The great balance between evergreen & trending content for SEO & beyond 

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting together some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the ever constant, although sometimes emerging, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Hello internet, SEO people. Welcome to the podcast. We have emerged, but we are always here in the podcast ecosystem, and you can find us where you find podcasts all the time. It's just an evergreen resource for you to learn and enjoy SEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

Evergreen, like those trees that just don't care about winter.

Crystal Carter:

They don't. They're like, "Winter schminter."

Mordy Oberstein:

Winter schminter.

Crystal Carter:

I don't care. I got needle leaves. The snow goes right through me.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. Not only do they not care about the temperature, but we've got snow covered too. Just be gone, snow.

Crystal Carter:

Do what I like. Whenever I think of evergreens, I think of the tree that I keep in my garden. Which I have a little evergreen tree, and I bought him a big pot. He's a little lopsided. Bless him, but I like him anyway. We've had him for a while.

Mordy Oberstein:

Do you talk to him?

Crystal Carter:

No, no. We bring him inside for Christmas and cover him in junk. And I always think that all the other trees are making fun of him. They're like, "Look at you. You look like an idiot in December." And he's like, "Oh, you know, whatever."

Mordy Oberstein:

So do you usually have conversations in your mind about various trees talking to each other, or just sometimes?

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. I used to talk to my kid about how the trees would take a nap at winter time. They take a nap, they get themselves ready for bed, and then they take a nap at wintertime. Then they wake up in the spring.

Mordy Oberstein:

What do you call it when the tree becomes, I don't know, your chair. That's not a nap. It's like a permanent nap time.

Crystal Carter:

I mean, there's a book about that. I think that the Giving Tree, or something like that.

Mordy Oberstein:

The Giving Tree, Shell Silverstein.

Crystal Carter:

Who is fantastic. And yeah, it touches the old heart right there. Gets you right there.

Mordy Oberstein:

You know what else touches the heart?

Crystal Carter:

What's that?

Mordy Oberstein:

The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also download SEO checklist templates, toolkits, cheat sheets, and more. Head over to Wix, SEO. But look for our new resource center, it will help you emerge victorious and stay that way forever. Too mas, too much overselling?

Crystal Carter:

No, I mean, I think I definitely have warm and fuzzy feelings about our resource center. I think it's incredible. I think it makes me feel warm inside and like a lovely mug of cocoa.

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, speaking of emerging and everlasting, that's precisely our topic today, in case you haven't guessed. I feel like we drop Easter eggs every episode for a good five minutes, about what the episode is going to be about.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

We don't need the topic. You should already know by now what it is.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. Just take it all in. We're ready. We're ready for you.

Mordy Oberstein:

But officially, we're taking a hard look at SEO for evergreen topic versus SEO for emerging topics. Which is harder, ranking for emerging or evergreen content? Why would you even want to focus on emerging content versus evergreen content? And how the content formats impact your approach to SEO. Plus an absolute SEO legend, especially for news content, the former global VP of Audience Development at Condé Nast, and the founder of the new SEO tool, NewzDash, John Shehata will stop by to share how he balances focusing on both emerging and evergreen content for SEO.

We'll also head to the top of the SERP and look at what's happening for an emerging-ish content feature, or a little SERP feature, that seems to be spreading its wings. And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So put on your fanciest spandex overalls and climb up to the type rope that is this circus, that is all about balancing SEO for evergreen and emerging content on this, the 76th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. I've always wanted one of those spandex overall suits that they used to put on people in the circus, where they used to shoot them out of a canon kind of thing.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, yeah. The strongman sort of suits. Yeah, no-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, the strongman suit. Exactly.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. They recently bought back gladiators in the UK on the BBC, and there's a lot of that, those sort of-

Mordy Oberstein:

American Gladiators, where the whole tone is steroids.

Crystal Carter:

The Netflix documentary on that can confirm.

Mordy Oberstein:

I didn't watch that. I saw that.

Crystal Carter:

It will absolutely confirm that.

Mordy Oberstein:

It looks disturbing.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting.

Mordy Oberstein:

What do you want from a dude whose name is Nitro?

Crystal Carter:

I know. I mean, I feel like you could do that for SEOs, but they'd be more like, I don't know-

Mordy Oberstein:

Markup.

Crystal Carter:

Right? Markup, here comes Markup.

Mordy Oberstein:

Here comes Markup.

Crystal Carter:

SEO gladiators.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, no, it's Redirect.

Crystal Carter:

He's going to disallow the competitor who's coming in.

Mordy Oberstein:

Well done. Well done.

Crystal Carter:

Thank you very much.

Okay. All right. So speaking of IPs that have lasted a long time, we are going to be talking about SEO and for ever evergreen content, and how it differs from other content. I think one of the things that's important to think about is that when we talk about evergreen content, that's essentially the kind of content that you expect to rank for a long time, that you expect to be on your page for a long time. And it's important to think about what that might be for your business. So depending on what business you have, these will be maybe some of your core keywords, and they might be some of the core topics, but it's also worth balancing that with content that's in the now, that's happening regularly, that's being updated. So for instance, if you were to talk about game shows like American Gladiators, or a competitions and things like that, it might be the-

Mordy Oberstein:

Like the Price is Right.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, Price is Right. Oh, that's a great show.

Mordy Oberstein:

Really competitive. $1 Bob.

Crystal Carter:

$1. Come on down. So for instance, if you were talking about a particular topic, you would want to have a page that ranked for that, but you'd also want to have news coming through there. And this can give you a few different levers for connecting with new customers and for getting different value from the SERP. So for instance, if you were a Beyonce fan club website or Beyonce fan site, you would probably have a general page that was maybe about fun facts about Beyonce, or maybe her discography, or that sort of thing. So you might have something like that, that's a core piece of content that you don't expect to update that often. It ranks for a certain number of core keywords, and it's essentially the top of your pillar. So when you think about content clusters, it will essentially be the top of your pillar.

Along with that, you might want to add in trending topics. So let's say Beyonce's in the news. So she was recently in, and I'm a big fan, so I know no way too much about this. But she was recently in the news because she had her film released, and Taylor Swift came to the release. So that's something that you might want to add in. So you might have an evergreen page on your site, that's generally about Taylor Swift and Beyonce's history together, because they have a bit of history. And so you might want to have that there. But then you can add in a webpage that talks about the new thing that happened where Taylor Swift came to the premier in London. Then you might want to have another article that talks about how Beyonce went to Taylor Swift's film release as well. All of these things can be interlinked.

I think that's the important thing to think about, about evergreen content. Evergreen content is a really good opportunity to make sure that you have links that last to your content, and that you can link to, and that also that other people can link to. And this is also something that can be really, really useful if you're somebody who does something on an annual basis, or a seasonal basis as well. We talked about seasonality, but for instance, if you have a situation where you are doing an awareness day, and it happens every year, it's worth having an evergreen page that is general information about that awareness day, that you can link to when you're talking about the one for this year, or you're talking about the event, or you're talking about other things that are related to it. But think about evergreen content as being sort of the anchor for some of the other trending topics that you can add into your website, and that you can keep people coming back and being more enthused about the new content.

Mordy Oberstein:

So to that point, and one of the ways I think about emerging content, and I've been thinking a lot about it lately, just coincidentally, a lot lately. First off, it is a brand play. Like you're saying, if you want to show that you're current, that you're relevant, that you're in the know about this. For example, that they were recording this, I just found out yesterday that Billy Joel was releasing a new song for the first time 17 years.

Crystal Carter:

Right, okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, yeah, just some new song, 17 years, new album would be, I don't know, like 30 years. But anyway, if you have a website about Billy Joel, which that sounds fabulous and super trendy, just like Taylor Swift and Beyonce, the same, a little bit less hair, but anyway.

You wouldn't want to add that onto your website so people understand that you actually know what you're talking about, about the topic. But you can also use it as a brand play and even SEOs. First off, as an SEO play, when you're trying to get started. So as you're trying to get your website going and you're trying to get some momentum and some cadence, like we talked about on a previous podcast episode, you need to have a digital presence.

And that means people will stay sharing your content in social media, and then maybe eventually taking the content they're seeing on social media being shared, and linking to that. Look at the web as a dark sky. It is pitch black out there, and Google's looking for lights. You want your lights to be big, so that Google goes to it. So having a well-established digital presence is very, very important for getting SEO momentum. Your evergreen topics are not as trendy. They're not as trendy, they're not as cool, and they're not going to get shared as much. They're really meant, in my mind, that's an SEO play. But if you're getting started and you want people to know who you are and look to you, the emerging content, that trendy-ish or emerging kind of topics, that's what's going to get shared on social, that's going to get those initial links, and that's going to let you pull in traffic from evergreen topics as Google starts to recognize that you are a worthwhile digital entity.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think that the evergreen topic should be a very strategic, in an effort to establish your authority. So for instance, if you're talking about Billy Joel or whatever, you need to be able to say, "Oh, in his corpus of work," or something, and refer to yourself, right?

Mordy Oberstein:

It has to be that balance. You have to be able to balance back between the different types of pieces to establish that credibility, 100%.

Crystal Carter:

So you're showing this to people who are visiting your website and you're showing this to Google as well. So you're able to refer to yourself, here's all of the things that I know about the history of this particular musical artist and the things that they've done. Here's this new cool thing that you found. And so this gives you a couple of different levers. And I think that that's the important thing to think about when you're doing SEO and everybody thinks like, "Oh, I want to get on page one." It's like there are lots of page ones. There's page ones of images, there's page one of news, there's page one of lots of different filters within Google, so think about all of those. And the news items and the trending topics are going to have less competition in the first instance, right? First movers get a value. So there's definitely a first mover advantage in terms of trending topics. But again, if you're able to anchor that with your evergreen content, that will add more effort to that.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. You have to balance back and forth. It's why we asked John what we asked John in a few moments, we'll get to that. But it's a great point about emerging topics being great places to get started, because there is no search volume. There is no end date, but I'll say you have to be a little bit careful. Let's say, okay, we're recording this three weeks out of the Super Bowl.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, three weeks. Okay. Let's say Lamar Jackson, the quarterback for the Ravens, breaks both of his legs in some sort of miracle and can't play that. I don't like the Ravens. I was going to say that.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. I was like, "Miracle?"

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, sorry. I don't know. Let's make it, yeah, let's say he breaks both of his legs. I'm just going to go with it. It's a highly authoritative kind of topic, meaning the websites that generally rank for this kind of stuff are super authorities. It's a high interest topic, it's the Super Bowl. Who's Google going to turn to cover this story on the web? It's going to be things like ESPN, CBS news. So just because it's emerging, doesn't mean that it's not highly competitive. You need to be strategic about what you target for emerging topics.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. There's a fantastic article on the Wix SEO hub called Finding Trending Keywords for SEO, and they talk about this as well. You need to think about that, absolutely. But it's also really, really important to think about where you're getting your trending topics from. We have a section on the podcast that talks about people also ask, fun with people also ask. People also ask updates incredibly quickly. So if there was an accident and somebody said he had a thing, people will also ask, say, "What happened to this person?" And people also ask would update quickly, and Google will be looking for an answer to that question. If you have that answer on your website, then they will send traffic to you. And this is something that, and again, it also demonstrated expertise that you know that that happened just now, and you were that quick to make it happen.

Mordy Oberstein:

And that people are looking for it. Because this is what gets a little bit tricky with emerging content, you have to have your finger on the pulse. It's not like one of those kind of things in SEO, you're like, "Ah, I'll use a tool. I don't really understand the niche." There's no way around it. You have to understand that niche because you need to know if it's worthwhile. Sure, you can rank for it, but if it's completely obscure and not really the real story, or the story's going to change in a day anyway, and there's really very limited opportunity for this aspect of the story to rank, not worth it necessarily.

So you have to have your finger on the pulse because there are no search volumes, there are no historical trends. So seeing something like the people also ask update, will tell you, signal, okay, people are actually looking for this. But you probably want to use social media, obviously. You really just want to have your finger on the pulse and not just rely on the SERP, because the SERP, outside of things like the knowledge panel, people also ask can be very slow. Knowledge panel, by the way, great for seeing things like sports trades, it updates automatically.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right, right. Exactly. And I think that's something to think about with some of the trending topics as well. For some of the new things, sometimes Google offers some instant answers on some of those things, like sports scores for instance, that they have a widget for that. They have a thing that works on that. But I think this also comes to things like trending topics will come and go, and trending topics will happen very quickly, so there might be a lot of news that's coming out. For instance, let's say if we were talking about the World Series or something, there's going to be a lot of news about the World Series. But it would be worthwhile having a page about the World Series and whether it was the World Series for that year, or the World Series in general, but having some core content, some core evergreen content that you can link to all of those things.

It's also really important as part of your SEO outreach activity. It's very, very difficult to try to build back links to trending topics, as a sort of long tail activity. So if you're trying to build back links to a news article or something, and the news is changing constantly, that's going to be tricky because you might need to make a new article, you might need to make a new post. It might change the link that you got, might be this, all of this sort of stuff.

But if you have a core, like a guide, a core topic, evergreen piece, then you can shape a link building campaign around that. You can build a link building campaign around that. You can build that link building campaign for years. So one of the one things you see really often, is people will do an annual report. So there'll be the state of SEO or something, and I've seen that done really well. Or the state of video marketing, and they will update the report every year, but the back links, all of the links go to the same report. So the link stays the same and you maintain your link equity, and I think that's one of the core elements about evergreen content.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and that points to something I really wanted to talk about, which is that the strategy, the SEO strategy behind both types of content is very, very, very different.

Crystal Carter:

Yes.

Mordy Oberstein:

In my mind, evergreen content is more of your typical content strategy. It's very paced, it's very strategic, it's very topically-driven. What are the topics? What are the subtopics? What do I need to cover? How do I holistically cover all this? What's the next topic logically, and so forth. Emerging content is very strategic, but it's narrative-driven. Okay, what's the narrative? Not right now, I think it's a very important story in this area, is what's the narrative tomorrow going to be. And getting ahead of that, and then being strategic about where you fit in. Because if you're... Great, you figured out the narrative. You know tomorrow, Beyonce announced whatever today, which means that tomorrow this is going to be a big topic of discussion in this way.

But now you're competing with Entertainment Weekly and People, and whatever. What's your angle going to be? What can you bring, because it's an emerging topic, it's trendy. What's your angle going to be? If you can't break the news, maybe you can aggregate the news and put stats together that way. Whatever it is, it's very strategic, but it's very different kind of an SEO and content strategy than evergreen topics, and your mindset needs to be completely different. I'll say one last point on this, if you're doing this and you have both types of content, which you should in general, you might need two different people with two different ways of thinking about things, to handle the different topics.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, absolutely true. Because I think that... So one of the things that Abby talks about in her trending topics things, is looking at scaling your social listening. That takes time, that takes time, that takes nuance, takes being aware. And also following everybody, you have to be somebody who's following everybody and who's looking at all of these things. Because sometimes the trending topics, particularly for some of the bigger things, will be things you don't expect at all.

So for instance, if there was the BAFTAs, the BAFTAs happened, and there was that Angela Bassett does the thing, went viral all over Twitter. And lots of the bigger publications will have been straight in and had something ready to go, like fill in the blanks of who won the BAFTAs that night, but they would not have expected that particular Angela Bassett does a thing, to go absolutely mad online. So that is something that you won't get from generally scrolling the internet. That's something that you wouldn't necessarily pick up from generally looking at search volume, historical search data, because it's not there. It's not there. It happened then. And so people who are on the ground, people who are in the know, people who are thought leaders will be very well placed for this kind of content, for this kind of topical elements. And it's important to have those kinds of folks within your team for lots of reasons, as well as for some of the evergreen things.

Mordy Oberstein:

The point is emerging topics and evergreen, you very often need both, but they're very, very, very, very different. From the mindset between SEO and editorial, both types of topics, to the strategy, to the keyword research, to understanding the topics and predicting it, all of it's very, very different. And you need both, but you need to balance it. So how do you balance it? So we asked, he's an absolute SEO legend, especially in the news space like we mentioned, he's the founder of NewzDash, John Shehata. We asked John, how do you combine your evergreen content strategy to help you rank with your emerging content pieces? Take it away, John.

John Shehata:

One of the biggest questions I faced, or challenges I faced over the last 25 years working in my professional career, is the balancing act between writing about new trending, emerging news content and evergreen content. And it has been always challenging for so many publishers. You see publishers who are fully focused on one or the other. Today, I'm going to tell you it's important to have and maintain a balance. And each content type has its own pros and cons anyway. So if you talk about news, this is fresh, relevant content. It only drive traffic for maybe one to three days, max. It ranks instantly, so you can see your rankings within minutes after publishing content. It depends on your authority and other factors for sure. And all kind of traditional SEO work gets into it, plus freshness, CTR, and few news SEO ranking factors. So it's really good.

It drives a lot of traffic, and it drives traffic immediately. And it gives you authority on the topics that you cover a lot. When it comes to evergreen, evergreen is really, it's continuous relevant content for the reader. So it's relevant today, it's relevant tomorrow, it's relevant next year, and so on. The beauty about it is it gets a lot of traffic, and this traffic can last a month, sometimes over a year, choose to last for much longer than that. But with more freshness updates, now we see maybe nine to 16 months of traffic, but it takes more time to rank. All the traditional SEO ranking factors get into it, and so on.

So you have these two different types of ranking content types. The beauty about news is you get instant traffic, or almost minutes after posting. It also gets traffic from Discover, so most of the news content do very well in Google Discover, but evergreen on the other hand, provides you with sustainable traffic, especially with low news cycles. So we have seen this many times, the news is very hot and after a while it gets very, very slow and there's not much traffic your site is getting. Evergreen content helps you with that kind of an issue. But evergreen content doesn't appear much in Google Discover, rarely. It's more focused on news.

So between these two, the question is how much content should I produce? My answer is always like 20-80 or 30-70 kind of approach, and it doesn't matter which direction. So you may want to produce, if the majority of your content is news. So you want to produce maybe 20% of your content in evergreen, and make sure that you refresh that content periodically, whenever that content goes below a certain threshold. And on the other side, if the majority of your content is evergreen, it might getting into news harder. So again, 80-20 kind of rule, you may want to select a certain topic or vertical, and cover all the news around it. And that will give you more instant traffic, and it help you all the time because the evergreen content takes more time to rank. I hope this was helpful to you guys, and thank you.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much, John. Make sure you check out John over on X at J-S-H-E-H-A-T-A, J Shehata. Also, make sure you check out NewzDash. If you're in the SEO space for news, you should definitely check out NewzDash. It's a dashboard to manage all of your news, SEO, getting instant SEO recommendations of visibility, track new search visibility and market share, monitor trends, and spy on the competition with NewzDash, little plug for John and NewzDash. There's so many points to dive into. One point we didn't mention before, is just the emerging content and Discover, that's how you're opening up to so much traffic potential by covering emerging topics and emerging trends. So even if you don't have to necessarily, you may want to.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right, right. And I think that what he was saying was that don't necessarily expect your emerging trending topics to rank all the time, because Discover will come and then it will go. And that's okay. That's fine. That's sort of what we expect. But I think that him talking about the sort of 80-20 rule, I think that's a great rule of thumb. And I think that also, this brings to mind some of the challenges with having that sort of mechanic and organic content, like the content that's responding to different trends and things, is that sometimes you have to be aware of which ones those are because you might also have to call those later on. Because as he says, they'll rank for a while, but then they won't rank for very long. So it might be that next year maybe that trend isn't a thing anymore, maybe people aren't interested in vuvuzelas anymore. Do you remember when vuvuzelas were a thing, when they had the World Cup in South Africa and vuvuzelas were a trending toy around-

Mordy Oberstein:

That's soccer?

Crystal Carter:

Yes, yes.

Mordy Oberstein:

All right.

Crystal Carter:

But they're not trending here anymore. So if you had content on that back in the day, then you don't necessarily need that content on your site anymore. So that's something that you should think about when you're doing this, trending topics is keeping on top of those as well, because of the way that the ebb and flow and because of the way that the traffic ebb and flows, and-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, it's a whole different paradigm. The ebb and flow, it's relevant one day, and not relevant the next day. If it's something that you're going to depend on, it means you something you're going to very much have to keep up on constantly, to keep on top of things and keep developing new content on a consistent, constant basis. And being in that case, if you're talking about Google Discover and all that kind of things, you need to establish yourself as a relevant entity around that. Which goes back to what you were saying before about establishing that with some of the evergreen content.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. Balance. It's all about balance.

Mordy Oberstein:

All balance. Like Mr. Miyagi said, "First learn balance."

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

All comes back to Mr. Miyagi in every way, shape and form.

Crystal Carter:

I mean, we can wax on or wax off about any of these things, but-

Mordy Oberstein:

I would, but I have to go paint the fence. Sorry, I'm busy. Tomorrow, I would also, but I have to sand the floor.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, okay, of course.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, anyway. So anyway, there's a little feature that we wanted to talk about. It's spreading its wings across the SERP. In fact, we'll get to a little bit of data around how it's spreading wings. And sometimes it can appear for some trending-ish or trending adjacent sort of content, sometimes it appears with some evergreen-ish kind of content. It's definitely an interesting thing to know as we go to the top of the SERP.

So we're talking about the things to know SERP feature, get it?

Crystal Carter:

Yes.

Mordy Oberstein:

Which by the way, according to Rank Ranger's data, it looks like prior to the start of January, it was ranking, or not ranking, it was appearing on 8% of all desktop SERPs. And now it shows that mobile SERPs rather, and now it's appearing as the time of this recording, because it could change by the time we release the episode. Now it's appearing around 10%, so a little two point jump for the things to know feature is spreading.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, yeah. I think people want to know these things.

Mordy Oberstein:

They do want to know the things. So just so you know what the things to know thing is, if you're searching for something, I don't know, social media addiction, I was going to search for screen time addiction because my kids are glued to fricking screens all the time.

You get on desktop, you get a little panel to the right, that's called Things to Know. And basically, a series of tabs with a header, and then you can open up the tab and it'll show you information. So for example, for social media addiction, it talks about things to know our definition of, or symptoms of, or problems of. And you click a tab, and you basically get a little snippet of content, like a featured snippet that will tell you, "Yes. Why is social media addiction a problem? Social media addiction is a problem because it can lead to issues such as fear of missing out, anxiety and stress, and so forth." And it comes from a website. So it's basically little blurbs of content, little mini-featured snippets, or little people also ask, but they're topically set up. They're almost entity based around the topic. And they're very interesting to me, because again, they break down things topically and they offer you new traffic possibilities, or visibility possibilities.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that in terms of evergreen content, and this sort of more dynamic trending topic, I think it also can give you a steer in terms of the kinds of things that Google understands to be related to that entity, because they're very often associated. When I've seen them, I've seen them very often associated with things that are entity entities-

Mordy Oberstein:

Very entity-based, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Right. So when I see them around, like I've seen them around blogging. The blogging term for instance, and they'll say things to know about blogging, like, oh, how to start a blog, or how long does it take to build one? What does it cost? That sort of thing. These are clues to the kinds of content that users are going to be expecting from somebody who's writing about that topic. They are clues to the kinds of information that is core to that entity. And I think that that's really important to think about.

So I think on your social media one, there's definition, symptoms, problems, impact, these are the sort of core topics that are related to this. And I think that it's interesting, it's another example of Google using all the tools in their arsenal to sort of disambiguate, and to sort of offer different user journeys around some of these topics. And I think that it's important because it gives even, sometimes it gives you a clue into something that you might not have even considered. I've had it where I've looked up something, and it was like things to know, and it was like, "Oh, it might also cause these problems." And I say, "Oh, I hadn't even considered that." I would not have even Googled that before, but I'm getting a clue here from this particular feature. So I think that's interesting.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. So what's interesting, I find interesting about it, first off, just to show you that it's entity-based, meaning that it's looking at the topic as an entity. Like what is this topic? How do we break it down? Conceptually, what is this topic? The format was stolen, not stolen, unless Google is stealing it from itself. From knowledge panels.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

And in knowledge panels, maybe a couple of years ago, I'm not good at the timelines. I always forget times. Google started adding tabs to knowledge panels. So I searched for Constitution of the United States, because we're in the middle of an election season so that came up. And it has saying words, rules, written by, all these different tabs.

That format from the knowledge panel is essentially the format from things to know. And what it's doing is, like you mentioned, is topically parsing out the topic, which is why it's great to understand what do I need to know about this? Or for example, I looked up on CTE, which is the disease you get for being hit too many times in the head while playing American football.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's football, it's playoff time, right?

Crystal Carter:

Okay, okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. And it has number of players, like how many NFL players have CTE, notable players CTE, percentage of NFL players have had CTE, causes. It's really breaking down topically what's relevant, but I also find that sometimes it shows up for things that kind of straddle the line between topics that are evergreen topics and topics that can also be looked at from an emerging topic point of view.

So let's take autism education. So you're always going to have advances in that area, in that field. There's always going to be new things coming out. There's always going to be new topics to talk about, but it's also an evergreen sort of topic, because there's historical information, historical knowledge, historical data, all that kind of good stuff. And there's things to know, shows up. It has a tab for programs, autism education programs, has impact of autism on education, how to improve special education schools. So it's one of those things that if you're in an area where you're kind of on the line between, it's an emerging area, but it's also an evergreen area. And you need to create both of those kind of topics, or both of the kind of content. It can help you, A, understand what you need to have for the evergreen, but it can also help you understand how to contextualize-

Crystal Carter:

Yes,

Mordy Oberstein:

The emerging topics.

Crystal Carter:

Yes, that was the word that was rattling around in my head. It's precisely, precisely context. Context. These are topics that people need context on, and that's why it says things to know. So one of the examples you've pulled out is about AI. That's an emerging topic.

Mordy Oberstein:

Emerging, but it's also not emerging.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

But it is emerging.

Crystal Carter:

It's also not emerging, but it's-

Mordy Oberstein:

But it's not emerging. It's so confusing.

Crystal Carter:

It's like a butterfly.

Mordy Oberstein:

I wish I hadn't bought an AI robot to tell me the answer if it's emerging not.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think that's the thing. This is the web, and so sometimes people are coming to a topic completely new. They've never heard of this particular topic, so they need some context. Sometimes people have been working in AI for the whole time, they've been working in this field for the whole time, they don't need all the context or whatever.

But I think what's fairly consistent around these things to know, is you tend to see them, and around the entity things, is I tend to see them for big, big head terms. So had term keywords, like shorter words, like AI, or a few words there because they're trying to give you enough context to go deeper, because Google's looking at your search and they're going, "This isn't all you want." You need to know what it is, or you need to know why it's like that, or you need to know something. Here's some context to guide you to get better information. We can give you better information if you give us better inputs. And I think that it's another opportunity for them to do that, and it's super useful for those who are thinking about building clusters around some of these head terms, and who are interested in thinking about how they can build, balance those clusters with some of that emerging topic content.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now you know what helps me have context for my life as an SEO person? Barry.

Crystal Carter:

Do you know who covers every emerging topic in SEO?

Mordy Oberstein:

And also sometimes hits an evergreen topics, like how many awards do I need to rank?

Crystal Carter:

I mean, I think he's probably one of the most evergreen entities in SEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

But he's also constantly emerging in all new ways. It's that time of the show where we talk about Barry, and then smoothly transitioned to the SEO news. Here's this week's Snappy News.

Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. We got a lot to sort out this week as the Snappy News is brought to you by the letter C, for a controversy. Let's start with Gisele Navarro, who wrote an article for her brand, HouseFresh, called How Google is Killing Independent Sites Like Ours. In the article, Gisele shows huge publishers trying to rank for review content. So basically, not basically, literally, the Rolling Stone writing content like the Five Best Microwaves for 2024, because the Rolling Stone is now known for not covering Bob Dylan, but for covering the best fridge. She goes through how some of these sites are now out of their lane and dominating the product review space, and how their site's content and the focus on experience and testing all these products like they say they are, isn't exactly 100% trustworthy. And she kind of goes through, "Hey Google, you should be ranking those hidden gems that you've talked about in the past."

Then on top of it, or as that's happening, Barry Schwartz reported on Search Engine Land, title Article Complaining About Being Outranked on Google Being Outranked by Reddit. And that caused a whole firestorm, because of all the Reddit controversy on the SERP. So here's the article now being outranked by Reddit for the query it was meant to target, drama. Then Google did respond back, which Barry Schwartz covered at SE Roundtable with Google, we want to reward the best content no matter site size. And Danny Sullivan, Google search liaison, had a really nice discussion with Gisele, going back and forth. I thought it was a very healthy kind of discussion. Danny sort of explaining how they factor things in and what they're considering, and all that kind of stuff. We'll link to it in the show notes. You can have a look at it yourself. And I thought it was actually one of the more mature SEO conversations out on Twitter, these sort of things in a while.

Then a day later, Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land wrote an article, quote, "What should a Google rank in search when all the content sucks?" And Danny's right. And he goes through looking at all the content around review of product reviews, basically not being the greatest. I've covered this a few times, more than a few times, that there really isn't a lot of great content out there. So this is basically the foundation of what has been a firestorm within the SEO industry, about big brands who are getting out of their lane, dominating their results. Google, what are you doing? And then people coming and saying, "Well, what's Google supposed to do, because all the content stinks. What's going on?" I have many thoughts, many, many, many, many thoughts.

Where to start? One, what these brands are doing, the Rolling Stone, covering the best fridges of 2024, is both logical and nuts. It's nuts for obvious reasons. The Rolling Stone is a 4magazine that's supposed to cover again, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Billy Joel, whatever, not best microwaves in 2024. However, it does kind of make sense for them because publishers are having a very hard time, have been having a very hard time, and they're looking for new sources of revenue, so they're branching out. So that's what I mean, it's logical from a need point of view, but from a topical point of view, it's kind of crazy. Now expecting magic from Google, that Google's going to magically know all these things and Google's going to magically get all the results right, and not looking how Google has improved over time, and having a more balanced look at the idea of, okay, there are things to improve upon, which I'll get to in a second, but things have been progressively better, overall.

Yes, there are hiccups, or moments in times where we have a lull in quality while Google figures things out, yes. But overall, things are progressing in the right direction. I think expecting magic from Google is fantastical. So we need to balance what's happening with, I think, a more mature outlook on what a search engine is able to do as technology takes a long time to develop. And Google, and its algorithm, need to rely on technology in order to get results right. Now, I would like to see Google, if I were to be able to point out conceptually what I think would be great for them to be able to focus on if they can, is I think Google looks at quality from a very topical point of view. Is the content quality content from purely, not purely, but from a very heavily focused... Yes, it's quality in terms of how this piece of content deals with the topic.

And you say, "As opposed to what? How else would you look at quality?" You will look at quality from an identity point of view. Does it make sense for this website to be talking about this? Does it make sense for this website to cover this? Is it aligned with the website's identity? Why are they writing this? Why are they saying this? Is it that the Rolling Stone wants to build a brand and really become known for and reliant by others, for their content around reviews the way the Wirecutter does? So yes, the Wirecutter has a commercial incentive, but they're also building a brand. And that's a much healthier place to be in terms of the incentive to produce quality content, than just trying to get traffic. So I think Google, if it can, needs to look at why they're saying it, who's saying it, and look at identity a little bit more as part of the quality picture.

Just to give you an analogy, let's say I am on, I'm on, I don't know, a politics news show. And I start offering not to talk about whatever the current events of the day are on this news program on CNN or NBC, whatever it is. But instead, I started offering you tips about how to shoot a basketball. And I, myself, am not a basketball expert. I'm a politics expert. That's why I'm on CNN. That would be weird. You would be like, "Okay, you might be making a good point about how to shoot a basketball, but then I'm not absorbing that. I'm not taking that in. I'm not doing anything with that because why are you talking about it, and why are you talking about it here?" It's the same thing. Why is Rolling Stone talking about fridges, and why are they talking about it here, and why are they talking about it now, and why are they talking about it at all? So being able, for the algorithm to be able to better decipher that, I think would be very, very helpful.

Okay, onto Danny Goodwin's point, that the content out there is just terrible. That is correct, and Google has been trying to incentivize content, better content for a long time. For example, Google's been talking about hidden gems. They're trying to rank forums, which they've gone a little bit too far, with the whole Reddit thing. They've been trying to democratize the web for a long time, trying to incentivize business owners to write more, because business owners are the actual content topical experts, and not a content marketing agency. So they've been trying to push this for a long time. The problem is it's a very, very slow burn. It takes a long time to do this, if it's even possible for Google to do, and that's a whole other debate.

The issue with that is, is that brands look at Google as the incentive, right? They look at it as, "Okay, what does Google reward? What does it not reward, because we are simply trying to get an ROI. We are simply trying to get traffic. We're simply trying to get conversions." So whatever Google is able to do in terms of quality, that is the maximum which we are willing to invest into quality. If Google's quality threshold goes up, we will now have to increase our threshold. That's a very unhealthy dynamic, because again, you're relying on technology to be able to emerge rather quickly, which technology takes a long time to emerge and takes a long time for Google to be able to do things. Look how long it took from Google to go from page rank to focusing on things around personal experience in content, that took years for that to happen.

So relying on Google to change the incentive is not healthy. What should happen is, and what I hope happens is, is that brands start looking at their branding as the incentive. So not to pick on the Rolling Stone, but just using it because it's such an obvious example. If the Rolling Stone's branding team said, "Hey, wait a second, we're not known for Bob Dylan anymore. We're not known for covering Led Zeppelin anymore. Now we're known for microwaves. That's not good for our branding, that's not good for our brand recognition. That's not good for our brand perception. It might be good for our immediate conversion and immediate traffic goals, but it's not good for our overall branding. We need to change course." That's a healthy incentive. And that's an incentive, why? Because that's an incentive that's based on users, not on algorithms.

So that needs to happen, and brands need to start taking that, I wouldn't even call it a risk, but brands need to start taking that focus off of the immediate ROI and start looking at the long-term conversions. Because I predict what is going to happen is going to be an absolute train wreck of epic... You ever see like a car race and a NASCAR or something, or Formula One, whatever you prefer. I don't prefer any of them. And all the cars get into an accident. That's what's going to happen in my opinion. We're going to see an epic car crash of unprecedented proportions on the web because what users want and what these brands are doing, are so juxtaposed, it's going to end in madness. And if a brand wants to get ahead of this, what I recommend doing is focus on branding, focus on what your users want and how you want to be seen, and not on the immediate traffic conversion, ROI kind of stuff.

And it's part of the web maturing. I think in terms of maturity, the web is sort of a teenager. And as a teenager, I have teenagers at home. They're focused on immediate gratification. I want the video game now. We're focused on conversions, we're focused on acquisition, we're focused on traffic, we're focused on all the ROI, and they're not focused on long-term brand perception. So as to when matures, I hope that brands do focus on that, take away the focus on the immediate, which means a little bit of focus off of the algorithms, and more focus onto user perception, and I think that will be the right incentive to create the better content that Danny Goodwin points out in his article, doesn't exist. That was a mouthful. That was a lot. And boy, did we get abstract, and boy was that not very snappy. So apologies for the not so snappy, Snappy News.

Mordy Oberstein:

I always wonder when we do this, I always wonder, we have new listeners, or listeners who are not from the SEO world, coming onto the show, listening to the show, like "Who's this Barry guy?"

Crystal Carter:

He's an evergreen element in the show. He's like a spruce. Barry Schwartz, that's what we're talking, things you need to know about our show, is we'll talk about Barry Schwartz at some point.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, for real. If want to, I always say if you want to learn, and we talked about this on previous episode of the podcast, read SEOroundtable.com every day so you can understand where SEO is heading. Even though it might seem like nitty gritty to you, it'll give you a sense of where things are going and where things have been all at the same time. It's evergreen and emerging. It's SEOroundtable.com

Crystal Carter:

Indeed, and you can understand the pace of things, and Barry shouts out lots of important people to follow.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, also perfect.

Crystal Carter:

Lots of important entities and things that are going on. So yeah, absolutely. You can't go wrong there.

Mordy Oberstein:

Can't go wrong with Barry. And you can't go wrong with Claudio Cabrera, who is our follow of the week this week. Who is also, by the way, the VP of Newsroom Strategy and Audience at the Athletic. I'm combining so many worlds here with this follow of the week. I'm combining editorial, we just spoke about emerging content. SEO, we always speak about, and sports.

Crystal Carter:

It's perfect synergy.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes. Check out Claudio on X over at CECabrera underscore, C-E-C-A-B-R-E-A-R-A, underscore, he's brilliant, super nice.

Crystal Carter:

Super nice.

Mordy Oberstein:

One of the most lovely fellows, and his feed is filled with sports stuff too. Again, right now, a bunch of Lions stuff, go Lions. The mighty underdog, the lovable underdog.

Crystal Carter:

He's fantastic, and he does a lot of events and outreach as well, so do keep an eye out for opportunities where he's sharing knowledge there. And also, one of the reasons why we wanted to follow him this week is because I think the Athletic do a fantastic job of balancing emerging and evergreen topics. So it's really important. Even if you are a small website and you don't have millions of people coming to your website every week, looking at the ways that some larger websites, like the Athletic, are handling these kinds of challenges, can give you a lot of insight into things you can do. So absolutely, follow Claudio, and check out the work that they're doing over at The Athletic.

Mordy Oberstein:

Nice. Good. Shout out, good strategy, good stuff. And for Claudio's sake, go Lions. By the time this episode airs, we'll know the result, but I'm hoping for the Lions. I really am.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, just to give people context, they haven't won a playoff game until this year, for like, I don't know, since like 1992. They're like blue collar, hardworking kind of team. They got a great coach. You talk about biting people's knee caps off.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, my God.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, he's great though. He's like, "Yeah, what's your philosophy on coaching? I'm going to bite your knee caps off." Love it.

Crystal Carter:

Sports ball.

Mordy Oberstein:

Sports ball. One of these underdog kind of stories, they've been losers forever, but now they're winning, and they're fans who've been suffering for 30, 40 years, 50 years, 60 years.

Crystal Carter:

They're trying to emerge.

Mordy Oberstein:

They're emerging victorious.

Crystal Carter:

They're trying to emerge from an evergreen situation.

Mordy Oberstein:

Their evergreen losing situation.

Crystal Carter:

They're trying to change their evergreen content and emerge victorious. And we wish them well, and whoever else is doing sports. Yay, sports.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes, but not the Ravens. We don't wish them well.

Crystal Carter:

I have no comment.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, as a Steelers fan, I feel obligated... By the way, I want to tell you my wife's from Baltimore, so I'm a Steelers fan. They're from Pittsburgh. My wife's from Baltimore. Her family are all Ravens fans because they're Baltimore, and she's trying to convince my kids to go for the Ravens in the playoffs because Steelers are out and the Ravens are still in, and I'm not having it. There's like a mutiny in my house, and I'm not having it.

Crystal Carter:

Are you like, "Never more?"

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I'm never more, because it'd be an emerging some punishment, if this happens.

Crystal Carter:

We're basketball fans.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're all grounded for life. You're evergreen league grounded. I've taken it too far. We've taken it too far.

Crystal Carter:

I think we're done now.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, we're done now here. We'll stop here. Thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode, as we dive into starting SEO from scratch. You make the dough, you mix the water. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast, or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content, webinars, and resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO.