Are expert opinions in your content an SEO must?

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're reporting out 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 a very authoritative, the very expert, opinionated SEO person, opinionated in the best way possible, the head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter.

That didn't come out right. I'm going to say that now. It didn't come out right.

Crystal Carter:

She's got a lot of opinions, a lot of-

Mordy Oberstein:

But good ones.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, but it's okay to have it. You know when you're digging yourself a hole and you're like, "I don't know how to-"

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, that was literally me, like shoveling my own grave.

Crystal Carter:

That's always the worst when you know you're doing it and you just know that you're shoveling yourself further down the hole.

Mordy Oberstein:

This is my entire life.

Crystal Carter:

Sometimes you just have to wave a little flag and just, "Nevermind. I'm just going to keep moving."

Mordy Oberstein:

Stop. I literally, I'm just going to stop here.

Crystal Carter:

All I really wanted to say was respect my authority. Which I know nobody remembers where that's from. I'm not even sure if-

Mordy Oberstein:

I was never a South Park person, but I know that, obviously. I'm not like I don't live under a rock.

Crystal Carter:

Precisely. There's also, South Park has some classics in...

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, there's like the Blame Canada thing. I know that.

Crystal Carter:

This is not about respect. Yes, but we don't want to blame Canada. Speaking of digging a hole, like I heart Canada. So let's just make that-

Mordy Oberstein:

Let's move on. 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 automate your content distribution with Wix's deep integration with Zapier. Client has a new event, zap it, set of automated posts across social to get your client's content out there. So zap, zap, zap, zap.

As today, we're going into content that is expertly written, which you can distribute your expertly written content with Zapier. Get it? Now it makes sense. We're taking up the very important question, do you need to have actual experts writing your content for you, what an expert voice lends to your content from an SEO point of view, how to integrate expert voices into your content, and when you do and don't need expert created content, and to what degree you do to begin with.

To help give us an expert opinion and an expert voice to our own content, Crystal will soon be joined in an interview, the none other, none other than the Mayo Clinic's own senior SEO analyst, Will Peters, who if you've been on the SERP before, knows a thing or two about expert led content. We'll also have a look at how different search engines handle sensitive queries that relate to your money or your life. Plus, we have the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So buy yourself some credibility because as John Mellencamp said, "I fight authority. Authority always wins." On this, episode 75 of the SERP's Up Podcast.

That's a deep cut. That's a deep cut. I used to be a Mellen head.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. That's fair enough. Fair enough.

Mordy Oberstein:

Back when he was John Cougar.

Crystal Carter:

Oh yeah. John Cougar Mellencamp.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. There's John Cougar, then John Cougar Mellencamp. Just, dude, decide on a name and just stick to it.

Crystal Carter:

Is he Jack & Diane? Is that Jack and-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, that's Jack & Diane.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. Okay. All right.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm dating myself here. And calling myself out as being completely lame with my musical taste.

Crystal Carter:

Hey, man. That's still on the top 40. That's still on the old deal. Like when you hit them radio stations, it's still on there. It's still the rotation.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's there. It gets a lot of clapping in his songs. Lot of clapping.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. It's all good. Oh, I love a soul clap. I like-

Mordy Oberstein:

Everyone like, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

There's Dobie Gray has a great song that has the (singing). That's got a great clap in it. And also Wilson Phillips.

Mordy Oberstein:

You could do a lot with clapping and stomping. That classic John Lennon song, all we're saying, give peace a chance. All of that sound was people stomping on stuff in his hotel room.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Right. There's a lot of good things you can do there. And I mean, it's something that if you were an expert in the field of musical recording, then you might be able to harness that to add more human experience and demonstrate the human experience of that song with those claps.

Mordy Oberstein:

There you go. So before we get into Crystal's wonderful chat with Will Peters from the Mayo Clinic, let's just have a little bit of background on why we're even talking about this.

So I always go back to 2018 and the Medic Update, which was officially termed the August 2018 Core Update. And out of that, because we saw that Google tended to impact content that was in the medical field, hence it was Medic Update, it really sparked a lot of change in the SEO conversation about Google being much more critical of what they call your money your life content, YMYL content, content that actually impacts your life or your money. And for some people, their money is their life, which is not a good thing. But all those kinds of queries, Google rightfully so. You don't want bad advice about investing in whatever stock. You don't want bad advice about how to deal with, I don't know, a heart problem. It's certainly not the same as looking up a sports score.

Crystal Carter:

There's a great article on the Wix SEO Learning Hub written by George Wynn, our editor in chief, and he gets into some of those things, like that you might think about which things may or may not be a YMYL topic. So like if you're an information query, we'd ask say like, "Could significant harm result from an inaccurate information?" for instance. And let's say for thinking about evacuation rates for a tsunami, that's A YMYL topic. That's one example.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Right there. A lot of stuff that you wouldn't think is. Even stuff related to your pet's health, that's considered YMYL. There are categories, for example, shopping is technically your money your life category because of the checkout. But what I've seen over years of looking at is that Google doesn't treat that algorithmically the same thing as a piece of content about, I don't know... I don't know, you getting a colonoscopy, bad example, got a heart attack.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

So because it's technically YMYL, but the content itself in that case is not YMYL.

Crystal Carter:

But I think that they do other things for that shopping content. So for instance, so in order to be eligible on Google Merchant, they have a lot of YMYL checks, for instance. So they make sure that your business details are correct, that you have all of your shipping information that you're clearly able to trade in that region. There's lots of criteria that are associated with that. Also, if you're doing e-commerce, a lot of people are doing ads and a lot of the ads requirements for different sectors will have YMYL requirements in them. One of the things that I always tell people is if you're working in a sensitive sector in something that's regulated, have a look at what the ad requirements are and that can give you a steer-

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a great point

Crystal Carter:

... as to whether or not it's a YMYL category and the kinds of things that Google are expecting. Because if you are trying to advertise on Google and you don't have your who you are and what your shipping details are and all of those sorts of things, or if you don't have clear credentials or you're not registered with the appropriate regulating body, they won't let you advertise. They will flag your advertisements, they will stop your advertisements. So if they're doing that on the ad site, then that can also give you a steer on the search side as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. Which is why people look at things like also looking at the Quality Raters guidelines, which may not be algorithmically implemented, but it does show you what Google is looking for fundamentally, which is why the Quality Raters guidelines have become such a big part of the SEO conversation as it pertains to YMYL. By the way, on the ad side, if you are running, let's say a YMYL website, you have to be much more careful with the ads that you were running or how many ads you're running, or how promotional your content is because of that.

So all of this stuff brings up the question of EEAT, experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. So today we're focused on the second E, which used to be the first E, which is expertise. If you're trying to build content that's trustworthy, that's actually not harmful and actually helpful, then in a lot of these scenarios, because they're very technical or they're very important or the lightest little detail can really mess you up, you really need that level of expertise.

And I'll give you a classic, or a great example of this. I forgot which update it was. I used to have them all memorized the May 2020 Core Update. It's all a giant mush in my brain at this point. As I get older, the numbers, they don't stick the same way.

But one of the updates I was looking at, there was a page, I believe it was from Healthline, and it was about there was a variation of bipolar disorder that is debated whether or not it is part of the bipolar disorder spectrum or it's not, and it's up for question, it's up for debate. And all of the content from, for example, the Mayo Clinic was pretty transparent about that term. I forgot the name, the medical name. And when they talked about it, they would say, "Medical experts question whether or not this is or is not part of the bipolar disorder spectrum." The Healthline content didn't. It just said that it was, and that page got killed on one of the updates because it didn't have that level, I think in my mind, I'm speculating just a bit, obviously, we don't 100% know, that level of expertise was not as nuanced as Google would've liked it to be for that particular query.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think that that nuance and that those caveats are things that show that you are an expert. I think about when I was studying physics in high school. First they tell you Newtonian physics, yes. What goes up must come down. They tell an object traveling in motion, and then they tell you the speed of light is consistent all across the universe. Then as you get older or then as you progress through it, they tell you those things first of all. Then as you progress through it, they're like, "Sometimes it gets a little bit... Sometimes there are some cases where those things like Newtonian physics doesn't do…"

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. Like the national debt-

Crystal Carter:

All the time.

Mordy Oberstein:

... it doesn't seem to come down. It just keeps going up.

Crystal Carter:

So there are some things where like, "Oh, this is a rule all the time." And then as you become more experienced, it's like, "We told you that rule so that you could get to the next stage, and if you don't know that next stage, then it's a sign that you don't know, that you're not an expert."

And so sometimes caveats are important. I think I recently had somebody come and help me fix a shed. I was like, "Oh, I want to fix my shed." And the guy came over, he looked at it and he was like, "Yeah, yeah, sure." Then he looked at it again and he actually came back and was like, "We can't fix this shed because this will come down in six months because of this, this, this, this and this." Right? And he's an expert. I can tell that he's an expert because he went through those extra checks and didn't just go straight through it and just go, "Yeah, I can fix this and do a terrible job."

So I think that sometimes people worry about adding in those caveats, people worry about adding in the elements that maybe make it not such a hard sell, but I think that it often is more of a sign of strength. So if you say that like, "This product is great for this, this, this and this, but it's not great for this, this and this," then that means that you've thought about that.

Mordy Oberstein:

I've talked about this a lot. If you ask me what's my definition of quality content, it's nuanced content. And nuanced content has to be either built on actual experience or expertise. And those two kind of overlap because experience is a form of expertise.

Crystal Carter:

So for instance, medical content, for instance... And I'm so pleased that we're talking to the Mayo Clinic because they do some incredible content across the web. But I think that one of the things that you see with medical stuff, and particularly with medical products, they always have to put the side effects. They always have to put the potential-

Mordy Oberstein:

Even in commercials.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Right. Right. Half the commercial is all that.

Mordy Oberstein:

Is that.

Crystal Carter:

Right. They're like, "Oh, this will be wonderful for you." They're like, "Oh, your leg might fall off as well." And you're like, "what? What'd you say that?" And there's like somebody skipping through a meadow.

Mordy Oberstein:

And people are smiling in the commercial while they're saying it. It's fine.

Crystal Carter:

It's like slow motion, skipping through a stream.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right, skipping. "Your leg might fall off, your head might fall off, all of your hair will fall off." The person's like so happy and like rowing.

Crystal Carter:

Blowing a dandelion. Yeah, I know it's not like... But I do think that you need to tell people the full range of information, and that again, comes from a point of strength because then somebody can make an accurate decision about whatever it is that they want do.

Mordy Oberstein:

Exactly. And that's good for... Right. It's good for your users. Forget the SEO part. It's just good for the people consuming your content.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And it's also good for customer service things and stuff as well, because then it's the stair, it's on the thing. So you won't have somebody coming back going, "Oh, hey, but I used my laptop underwater and it didn't work." It's like, "We said on the website that you shouldn't be using this laptop-"

Mordy Oberstein:

There you go. You can't hide from reality. Reality always come back to bite you somehow. So just be real.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Precisely. And I think that that's particularly important for YMYL. On the Hubs article, they talk about a few different categories. So for instance, like health and safety, if it's something to do with something like a car seat or something like that, or any of those financial security topics that could damage a person's ability to support themselves or their families, this is totally true.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's what I mean, there's so much content that you think is not YMYL, but it actually is.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And then they say it's society, topics that can negatively impact groups of people, issues of public interest, trust or in public institutions. And I think that this can be something that people don't think about with like opinion pieces on political things that are happening, for instance, or historic things that are happening. If you were to write an article about a historical event, you would need to have a bibliography. That's good practice or copious links. That's good practice for lots of reasons, but also so that people can trace where you got that information from.

Mordy Oberstein:

I always say links are also not just like, "Okay, links." Links are a citation.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Precisely.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's a new footnote. It's a link.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Precisely. Precisely. And it's why like Wikipedia is full of links and it's full of things.

Mordy Oberstein:

Truly.

Crystal Carter:

And it's why people... If you're on Wikipedia and you claim something and you don't have a link, people will take it off.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's right.

Crystal Carter:

Wikipedians will take it down. Like you can't just make up links.

Mordy Oberstein:

The Wikipedians.

Crystal Carter:

The Wikipedians..

Mordy Oberstein:

They live on a special magical land.

Crystal Carter:

It's true.

Mordy Oberstein:

It is true. Okay. So we have an absolute treat for you. If you're from the SEO world, you know what a treat this is because there is no super authority in the YMYL space like the Mayo Clinic. They understand producing expert-led content like none other. They rank for it like none other. So you're going to get an inside scoop on creating expert-led content from... no one could be possibly better than this, the senior SEO analyst at the Mayo Clinic, Will Peters. Here's Crystal's chat with Will.

Crystal Carter:

I am so pleased to be joined here today by Will Peters, who is the senior search engine optimization analyst over at the Mayo Clinic, who is joining us here today. And he's going to be talking to us about how you can engage experts, real actual experts in your content creation process. Thank you so much for joining us today, Will.

Will Peters:

Thanks for having me.

Crystal Carter:

I mean, Will can attest to you that I basically followed him all over brightonSEO because I was so excited to meet you and things. I think most SEOs have seen the content from the Mayo Clinic and what y'all are doing over there, and it's kind of the gold standard. So I think it's great to be able to get some insights on how you do what you do, especially around EEAT. I might kick that off with that one. Is that something that you as an SEO think about a lot, EEAT and YMYL, and all those sort of things?

Will Peters:

Oh, absolutely, is part of the framework and the Bible we must do. So it's one of those things where those terms are pretty much the SEO jargon that we use when we're talking to the content writers and we're talking to the physicians and whoever else, is getting them to really understand the impact of it.

But yeah, it's a lot of evangelism at Mayo for SEO. So it was kind of, they hear SEO, they know, "Oh yeah, we've got SEO, we got to put some SEO on this thing." It becomes this kind of thing that you just put it, "Let's put some SEO on this content. Let's just throw it in there after we've done our thing. Hey guys, can you get in here and do some SEO?"

But what we've done is really just start to build a framework of content development. So SEO is considered from the beginning of topic selection through the end of actual. And then we may still do a review at the end just to make sure it is fulfilling, but it's a mindset of thinking EEAT from the beginning through the entire process that really makes it more of embedded within the Mayo Clinic culture.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think that that process of the evangelism that you mentioned there, I think is really key. So when you're thinking about how you engage experts, like real topic knowledge, the physicians you mentioned in the process, are you engaging them with training or with an all team session where you're getting them engaged with that process? Because I think that that's something that certainly when I've worked in YMYL topics, getting people who are like, they're the physicians, they're the doctors, they're the lawyers, they're out there doing the stuff. Sometimes it can be difficult to get them on board with the process of content and SEO. So what is your process for doing that?

Will Peters:

They are super busy.

Crystal Carter:

I mean, they do-

Will Peters:

And it's probably not even on their list of priorities, right? They're dealing with tumors and some real things and SEO-

Crystal Carter:

Let me just talk to you about these keywords. I know you're trying to save lives, but-

Will Peters:

Yeah. Right. They are totally... So there's several different layers between where I sit and where the physician is sitting, and we rarely cross paths unless it's like a quick five minutes of even... So we've got some layers. So I typically engage with the layers of the content writers, the editors, the ones that actually run the taxonomy of our content. So those are the folks I really engage with, and they engage me from a, "Okay, we want to make sure we're keeping an SEO in mind as we're developing the content."

But with the content, it still has a medical review. So at some point, the physician and/or the medical experts will review the content just to make sure it's in line. And so I say that to say time, it's a huge constraint, right? Priorities when they're thinking about SEO versus, "I'm working on this tumor."

Crystal Carter:

Right. Precisely.

Will Peters:

But they would like to share the knowledge that they've learned from a procedure. So we do have peer learnings where... And it's real peer community. It may appear competitive between different hospitals and different clinics, but as we learn, it's a shared wisdom that they want to share with the peers. So as they're going through procedures, they're documenting. So we want to take that documentation and share it in a careful way. So the overall medical community learns from each procedure. It's a tedious process, but they're open to sharing the wisdom, which makes it totally fascinating.

Crystal Carter:

And I think that speaks to the value of genuinely expertly-led content is that you are helping to improve the whole corpus of professional content around what you're doing in your space. And it helps to drive the conversation, which is beyond SEO, but it obviously benefits SEO because people who are wanting to learn the latest techniques or the most effective way to manage that particular medical situation are going to be coming to you because they know that you have really knowledgeable content there. And I think that you also spoke to time, and certainly in my experience of working with experts, they don't have a lot of time. If you have a question, you need to be ready with the specific.

Will Peters:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think for that process, is that something where you have a very clear set of like, "I've got five minutes and I need to tick off this, this and this, or I've got this piece of content. Can you just tell me, have I paraphrased this correctly?" What's your general way of making sure that you're mindful of people's time, but also getting good value?

Will Peters:

One of the things I've done in the past that has worked well is I have to be convenient and flexible. I need to be open to the movements of their schedules. So they may say, "Yeah, I have some time," but when that time is, we don't know. So I've got to be flexible. It's like, "Okay, I've got these slots here. Here are the various slots that we can work with, but we're open to move that around as well." And they're pretty open to sharing because one of the founding of the Mayo brothers, and I don't know if the audience knows the history of Mayo Clinic.

Crystal Carter:

I don't. I'm interested.

Will Peters:

So it was founded by two brothers. And essentially one brother was tasked with working onsite, and one was tasked with going out, discovering new medical procedures, new science, new technology, new ways of completing procedures or new ailments or new solutions, et cetera. And one brother was tasked with being onsite, working and discovering himself and sharing that wisdom.

So from the beginning, it's kind of interesting that they've built within the culture of sharing what they've learned with the overall medical community as well as patients and health information seeker. So it's built into the fabric of Mayo Clinic to go out to seek wisdom and share the wisdom that we learn. But yeah, totally being flexible and convenient for what they're working on is the key of we know what the mission and kind of vision is. We have to be flexible to receive that.

Crystal Carter:

Yes, yes. I think that's really, really interesting. And I think that it helps you to get great value from people in a time that's respectful of their time.

Will Peters:

Right? Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely. I want to talk a little bit about some of the sort of more on page kind of stuff. So what are some of the things that you do on an SEO level to demonstrate expertise, authority, and trust? One of the things that I've found with clients is they sometimes they're like, "Oh, but we are good at this thing. But we do have this." I'm like, "Yeah, but it doesn't say it on your website. We can't see it on your website and we need to evidence it." What's your general approach to that? Do you have any tips you could share with somebody?

Will Peters:

So currently what's happening, I mean with the SEO process is really, it's one of the expert, like the actual author, but then do you have some data-driven diagrams, proof backed by some expert sources? And being Mayo Clinic, we have a lot of the expertise in-house. We've got writers, we've got physicians, we've got, I mean, some really smart people on the team. So we do have a medical school as well, so it's kind of like we've got research, we've got education, we've got actual procedures, so we've got a ton of expertise in-house that we source from.

But even these experts, they're sourcing and they're learning consistently to become better experts within their field. So we absolutely do not have an issue with finding experts within each domain. We can go into neurology, we can go into orthopedics, and we have research, we have education, and then we have actual procedures. So we are not short on expertise. It only just boils down to time.

Crystal Carter:

Right. But I think also, I think there's a lot of companies, particularly companies that have been working for... And even outside of a core YMYL space, so even outside of a medical space, I think there's a lot of companies that have a lot of resources that they are not tapping into. Like you mentioned people who are in the core of your business, but you also mentioned the medical school, you also mentioned folks doing other stuff, and I very often find that companies' websites will have untapped resources that they're not engaging with in order to demonstrate a breadth of knowledge. And I think it's a real missed opportunity, I think.

Will Peters:

Yeah. One other thing is really to engage them. You've got to share with them what's the goal and purpose. What are we really doing? Is it built into... Is this something that's built into the overall company fabric? Who are we when we position ourselves?

So Mayo has always positioned themselves as a resource. So not only a resource to patients, but also a resource to other physicians, to other peers within the community. So when you start to look at your brand and how you want to lead, I think many times... Even having this conversation, I had to kind of run it by Mayo and say, "Is this okay?" And the leadership was like, "This is built into our fabric of sharing with the peers and the community, so totally open to sharing how we do things and why we do things and the mission and vision of Mayo." So yeah, they were totally open to it.

And I think other companies can learn from that is if you build that type of the brands of the future will be positioned as resources.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely.

Will Peters:

Because how do we further whatever industry that you're in, if each company is not sharing what they've learned, what they've discovered with others, and as they grow, they share. And as they learn, they share. We learn and we share, right?

So I think with other companies, engaging your experts is helping them to understand that type of culture is trust building because now the patients and your peers start to look to you as, "Oh, wow, let's partner. That's where I want to go for in my procedure. That's where I want to go for." Different companies, it could be a car dealership. "That's where I want to go for my next car because I hear them always sharing expertise on vehicles, on the buying process, how to find the best financing for your vehicle."

I think there's a disconnect with companies that want to hide a lot of things and it doesn't further grow the community. And I just went through a car buying experience, and so that's why that suddenly popped up. But I think there's a lot to be shared from a car buying experience, but it seems like it's very secretive, right? It's like when you find third parties sharing the wisdom when a car dealership could be the leader in sharing how to actually pick out the vehicle, how to actually get the best financing deal, what type of profile do you need to build and have, and then competitors can look. So you can either be a competitor or a peer, but we're moving forward the car buying experience for all, but we're also building trust.

Crystal Carter:

Right. I think the other thing is that people think, "Oh, well, we don't want to show them all this stuff." Nine times out of 10, somebody can look it up on some Reddit thread somewhere or somebody else shares it anyway. So all it does is it makes you look like you're hiding something. And like you said, that doesn't build trust.

I think that what you're saying about companies of the future, I think you're absolutely right that brands that are sharing and brands that are leading the conversation with high quality, high grade authoritative information, like the kind that's built into the fabric of your company, I think that that is going to make the difference when there's so much noise from so many players, adding so much content that they may or may not be experts in. I think that if you're able to demonstrate a breadth of knowledge, that's going to make a really, really big difference.

And I think that you get a lot of people that say, "Oh, I don't want to give it away for free. I don't want to write all my stuff on the blog." You've heard this before in your SEO career, I'm sure.

Will Peters:

Right. Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

And it's very strange. It seems counterintuitive, but the more you share, the more you get back.

Will Peters:

Right. Right. Well, one of the teams I'm on is really the brand Mayo and about Mayo. What is Mayo? What does Mayo stand for? So we're actually actively working on that. There's several segments of... One is we have health information, we have about Mayo, and then we have actual procedures, et cetera. So there's a multifaceted way of how we deliver content from these different spaces, whether it be research, whether it be education, whether it be procedures.

But really when we start to talk about the brand, is we look for brand signals. And if our information is in enough places where people start to recognize, we've noticed that the mention of Mayo Clinic starts to grow, whether it be through Google Trends or whether it be just our name mentions when we use our search console and just look and see, "Okay, well how is our brand really looking? Is it growing? Is it decreasing in comparison to our peers that are not sharing that wisdom?" And you can see those that are not sharing their content or their expertise, you can actually see their brands decrease in mentions versus those that's actually sharing great quality, high grade content, you can actually watch their brands grow.

Crystal Carter:

That's absolutely true, and I think that's a great point to end on. Thank you so, so much for your time today.

Will Peters:

Oh, no problem. Thank you.

Crystal Carter:

It's been an absolute joy. We should let you grow your personal brand as well. Where can people find you, Will?

Will Peters:

Probably LinkedIn. It's my hub. I'm on LinkedIn regularly. I need to do more with my LinkedIn and probably start doing some content, but Mayo keeps me pretty busy.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, it's all good. It's a big job.

Will Peters:

It is. I'm always happy to have a conversation with individuals that want to talk strategy, talk analysis and actionable insights. I love data and filtering through to find the story within the data and humanizing the data. It's not just search volume, it's not just clicks. These are actual visitors with real needs, real questions, and personalizing that data into something that is meaningful I think will be helpful for all brands.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much again for your time.

Will Peters:

You too.

Crystal Carter:

I'm so happy to have you on. Thank you so much, Will Peters.

Mordy Oberstein:

I just want to say, Crystal, that was phenomenal and it's amazing just to see what goes on behind the scenes. And look, there is no other website like the Mayo Clinic for expert-led content and is a real treat that you were able to bring Will on the show.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, it was great speaking with him, and I think that they're a really good example of a website that's been in this space for a while. They've been doing content like that. They think they were one of the first websites that's been doing content like that for a long time, so there's a lot to learn from them. And I think that even if you are a smaller website, even if you are not working in the medical space, there are definitely recommendations and things that you could apply to the work that you're doing to make your content more robust and to make your work with experts more streamlined.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, one of the things I like to do in general is to reverse engineer the SERP. If you're looking at how do I handle expert-led content or YMYL kind of content, well go look at how Google handles it and in this case, go look how Bing handles it also, because they also do some really cool things.

So we are going to take a little bit of a dive into how different search engines handle YMYL queries differently as we go with our little segment that we like to call So Many Search Engines.

Mordy Oberstein:

So I just did a little query. Every SEO is the go-to queries. My go-to query for YMYL stuff is heart attack symptoms.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't know why. I think maybe I'm unconsciously scared of having a heart attack. I don't know.

Crystal Carter:

Hey, it's something that affects a lot of people.

Mordy Oberstein:

It does. I went to the doctor recently. I got my blood checked, everything's good, so I shouldn't have this fear, but I think I have heart disease in my family, I think that's why. Too much information.

Crystal Carter:

I think a lot of people do. Yeah. Yeah. But donate to a heart charity near you.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes, please do. And watch your own heart health, by exercising and eating a balanced diet.

Crystal Carter:

Team K all over here.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, let's look on Google and Bing say about this. We just ramble off all advice that no one really wants to hear.

Crystal Carter:

With no expertise.

Mordy Oberstein:

With absolutely no expertise whatsoever.

Crystal Carter:

Don't listen to us.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, I think you should exercise. That's good advice. That's pretty generic.

Crystal Carter:

I think so. Yeah, I think that's pretty... Yeah, okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Probably take my own advice. With that, I just ran heart attack symptoms into Bing, and I ran it into Google, and you get back very different approaches to it. First off, I'll just say Bing's approach to it is very layered and it's very visual, and they're trying to give you multiple layers of information right away. They do some really interesting things I was not expecting. For example, they have a little carousel and it says it's a story that is AI-generated and it goes through heart attack symptoms and preventions. It says, "Story is AI-generated" and it gives you the sources from it and it tells you the most common symptom is X, Y, and Z. Or some people also may experience whatever, whatever symptoms. And it tries to run you through all, I guess, the top level information that you might want to know about heart attack symptoms. But it's AI-generated, which I was very surprised that they would be okay with doing for this because AI sometimes hallucinates.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I can see that. I guess for some things, like the only case I would make for that is that LLMs are using a lot of established content. So I think for something that's a less dynamic query, that's maybe less... I think that the information on heart attacks doesn't change super rapidly, so it could very well be the case that they're more confident with referring to a corpus of information that's fairly solid. Do you know what I mean? Like if you were to talk about-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, no, I get it. And the information is great. There's nothing wrong or bad about the information. I was just a little bit surprised. But you're right, because the sites that they're quoting are the Mayo Clinic, the CDC, the Heart Association. I guess they're confident enough. I wonder if they've limited their database to say, "Okay, these are the sites you're allowed to pull from for these kind of queries," and that's fine.

Crystal Carter:

Right. That could very well be the case. I mean, similarly, I looked on Bard for what are heart attack symptoms in women, because I don't think people actually understand that women can tend to have different ones. For instance, Bard is pulling through basically a bullet point. So they've got common symptoms in both men and women, common symptoms with more common with women, important to remember. And they have here a list of sources, helpful resources for further information. Now they're referencing the American Hearts Association, the British Heart Foundation. Okay, here's interesting. So they say, "Reference American Heart Association," but it doesn't go to the American Heart Association website, it goes to CBS news article.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, that's interesting.

Crystal Carter:

With the American Heart Association. The British Heart Foundation goes to a static page for them, and then it says, "CDC, Centers for Disease Control Prevention," and then is the reference, but the link says Mayo Clinic.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh boy.

Crystal Carter:

Do you see...

Mordy Oberstein:

This is what I mean. But that's important though. The citation is important.

Crystal Carter:

Right, but there's-

Mordy Oberstein:

Obviously, the Mayo Clinic, as we said, is a great source-

Crystal Carter:

It's a great source, but they muddled it.

Mordy Oberstein:

But it's bad.

Crystal Carter:

So their heading is CDC, and the link that they have for that heading is going to the Mayo Clinic. Then they have sources underneath and it says, "AC cast some sort of episode in fitpage.in," which I've never heard of.

Mordy Oberstein:

Never heard either of those before.

Crystal Carter:

No.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's interesting. By the way, what kind of stands in a little bit of contradistinction to what Bing is doing. So one of the things that Bing does up top, they have a panel, almost like a knowledge panel-ish kind of thing with the tabs you would see on Google. Has overview of symptoms. If you type in heart attack symptoms, it takes you right to the symptoms to have. Google does the same thing. But at the very, very top of it, it says, "Content medically reviewed by Dr. Kabir Sethi," and it links to his LinkedIn profile, which is interesting, by the way. First off, that's amazing that they're telling you that this content was actually... the content in their knowledge panel was actually reviewed by somebody, is an amazing level of authority and expertise that they're linking... They're so confident they're linking to his LinkedIn profile, but it also speaks this whole conversation, which we got into the news a couple of weeks ago about author bylines.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Bing is focused on author bylines on the fricking SERP.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. But the other thing is this also goes to ecosystem, right? So Microsoft owns LinkedIn.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I was going to say it owns LinkedIn. It makes sense.

Crystal Carter:

They own Bing. So they're able to pull those two things together. And when we think about EEAT, one of the things that John Mueller has said, that Google looks at LinkedIn for information about as a source of verifying somebody's EEAT, and it's also the case that Google will regularly pull from LinkedIn in order to pull up biographical entities. So for featured snippets on people and also for knowledge panels.

So this goes to ecosystem, and this also goes to the fact that when we're thinking about an AI-led SERP, like an AI-integrated SERP, that the data sets that people have available to them will impact what information they're able to show us. So if Bing is able to pull through more biographical information or more biographical entity information via LinkedIn, then that will work in their favor. If Google is able to pull through other data sets, then that will work in their favor, but it will definitely mean that we have different results. I think the Bing result on this one is really interesting, and it's got a lot of context. It's got a lot of links.

Mordy Oberstein:

It has a whole little section for the Mayo Clinic also. They're the first result, obviously, and it has different cards that you can scroll through for the Mayo Clinic itself, like symptoms, when to see a doctor. And it gives you some information from the page and then a see more link to go to the actual Mayo Clinic.

It is very interactive. It is very dynamic. It is also very different from the Google SERP, and I wonder if that's on purpose. Google SERP is very dynamic sometimes too, but in this case it's pretty linear. On desktop, they give you knowledge panel on the side of the tabs. On mobile, it's right up front. And it's just, "Here's the information." Very straightforward. I don't want to say linear, but very simply presented. It's sourced by... They tell you the source. They source by the Mayo Clinic. Again, adding that layer of expertise in there. But I wonder if Google's doing that on purpose because, "We don't want you to have a complicated user experience here and a complicated UI or a layered UI. We want to make sure you get the information very quickly, very clearly, and without any sort of possible complications or confusion."

Crystal Carter:

I think it's also a case of maybe Google has more eyes on them, and I think also Google is going to be, might feel less... I don't know. I don't want to say feel less confident, but might want to have full confidence, full, complete confidence in a piece of content before they publish it for those reasons.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I don't see them ever doing an AI thing like Bing did.

Crystal Carter:

Right. So I think it might be the case that they want to pull out information that they know to be solid. And sometimes if you're going for something that is 100% solid information, you might have a smaller connection to there. And again, it could also be a question of ecosystem. It may very well be that I think that Bing has certain relationships with certain content creators to pull through some of their knowledge panel sort of things, and it may be that they have agreements with certain people in their spaces. I know that Google absolutely does...

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, it has.

Crystal Carter:

... for certain things.

Mordy Oberstein:

They absolutely do. Yes.

Crystal Carter:

So for instance, like for some of their weather things, weather features, and also for instance, for some of their lyrics features they have-

Mordy Oberstein:

I think here also with the Mayo Clinic, I think there's definitely a partnership.

Crystal Carter:

Right. So I think that that can affect which ones come through. But yeah, it's definitely worth having a look at those. And I think that the other thing about those features is that they can give you an idea of the kinds of content you might want to create on your own website as well, because if they're filtering them into different sections-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, that's the whole point. Reverse engineer this.

Crystal Carter:

Right. If they're filtering them into different sections, if they've got different subsections with questions and things like that, then you might consider adding those elements to your site in order to make it more robust for users.

Mordy Oberstein:

If Google's being very clear, very straightforward, very linear, you should probably do that with your content too, sort of thing. By the way, speaking of information that's 100% reliable, there's none other when it comes to SEO news and SEO information than Barry Schwartz, who is 100% reliable 100% of the time, unless you're asking him to make a butter sandwich, in which case might want to move on.

Here is this week's SEO News from the most reliable sources, which obviously includes the great Barry Schwartz.

Snappy News. Snappy News. Snappy News. Two for you this week. First up from Barry Schwartz, over at search engine round table. New Google search DMA, rich results, aggregator units and refinement chips. Ooh, chips. I love chips.

Anyway, the DMA. The DMA is the Digital Marketing Act out of the European Union, which basically says, "Hey, Google, don't manipulate the results and not give visibility and access to actual websites, to actual businesses. We don't want you to manipulate the results for your nefarious purposes, that sort of thing. We want to make sure that there's enough visibility to go around for all."

Because of this, Google is saying that it's launched a new carousel, it's either based on search data markup or Google said they can actually use the standard text without markup if there is none, for example. And it's basically a way of showing more aggregators or suppliers for travel local and shopping queries. And this is right now in Germany, France, Chechnya and the UK.

Google has tested this in the past. You can actually see, Barry has a whole article showing you what this is, but basically is, imagine you search for bike repair in Berlin. What you basically have or will have is a rich result or a carousel that gives you aggregator websites or actual suppliers to tell you where you can get your bike fixed or a place where you could actually get your bike fixed in Berlin in this case.

So traditionally you would think websites like TripAdvisor or TimeOut or all these sort of aggregators who take websites from around the web, put them onto a list. Those are the kind of sites that might show up here. You can actually get some actual suppliers as well showing up here. But in this way, what Google is doing is saying, "Hey, we're guaranteeing that businesses are going to be getting traffic and visibility through this new feature."

A great way of describing this is the airline option. So underneath the traditional sort of lights box where Google just tells you the airline and the price and that's it, there's also going to be a carousel called Flight Sites where you can see things like site scan or Expedia, Kayak, all those aggregators listed there as well. So you can go to an actual website, which I think what this is all about. So the actual websites are exposed and not just Google's direct answers or Google's own properties.

At the same time, there's going to be what we call a chip or a bubble filter added as well. So let's say for example, you're searching for best places to visit in, I don't know, in Paris, which is the example Barry happens to have, which I didn't read it, I wasn't reading at Barry. I happened to come up with Paris on my own, and it'll be a little filter there for places sites, so you can get websites on places and things to do in these places and places to visit and all those other things you want to do when you're on vacation in Paris.

This is a big deal. This is Google aligning with the DMA. It's really interesting. I definitely recommend you check out the articles so you can see the actual examples that Barry links off to it. It does a better justice than me trying to explain it verbally to you.

Next up from Search Engine Lens and to Goodwin, Reddit's shown excessively, no, really in Google product review search results, study finds. This is a study from Glenn Allsopp who did an amazing job analyzing what SEOs have kind of been complaining about or noticing or talking about for a good while now that Reddit is everywhere. So the data shows that Reddit shows up in 97.5% of product review queries, so things like best microwave or best silicone popcorn maker thing, which is the thing I was looking for. I mentioned on this podcast before, it's super niche, but it's super awesome. You should get one.

Anyway, it kind of puts quantitative data to what SEOs have been seeing for a long time, which is almost an excessive amount of Reddit showing up. My personal feeling is what Google did was they actually made an announcement around showing firsthand knowledge on the SERP results, on the SERP, on the search results, and Reddit and forums like Reddit sort of became a default way to do that, as opposed to showing websites that actually offer a blog post or whatever it is that actually offer firsthand knowledge based on a topic, experience-based knowledge. The forums were the easiest way to do that, I think personally, because it doesn't exist in a serious way outside of the forums, which is a different problem that Google, I feel like is going to have to address, and that kind of ties into what Glenn wrote in the article itself.

I'll link to both Danny's coverage and Glenn's actual study in the show notes. Glenn wrote, "I'm not the Google police and I'm not going to out anyone, but this SERP feature surely has to change." And what he's talking about is that SERP feature that shows forums, the discussions from Reddit and other forums on the SERP plus, mostly Reddit and a little bit of Quora. It's called discussions and forums, by the way. Makes sense. That's the name of the SERP feature. It does have to change. The information there, I have found personally, is not really what you want it to be. A lot of it's outdated. Some of it's spamish. It's really not what you want to have so prolifically shown on the SERP the way that it is. And Glenn I believe is right. I think everyone knows that it's right. It's going to have to change.

My question is how is it going to change? Because what Google wants to do, in my opinion, is to sort of compete with the TikTok of the world and have actual firsthand experience, firsthand knowledge, personal knowledge, personal connection on the SERP itself. Forums are a way to do that, if the content was a little bit better and more targeted, I think, than an actual article or a blog post or informational content would be better. But again, that doesn't actually exist to the way that I think that it should exist, and that has to go through incentive cycles and how Google and others have been incentivizing content for a long time. To the extent that that kind of content that's built on firsthand knowledge, firsthand experience being written in blog posts hasn't been incentivized in the past, so there isn't enough of that content to rank.

Then we actually talked about this on a podcast with Nigel Stevens and Jason Dodge, and I wrote an article about this, I believe on the Wix SEO Hub around the future of web content and that sort of thing. It will be interesting to see how Google handles this, but at a certain point, yeah, we're going to have to see a rejection in the amount of forums showing up. Not to say there aren't great forums out there, I just think there needs to be maybe diversification of those forums in a minimum.

Anyway, it's a great article, it's a great study. It's very thought-provoking about what's going on in the ecosystem now, and it's certainly something that SEOs have been talking about and addressing. So nice to see some actual data around that to quantify that. Thank you, Glenn. Thank you, Danny. Thank you, Barry, of course, for your articles. And that is this week's Snappy News.

100% reliable, 100%. There's not many people you can say that about, but I will say that about Barry legitimately.

Crystal Carter:

That's true. That's true.

Mordy Oberstein:

Again, except for the butter sandwich.

Crystal Carter:

And I don't know how he finds the time. I don't know how he finds the time to reply to so many people who are like, "I found this thing. I found this thing. Look at this, Barry," and he's like, "Yes, I will look at that," and I'm like, "How do you find the time?"

Mordy Oberstein:

Because he's 100% reliable 100% of the time.

Crystal Carter:

Thank you, Barry.

Mordy Oberstein:

100%. Speaking of reliable information, again, it's time for our Follow of the Week. And this week we have a little treat for you. It is the one, it is the only Ian Helms who on X/Twitter is @IanHelms, which is I-A-N-H-E-L-M-S. Follow him over on X/Twitter, whatever you want to call it.

Crystal Carter:

He's great and he shares some really interesting information about lots of different content. He's somebody who's been working in this space for a long time and is able to give some great information, so yeah, he's a great person to follow.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yep. Okay. So definitely make sure you check out Ian Helms again over at I-A-N-H-E-L-M-S over on Twitter. We'll link to his profile in the show notes. And that's it. That's all I got for you this week.

Crystal Carter:

That's it. How was the experience?

Mordy Oberstein:

That's all the expertise I can offer in one episode.

Crystal Carter:

Well, I had a great experience and I trust that we will be back next week with some-

Mordy Oberstein:

We are going to be back next week. That's very authoritative declaration you made there. I see what you're doing.

Crystal Carter:

I'm an expert at podcast scheduling. I don't know.

Mordy Oberstein:

Podcast scheduling is something to be an expert in. It's not as easy as it sound to break the fourth wall here, which means thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with the new episode as we dive into evergreen content versus emerging trend content for SEO and beyond. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Please learn more about SEO, check out all the great content, webinars and downloadable resources on the Wix SEO Learning above where you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO.