard so-and-so, what do you think about this? And when you ask enough people who are practitioners in their day-to-day life, then you'll get a rough idea, I would assume, in terms of like what's actually valuable and what isn't. Um, the last thing I want to get to, is there any unsolicited SEO tip that you've sort of not shared on purpose or anything that you haven't yet shared that you would want to share here right now? And I am putting you on the spot because I think it'd be quite fun. There doesn't have to be one, but I'm just wondering if there is. Do you like keep something in the back of your mind for like a rainy day or like what?

So a view into my chaotic life, which surprises most people, is when I write those SEO tips. So I do that every single working day, right? Monday to Friday, pretty much all year round, even schedule them when I'm on holiday. Is that day to day, I usually just think them up before I do them. There's no pre-planning. And it's just because I encounter enough stuff and see enough stuff during the day to kind of give opinions on. I occasionally recycle them now just because as my audience has grown, I realize, you know, there might have been something I posted 2 years ago that's still relevant that was popular, and then there's another 10,000 people who have never seen that. Um, in terms of things I haven't posted, um, yes, um, so I, I think a few people know I got a Google bug bounty, um, this year back in March for finding a Google exploit that, um, was giving variable names, loads of variable names for different things it looks like Google was using in ranking. But more interestingly to me was it was also surfacing the values for those. So it wasn't just, you know, here is this quality metric. It was this particular domain has this score. This was hugely interesting to me. And my initial plan was to publish a lot of that information. Um, and I decided against that in the end after seeing the— so we had the Google API Content Warehouse leak thing, um, which was slightly different. It was more just kind of variable names. There wasn't any definitive, it has this values, it's being used, whatever. We had comments, we had variable names. And if I'm honest, um, I was a little bit disappointed with how some of that information was handled in regards to, I think, probably as an industry, the general understanding. And I'm not now talking about the specialists, the people who are full-time SEOs going into it, but I think it put out maybe some misinformation to people who are quite new to SEO and in fact, reduced the collective understanding we have of search engines because there was definitely some things in there where some big logical leaps were made and they were kind of then presented as fact because we had this correlating evidence, which in my opinion, in some cases was fairly weak. Things like, there is definitely a Google sandbox in the context to how it used to be talked about. I still absolutely don't agree. Um, with that, I think there is something Google calls a sandbox. And, um, again, there's, there's some excellent work on what kind of that is. Um, and the end result of that was, I think there was quite a big backlash to specific Googlers, um, you know, being like, oh, they're just lying to us. And I think all of this was, uh, amplified by the helpful content update, obviously, which upset a lot of people in and outside the community. Um, So I had a lot of information I was originally going to share about that, but I was worried about how it would be kind of interpreted by people. So I didn't want to present it without context. So the decision I've made in the end is I'm doing like a couple of talks this year, hopefully some more next year, and I will show people the things I discovered, but I want to do it carefully in context. to listen, these are the values I found, this is the situation I found them in. I've done correlation studies with like Ahrefs data, SE Ranking have helped me with some stuff, done some data science on it to find like, you know, correlations between different datasets. So I've got a better idea of, I can say, you know, this is this, and maybe I couldn't find, you know, a reason why they use this or what it is, or this is this, and it definitely does this, um, rather than just put it out there and create drama, which I don't think necessarily helps move the industry forward. So to answer your question, yes, there is things that I have held back. Um, nothing probably that I'd want to share right now for those reasons, but in general, I am super open about the things that I know about SEO. Um, I don't, I don't think, having done it for 20-odd years, I don't think the differentiator so much nowadays is knowledge in terms of like, I need to hoard and protect the knowledge I have. It's more, as I said, about how to apply that in context to businesses, you know, how to prioritize stuff. When you actually start doing SEO, you realize there is a whole lot of really important challenges that fall completely outside of just understanding how a search engine works. If you want to get to the point where you've got better rankings, you know, and you've got someone to implement it, sign off on it, deliver it, and you've got it done. And that's what we're good at. So I'm not, you know, I'm not doing much. I still do experiments, but not doing too much like black hat stuff anymore. I don't tend to post much black hat stuff. Just again, because I don't want people going off and playing with a chainsaw if they don't know they can hack their own limbs off with it, to use a dirty analogy.

No, for sure. And also the bounty program thing, I remember, and you gave that money to charity, which was a really nice thing as well to do. Yeah.

So it's being paid now in, I think, about 40 days' time. So it took me since March. There was a long process to become a supplier with Google, and I'm really bad at doing forms. So it got rejected a whole bunch of times, but I finally got there. It's all approved and got the PO. Yeah. So that's going to Brave Futures charity at the end of next month.

Amazing. Very cool. So, Mark, this has been a wonderful conversation. To sort of end it here, I always ask, you know, where can people find you if they want to get in touch or if they haven't yet been seeing the Unsolicited SEO Tips?

So the easiest way is just to Google Mark Williams-Cook. I think I'm the only Mark Williams-Cook on the internet, it seems. So it's very easy to find me. I'm most active nowadays on LinkedIn. I don't use Twitter, X, as much as I used to. If you want the kind of content that I've been talking about, so apart from the SEO tips, we do a podcast and such. I run an SEO newsletter at coreupdates.com, and that's essentially just a bullet point of what I think the important SEO news is from the previous week. It's the 5 unsolicited SEO tips from the previous week, and it's Jack's and my Search Wakanda podcast episode. So that's a nice way to— and the reason I started that was just I didn't want to rely on the LinkedIn algorithm, especially because I had my Twitter account banned, I think, for a while, for like 10 months for no reason. And I was like, I probably shouldn't just have my only connection to people being on a thing that can easily be taken away. So we started the newsletter for that. But yeah, LinkedIn or Threads as well. If you just search for Mark Williams-Cook, you'll find me.

Brilliant. A rational thinker. That's always great to see. All right, so yeah, thank you very much for your time, Mark. Really appreciate it. And thanks to everyone listening out there as well. And we will I'll see you as always in the next episode. Hey, you've reached the end of this video, but don't worry, there's plenty more great content that you can watch right now. All you have to do is click one of the 2 video links on the left side of the screen. And also, if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and turn on the notification bell to never miss out on future uploads.