The hard work of maintaining your Google rankings

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 pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO brand here at Wix. Today, I'm joined by she who doesn't wear a cape, but maybe she should wear a cape. But either way, she is an SEO hero, our Head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Hello, not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes-

Mordy Oberstein:

But the good ones do like, yeah, the Flash doesn't wear one, but Batman does.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know, I had a plumber who really helped me out. He didn't wear a cape, that would be very impractical.

Mordy Oberstein:

But it would've covered up his crack.

Crystal Carter:

My plumber has it under control. I'll just tell you that right now.

Mordy Oberstein:

Plumber crack is a real thing. My stepfather's an electrician. Electrician crack is also a real thing.

Crystal Carter:

Wow, this is wow, that's a great start to the podcast. Thanks listeners for hanging in there with us.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, it's not my fault, it's a full moon tonight. Anyway, 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 get inbuilt Google Search Console insights to help you maintain those rankings. Look for within our SEO dashboard, because today we pay homage to the unsung heroes of SEO, those who maintain rank, how Google updates bring maintaining rank into focus in all new ways. The content connection, why a content first focus can be your best friend when looking to keep your rankings, and how sites of all sizes can go about maintaining their rankings.

To help us RicketyRoo's own, Melissa Popp will be here in just a few minutes to share what's in her utility belt as she goes about keeping her rankings. Plus, we look at how search engines try to maintain their market share by borrowing from other search engines. And of course, we have snappies of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So, put on your capes and proudly wear your underwear on the outside as we pay tribute to you, the unsung hero of SEO, AKA, Captain Rank Maintainer on this, the 93rd episode of the SERP's Up podcast.

Maintaining rank is hard. It's not easy.

Crystal Carter:

Maintaining rank is hard.

Mordy Oberstein:

Because everyone's gunning for you now.

Crystal Carter:

Yes, everyone can see you. You were completely exposed. If you're number two or if you're number 37, you can sneak in, right? You can sneak in on the cut, you can be like, okay, I see you number one, I see what you're doing, but you can bide your time, like a sneak attack kind of thing. But if you are number one, everyone can see you and everybody knows what's going on and people will study you and get all in there.

A great tool for looking at your competitors is Semrush has a great tool for that, looking at keywords and looking at competitors. One of the ones that Ross Simmons, friend of the podcast, friend of the SEO Hub has talked about is CRM. Salesforce has an article called, What is A CRM, and I'm looking at there, and that has a traffic volume, the keyword, what is a CRM has a traffic volume of 22,000. According to Semrush, they're getting 5,000 of those clicks every month. They've ranked number one in that position since May, 2023, possibly even longer. And they spend time making sure that that does not move. Why? Because that's 5,000. That's that much coming through straight away, and that's something that's really important. They're also ranked, they recently have had a tussle with HubSpot.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, a tussle, that's a good word, by the way. I just want to stop, point out what a great word tussle is. Sorry.

Crystal Carter:

Tussle, yes, tussle is a good word. So they're tussling a little bit with HubSpot for CRM, so sometimes they're number one, sometimes HubSpot's number one for just the word CRM, but they've had number one for, what is a CRM, for a very long time. And that's really important because that's core to their business.

So if you have terms that are core to your business, it is absolutely worth maintaining that content, maintaining that position over time. And if Google understands that it is core to your business, that everything you do points to that particular keyword, then they will give you that. They'll understand that you are the authority in that, and all of the things on your website should point to that.

Now, not only does what does a CRM, rank number one for what is a CRM, but it also ranks number one for loads of other terms as well. So for instance, it also ranks number one for, what is a CRM tool. It ranks number one for, CRM definition, CRM program, all of that sort of stuff. That particular piece of content is pulling in tons of traffic for them.

And I think that in terms of maintaining rank, sometimes things can rank number one and get no traffic and not get much traffic at all. But according to this, according to Semrush in May alone, the page, what is a CRM, on Salesforce was getting 43,000 clicks a month. Okay, now that is absolutely, absolutely 100% worth maintaining rank.

Now, if you're looking at your keywords and you've got number one but nobody's coming to the page anyway, you want to have as many number one keywords on your site as you can, but maybe don't lose any sleep if you slip a little bit. But if you have something that's coming in and bringing in thousands and thousands every month, then absolutely spend the time. And there's lots of different tools, which I'm sure that Melissa will get into the details of it, but you need to assess when you're assessing whether or not you should fight to maintain your rank, whether or not you should defend yourself from the usurpers. Make sure... I know dropping the vocabulary words. Anybody studying for their SATs, you're welcome. And-

Mordy Oberstein:

That's our core audience right there.

Crystal Carter:

Right? But basically anybody who, if you're looking at it and you're trying to think, should they hold the line here? Have a look at the search volume, have a look at how relevant it is to the rest of your content, and then also think about the links. So if you're thinking about that particular page, we have a particular piece of content. We have the SEO Guide, the Wix SEO Guide, for instance, on the Wix SEO Hub, which has lots of links out to other pieces of content, has lots of links into it from lots of other links as well, and gets a fair amount of traffic for us for that particular page. That's worth us maintaining, that's worth us looking after, that's worth us thinking about.

And so have a look at which ones are those pivotal, crucial, important pages, and you should probably be monitoring those in terms of ranking. You should probably be monitoring them daily, weekly, at least. And you should be scheduling in and making sure that you're updating them regularly and making sure that you're paying attention to your competitors because sometimes if you're not looking and they can sneak in and you might miss that you lost a keyword that maybe has a knock on effect to some of the other keywords that you're ranking for.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, to get more into this, I had a little chat with RicketyRoo's, Melissa Popp, because I have a lot to say about this, and we talked a lot about this. Here's a little chat with RicketyRoo's, Melissa Pop.

So, welcome to this show, Melissa Popp. How are you?

Melissa Popp:

I'm good. How are you doing?

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm good, can't complain. I think that you are one of the unsung heroes of SEO.

Melissa Popp:

Oh, gosh. I just have to throw that feather in my cap, won't I?

Mordy Oberstein:

Not all heroes wear capes, unless you're wearing a cape. You wear capes?

Melissa Popp:

That's true. No, not yet, not yet. No, I do have a crown though that I wear sometimes.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, that's close.

Melissa Popp:

Yeah, I'm a little extra sometimes.

Mordy Oberstein:

There's a whole... In every SEO conversation, podcast, webinar, article, whatever, it's all about increasing rank, increasing rank, increasing rank. But one of the things that I'll put a little spoiler out there, or I don't know, behind the scenes thing, maybe I'm not allowed to say this, but one of the things we talk about internally at Wix is maintaining rank. We're already ranking, and now we have to keep those rankings because if you don't keep those rankings, then you're back at the square one of trying to get the rankings, but no one ever talks about this.

Melissa Popp:

No, nobody does. Nobody talks about, what I like to think of as maintenance mode of SEO. You come to a point where depending on how big your site is, what your niche is, that you hit a saturation level where it's like, how much more can you do to continue to boost rankings when you already are in page one, top three results, earning your featured snippets, unfortunately showing up in SGE now, whether that's right or wrong, but there's a maintenance that's involved there and ongoing work that most of us, I would say, probably 60 to 70% of our job is that maintenance mode of maintaining those ranks. And then at the same time, trying to figure out, okay, where do we pivot from here to earn additional rank rankings? If that's even possible, because at some point you reach a level where you own it all, ideally.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Well, that's one of the, I don't know, thou shall not say this, but sometimes you can't go any higher. You're number three, and that's where you're going to get for this keyword.

Melissa Popp:

Absolutely, and at RicketyRoo, we do a lot of work with home service clients, and you see that all the time. These businesses are competing with directors like Yelp, Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, and other websites that the domain authority and just overall topical authority that they have in those niches because of what powerhouse of websites they are. Your little mom and pop shop is never going to be able to get rank one, two, three, even in some cases when you're going up against powerhouses like that. So it's, what do you do from there? Unless you have millions of dollars to try to compete there, you're never going to maintain that. And nobody talks about that either, of what ranking is good enough before you start carrying the load of ranking right there versus trying to convince clients that you can go higher because you can't. It's fine.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and that's fine because sometimes you're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggonit, and people click on you and you're ranking number three, and that's fine.

Melissa Popp:

And as long as you're converting and earning business, and then also you're satisfied as a business owner at what your revenue is from that, you don't have to be number one to make a living and to keep your business growing. And there's so much competition out there, and so many, we're seeing this right now, all the changes. I mean, that could be a whole other episode, right? Talking about Reddit and Quora jumping in rankings, and now you're competing with a whole other subset of websites that shouldn't even be competing with you, but at some point you have to step back and say, okay, this is good enough. We are converting enough. Either, what other channels can we look at? Because that's another thing we don't talk about as part of this maintenance mode.

Mordy Oberstein:

Wow, there's life outside of Google?

Melissa Popp:

Oh my gosh, life outside of SEO, I'm going to get hate mail for saying, and I'm a huge, huge believer in being able to look at, where is your audience? Where are they hanging out? Where are they having discussions? Sometimes it's social media, sometimes it is Reddit. Sometimes, I mean, I was talking to someone the other week about direct mail campaigns and how nobody talks about direct mail, but when you look at certain demographics, that still works. And that's another whole aspect of maintaining not just rankings, but brand awareness. You want to go where people are. You reach a plateau with SEO, you can take that budget and spend it a little bit elsewhere to figure that out, and you're still growing just in a different way.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, so spinning back around to all this, because the point about Reddit and Quora is exactly where I want go with this. You were doing just fine, things were okay. You were ranking, I don't know, one, two, or three, and now all of a sudden you're still ranking one, two, or three, but there's a giant discussions, cert feature box above you with a bunch of Reddit URLs. How much of your work is going into changes in the ecosystem, how to combat them, how to deal with them? With the Reddit one, I don't know what you do, but things like that where the SERP is changing, the algorithm is changing, there are updates, there's this or that, and you're trying to just staying out above water because you're doing better than above water. You're ranking the top of the SERP, but you're doing work that keeps you afloat at the very top of the SERP. How much of your time is spent on those kinds of things?

Melissa Popp:

I mean, I already, as part of my work, and especially on the content marketing side with clients, I am already looking at Reddit and Quora, whether they're ranking on page one or not. When it comes to content ideas, blogging, even updating content, looking at people, also ask boxes, I was already looking at all of this before all of a sudden they all jumped to page one. And I think that's a big problem in our industry, is that a lot of our efforts, there's a lot of people out there doing great work with content that are looking at the big picture and not just the little SEO piece of it. We need to start spending more time looking at this.

So Reddit and Quora, I mean, I was doing content briefs a couple of weeks ago for a home services client, and I'm seeing Reddit discussions pop up for transactional keywords. There's no reason they need to be there at all, but I'm like, okay, if people are landing on a page, a service page, and still have that question that is popping up on page one, whether I agree that that Reddit thread should be there or not, I need to be looking at that. There is still, whether Google's algorithm is all jacked up and that is what's happening here or not, I still, if Google is going to rank that there, I need to be aware of that for my client and think, is this Reddit discussion worthy of inclusion on a piece of content I'm creating for? Do I need to update that piece of content?

So I think there's two, there's two issues there. One is we're not doing enough to actually understand search intent to begin with, and Reddit in discussion is popping up there is one way to look at that. What are people discussing that they're not getting from "normal" search results, that we need to be including in our content? And not just for SEO purposes, but literally a potential customer is asking that question. And then on the flip side, why are we not doing this to begin with? We only care about it now that Reddit and Quora and other discussions are on page one. So we're already doing a disservice to clients by having not paid attention to this before it simply popped to page one.

Mordy Oberstein:

But that goes into, so I'll give you an example of this where if you're not paying attention to what people actually want and talking to them in a way that actually speaks to them, while you might be ranking today, I don't think you'll be ranking tomorrow. There was a couple... I'm actually running this up right now for the Wix SEO Hub. By the time this recording comes out, I hope it'll be long published. Looking at two examples from the March 2024 core update. So bankrate.com redid basically an entire folder of their content, and it was previously very, I call it sterile content, like, what is a payday loan? How to get a payday loan, when don't you choose a payday loan, how to finance a payday loan. Every H two was very topical, and it's like each one's trying to rank for a featured snippet, kind of thing. And they redid all of it and the folder went berserk in a good way, just shot up in the rankings with the March 2024 core update, because what they did was they said, okay, let's speak to the topic, but in a way that relates to what the user's going to do with the information.

So for example, they added a section on when a payday loan might actually be worthwhile because they realized, okay, we're talking about payday loans and the original content was, what is a payday loan, the risk of a payday loan, and all these very generalized, sterile kind of subtopics. But if we're talking about this, obviously the user is looking to get a payday loan for a reason, so why don't we address that? And they did, and they did it across all of their content, it became very situational like, here's what you need to know about a payday loan, in the context of how it's going to work for you. They talked about just what to expect, the money would take X number of days to get into your account, blah, blah, blah. It was much more user focused.

All of a sudden they shot up in the rankings, they replaced somebody. They replaced the page, and that page is now gone and not ranking. And websites, I think are slowly coming around to the idea that they have to update content. What they wrote five years ago and ranked with five years ago is not going to work anymore because the algorithm is changing. Let's change that up. And big content teams are doing that and if you're not worried about maintaining your rank, somebody's going to get after you and replace you.

Melissa Popp:

Exactly, and why wouldn't they? Especially when you look at bigger websites compared to smaller websites, and that's a whole other player, smaller websites being frozen out of brand dominated topical searches. But that example that you gave with bank rate, how many SEOs listening to this right now, okay, on let's say smaller or medium sized teams and websites, are going to come away from this and go, holy cow, if Bankrate did this, this is absolutely what we should do. Lily Ray, Marie Haynes have been sharing other examples of websites that are skyrocketing after pivoting their content strategy. We have that proof there.

Now, can we guarantee 100% certainty that Google's always going to reward that content? Who knows what Google's going to do, but what we know is searchers want information that they can actually act on and use, beyond just whatever their initial search query is. And the problem is, is we spend so much time creating SEO content, focusing on keywords, focusing on page, what backlinks can we get, what internal links can we update? We are so focused on gaining the SEO side of things that we forget the content is the foundation of that growth.

And what's even worse is most people know that, but they don't want to spend the time on creating a quality piece of content because holy cow, that's actually really hard, even if it's a topic, what is a payday loan versus how does the payday loan scam work? And so you have a problem that companies don't want to invest the time in creating quality of content. They certainly don't want to pay writers and spend the money to create quality content.

I mean, I can imagine how much Wix spends with all the content that you all push out and you have a set budget for that and you can get it and you look at the names you bring on to write for you. But most companies don't have that, nor do they want to invest in it because they feel that their ROI could be better spent elsewhere, whether it's paid advertising, display, something else. They want instant gratification, not realizing that keeping your content updated to match search intent and what your users are actually looking for to make a decision through that top and middle of the funnel content, particularly, you are going to spend less money long-term on ROI than throwing money at the wall with PPC, competing with everyone else driving bids up.

And I get it, I understand why this works the way it does. You're always going to try to get the most for the cheapest. But we're now finding with the helpful content update and other things Google are doing that, holy cow, that doesn't work anymore. And now companies are playing catch up and having to spend even more money that they didn't budget. In Bankrate's case, I wonder how much money they spent updating content that if they had approached the correct way to begin with, they wouldn't have had to spend. And that's the conundrum now everybody is in.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's the whole problem. And to your point about the smaller websites, they also, in my opinion, there's no such thing as one kind of site having a total advantage. There are things that big websites have that smaller websites don't, like we have money for SEO Hub to pay writers, yada, yada, yada, yada. But if you want to make changes, it's very slow. We're a giant brand, there's a lot of guidelines, there's a lot of hoops to jump through. If you're a smaller website and you're like, you know what? And we're more risk averse, so if we see that there's a new trend.

I think for example, that content's far more conversational than it ever has been before. Good luck getting a big brand to create a landing page that's conversational, not ultimate, whatever, whatever, sell, buy here. Good luck. If you're a small brand or a small website or a small business or an SME, whatever it is, you can do that. You can take those risks and that's what'll help you maintain the rank, in my opinion. I think you're at an easier advantage to maintain rank to a certain extent. Obviously, the larger websites have that authority and that makes it easier for them but you can do things like, I think that content that Google's looking for X now and I want to pivot to do X, you can do that tomorrow if you wanted to. There's no hoops to jump through.

Melissa Popp:

Definitely, and the thing with smaller business versus bigger businesses, especially in brands, we're hearing that conversation a lot as well, is how is anybody going to compete with these big brands now dominating search more than ever? And depending on what your business is, especially as a small, medium sized business, you don't need to compete with those. That's not where locally people are looking for. We have these conversations with local clients all the time, that they want number one against Yelp and Angie's List, and it's like, no, you don't, you don't need to. People understand that they're shopping around, they are going to click down through results. That's the whole scary idea of, oh, if you're not at the top of page one, oh no, oh no, the sky is falling.

Mordy Oberstein:

What's the best place to bury a dead body? On page two of the SERP.

Melissa Popp:

Listen, you just need to be on page one, and you need to give searchers and actual consumers more power to make that choice, most people are shopping for that.

But yeah, I absolutely agree that smaller businesses has the opportunity to make more immediate impact than bigger businesses do, and they are less risk adverse. And it comes down to the priority of changes you're making, whether it's SEO updates, link building, content, you don't have to do it all. You just have to do the right things in the right order to make the most impact and then eventually, you get to all the other things. And that's another thing that gets, I think very missed in our industry is everybody wants a checklist. Let's go through, update title tags and Meta descriptions and headers and blah, blah, blah down the list, where it's like, okay, we know Google rewrites Meta titles and descriptions all the time. Why is that your number one priority?

Mordy Oberstein:

That's not what's going to move... Sometimes, yes, but my experience, if you had rankings and are slowly seeing a decline, like a consistent slow degradation, it's a quality issue, usually.

Melissa Popp:

Exactly.

Mordy Oberstein:

And that might be, you have terrible headers as part of the quality, but it's usually the quality overall. You need to have a hard look at your content, which is I think what people don't do. I feel like SEOs look at the SERP like I won. It's like I don't know, I'll use a sports reference, like, I scored a basket or I got a goal or I got a hit, now I'm done. Yeah, but in five minutes from now, you're back up in the order, you got to take another swing. It's not, you won and these rankings belong to you. Google doesn't owe you anything.

Melissa Popp:

No, no, and why we think they do. These conversations and arguments and the vitriol that our industry is showing to one another right now and frankly showing to folks like John Miller and Danny Sullivan. Okay, I'm not saying Google is the enemy, but we are competing against them. That's a realistic fact of what we do. The only thing we can do is do the best we possibly can, starting with the foundation that does everything for SEO and that piece of content. We can only do the best that we can and maybe pray, hope, whatever you want to do, burn a candle, whatever, and hope for everything else to match up and help rankings. But at the end of the day, we start with that piece of content and it's so overlooked.

And to circle back to talking about unsung heroes, that's why this maintenance of your rankings is so important. And it always starts with that content. What more could you be doing? How has search intent changed that you need to now update your piece? We see that all the time in local. I feel like local search results, the search intent changes more than anywhere else that I've worked, and I've worked on e-comm brands, I've worked enterprise level national, international. I feel like at the local level, that search intent changes almost on a whim. It's like a whole demographic decides, oh, I'm going to search to buy this or find this service, this is what... And it makes no sense, but it's what happens.

And that's one of the first things I do when I'm looking to update a piece of content is, I want to dive deep into SERPs and understand, has this changed? And we don't spend that time. We want to blame Google and we want to point fingers at things. And yes, sometimes, you know what? I've seen some of the cases here that I definitely think this is Google's fault for a particular domain and not what they're doing, absolutely, but those cases are so actually rare.

Mordy Oberstein:

Truth. Yeah, the norm is, Google knows for the most part what he's doing. There are enormous gaps sometimes and there are shifts. I think we're in a point right now where, like an inflection point, where things just like multiple reasons why things are not firing in all cylinders and they're not and-

Melissa Popp:

No, they're not. Absolutely, I'm not defending Google here at all for any of this. I cannot imagine the algorithmic engineering, especially now that you're adding machine learning and AI into the mix, of how difficult it is to actually do this right. And part of me still believes that they do in fact want to get this right. Losing market share for people switching to AI search engines, to TikTok, to any of these things, depletes their revenue. They want to get this right, but in the meantime, we're all left holding the bag with our clients trying to explain, we have no control over this, so-

Mordy Oberstein:

But you do have control over, for example, let's talk about bounce rate, and they'll talk about the context of user behavior metrics and nav boost, that kind of thing, which is legit, nav boosts is a really interesting conversation, but they're not talking. We're not talking about it. Oh, you know what? I see my bounce rate has gone up, maybe my content's not what people want anymore. Let me see, maybe I should rework that. We always look for the most immediate, easy way out.

Melissa Popp:

Absolutely.

Mordy Oberstein:

As opposed to taking a hard look, and the only way I feel like to maintain your rankings is to take a hard look at yourself. What are we doing wrong? What are we doing right? What's the data say about how people feel about our content? And it is not just your typical SEO metrics, if you're going on social media and being like, oh, I hate this. Also, you're seeing people talk about your blog in a negative way, that's going at some point to impact search and your rankings. You need to go back, you need to take a hard look, you need to think, okay, I need to rework this because your rankings, again, they're not a given. They're not going to last, no rankings last forever.

Melissa Popp:

No, nobody, nobody, and you bring up bounce rate, one of the most misunderstood and it's like the bad child of everything. But how many SEOs are either bringing in a content marketer to actually look at content marketing metrics like bounce rate, timeline page, etc? How many of SEOs are actually looking at those metrics at all? And I'd imagine that number is probably staggering low because like you said, a lot of us, well first off, I mean it goes back to our clients. What do our clients care about? They care about rankings, traffic and conversion, and that's usually it. They don't care about anything else, as long as rankings leave the traffic to conversion, boom, you're done, right?

Mordy Oberstein:

Right.

Melissa Popp:

But the problem is, is so many have relied on those three types of metrics for so long, they've forgotten about the world of things out there beyond just bounce rate and time on page. It's, how many websites have heat maps and are looking at what elements on a page people are clicking on? Where are they clicking out? Well how... Scroll depth, if you write a 2,000-word blog, let's say it's completely as comprehensive, topically authoritative, it's a perfect, perfect blog ever written on a subject, but nobody's reading past the first third part of it. Something is wrong with that, even if it is the greatest blog ever to be written. But we don't, for the most part, SEOs don't look at metrics outside of their little bubble. And I get it, I understand why that happens, but we're now evolving to how content is relatable, not only to search but to users. We have to be more aware.

I really believe in the next couple of years, probably next 15, 18 months really, that design and user experience-

Mordy Oberstein:

Sure, 100%.

Melissa Popp:

... that's going to be the next set of conversations we're having, it's if your user experience is terrible, starting with site speed and page load time, to just how your call to actions. I mean, how many websites do we go to nowadays that, here's a modal popup, boom, right in your face. You're not even there for two seconds and it's like, sign up for this, do this. Or my least favorite thing in the world, you get to a page and a video automatically starts playing and it scares you out of your seat because all of a sudden your screen is yelling at you.

Mordy Oberstein:

Here's a page I'm sharing. You can't see this audience because it's an audio experience.

Melissa Popp:

Oh, I already hate this.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, okay, you already hate it. This is a page that lost a lot of rank with the March 2024 core update and it's not hard to see why. There's no white space on the page, there's no spacing, there's no anything. You're looking like, oh my God, it wasn't meant for me to consume the information. The page was designed to rank for whatever keywords.

Melissa Popp:

No, absolutely.

Mordy Oberstein:

And the enterprise is like, you read it, it's not bad information.

Melissa Popp:

No.

Mordy Oberstein:

But it's not usable.

Melissa Popp:

No, my eyes already hurt. The font is terrible on the page, the image is so tiny. I can tell it's a dude, but I have no idea.

Mordy Oberstein:

Why is that even there? Is that the author? I don't even know what that is.

Melissa Popp:

Yeah, I mean, and even look at this, I see the data up here, the published date is 2022. When was the last time that this page was vetted by anybody to determine is this information still accurate? Is it correct? But then also it's like, where is the connection here? Just skimming this first paragraph. There is no connection to get people to even care. The hook is not there. This absolutely to me-

Mordy Oberstein:

It's very sterile content, it is written topically, it's not written for users, and the problem with this is no one since 2022 has looked at this and said, how can we make this page better? You should be constantly thinking, how can I make my content better? Because your content is never perfect and it's never good enough, and it's never, I don't want to say good enough, but it's never the pinnacle of what you want. And user expectations are always changing. To quote Glenn Gabe, Hell hath no fury, like a user scorned. If the user looks at this and says, oh this... They're never coming back, all of that nav boost interaction data is getting factored and now, and it's all because you thought I wrote the content, I won the rankings and I'm done. And hence, the unsung heroes of SEO are those who are saying, it's never done.

Melissa Popp:

No, and it's never, it absolutely isn't. And one of the things I do, a lot of the times when we have new clients come on board, no matter it's a 10-page website or a 1,000-page website, is we content audit the heck out of every single page on the website. And I want to understand, it's, are you getting traffic? Do you have any rankings? And then beyond that, what do these pages look like? What information is on there? And anybody on the RicketyRoo team will tell you, I am vicious when it comes to content update.

Mordy Oberstein:

Nice.

Melissa Popp:

I do not play around, I take a scalpel to websites. I have recommended pruning websites two thirds of the content in cases. There has been recent cases where I've pruned a lot of content and said, no, you know what? We're just going to start over. We probably could use some of this content foundationally, but I don't even want to look at it anymore. It's that bad.

And I don't do this, I laugh a little bit about it, I don't do this because I'm a mean person or I want to tick people off. I'm doing this because I see the writing on the wall. We've been saying this for 20 years, that content is king, that has not changed, it hasn't. And why every couple of years we shift back and forth on that and we don't spend the time on even just focusing on our content strategy. Most SEO's content strategy is literally, okay, what long tail keywords in Semrush or Ahrefs do I see that are questions and your when, where, whys, hows? Let's just write that content because it has high search volume and no, and it's like-

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, no.

Melissa Popp:

And I'm not saying that that is incorrect.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, there's a place for it within.

Melissa Popp:

Exactly, and you have to look at it bigger than that. I mean, there are lots of topics I recommend because absolutely, I'm like, oh, the search volume is there, but also, it matches search intent. And we talk a lot about a topic clustering as if that is a new thing that somehow magically has appeared. And no, that has been a marketing trend, not just in content marketing, but in other forms of marketing for decades. And when I'm building topic clusters for clients, I absolutely am looking at search volume, but I'm also thinking, okay, what do people actually want to know? And a lot of times I recommend topics that have very low search volume, and sometimes I'll get pushback on that of like, oh, but oh no, nobody's searching for that. And I'm like, listen, search volume numbers are BS, they are guesstimates. They do not necessarily mean that 1,200 people are searching a month for X, Y, Z. Now, that doesn't mean that we should ignore those guesstimates. They do help guide our efforts, but we have to think more outside the box.

And especially working with smaller clients, you'll get a lot of zero volume keywords that because the tools are running nationally to aggregate that guesstimate, you actually don't know how many people locally might be searching for that because it's not enough to ping for those tools. And that's another thing people forget about when they're creating content, but also updating content. Just because something has the 1,200 volume search nationally every month doesn't mean that people are actually searching for that to eventually lead to conversion. And so that's why I always go back to the number one thing I'm always looking for when I'm updating content and in this maintenance mode, is search intent. It's the most important part of updating and creating content. And we dance around that because that's a little bit outside the SEO box. We talk about search intent at a very high level, but in the nitty-gritty-

Mordy Oberstein:

But the micro level, no. Micro intents, what's that? Or we feel like, yeah, we nailed it and don't think, wait, it changed. It's like anything with your content. I want you, if you're listening to this podcast and you write content and you're trying to write content, I want you to go back to something you wrote, I don't know, five years ago, 10 years ago, two years ago, and I want you to reread it and I want you to walk away. And how many of you walk away feeling like, that was amazing content? And how many times do you walk away? That's how I used to write and it's good, it's not bad, but-

Melissa Popp:

No.

Mordy Oberstein:

... you're in a different place and you're a better writer, you're a better SEO, you're a better content person and you look back like, I could have done better with that. That's how Google's looking at your content. That was good, that was good.

Melissa Popp:

Exactly, that's the missing link, is as Google's algorithm gets smarter, faster and larger, encompassing more items into ranking factors, we have to evolve with that. We can sit here in our discussions and blame Google all we want, but at the end of the day, we are at their mercy of how they want to do things, whether we like it or not, and our clients are at that mercy. So we have to evolve with it.

And it's like for writers, absolutely, just go back a year and look at some of the things that you wrote. Go look at where they rank. Go look where they rank now and if you still have access to any analytical data around it, how many people are coming to that page? Where are they going from that page? And I guarantee you, in a lot of cases, you're going to find that it's not performing the way you felt when you finished writing and you hit publish, because we publish pieces of content and we're like, yes, this is it. This is awesome, this is the pinnacle we did, we're at the top of the world, but then nobody comes to see it. Nobody comes, but we pretend like that doesn't exist. We pretend that that's not a thing that we need to care about. The SEO team cares about that now and it's like, no, it's like we should also care about that too, especially if we're continuing to write for that business or we work in-house or whatever our role is, and that's just part of the process. Just like you revisit keyword research, with clients, I like to revisit keyword research every six months to a year. I want to see again, where does the search intent just for on-page change that we need to pivot and change things up?

Mordy Oberstein:

Totally, totally.

Melissa Popp:

But we just don't do that.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, we don't get that that's, it's not a checklist. That's a different snarky point for a different time. If people wanted to revisit their processes and get some advice from you, where can they find you out there in ether?

Melissa Popp:

Oh gosh, everybody knows I live on Twitter and I'm going down with that ship. You can find me at-

Mordy Oberstein:

Me too.

Melissa Popp:

... Popup writer on Twitter.

Mordy Oberstein:

Popup writer, okay, we'll link to that in the show notes.

Melissa Popp:

And yeah, feel free, anybody on my team will tell you I love ripping content apart and not from a place of negativity, but to help people do better. I ask my team all the time, any RicketyRoo blog that you read that I wrote, I guarantee you, two or three people on the team have told me how terrible it is and helped me make it better. I come from a place where I want to support anybody writing content to do better, not just for their clients, but for themselves. We only grow by putting ourselves out there and that's another scary part of all of this, is we have to admit that maybe we didn't do our best or something changed. That means we have to do better. So, I'm always happy to help people. Slide into my DMs, email me, any of that. I'm always around to help with this because I think these are the conversations we need to be having.

Mordy Oberstein:

Melissa is not only a great SEO and a great content person, just a great follow altogether, and it is why you were a previous follow of the week on the podcast for that reason.

Melissa Popp:

I was, I know.

Mordy Oberstein:

You were.

Melissa Popp:

I was like, oh.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're one of the best follows on Twitter out there in the SEO space right now. I don't want to say all of Twitter because if you're sports, maybe you don't talk about sports, but in the SEO space, not many better follows at all. So, please follow Melissa.

Melissa Popp:

Well, I appreciate that. I just telling it like it is. I love what I do and I love to share knowledge and I want us to have more productive conversations about the things we're doing because we're all going through it. It's not us versus one another, it's we're all in this together. And as cheesey that is, there is light at the end of this tunnel.

Mordy Oberstein:

Melissa, thank you so much for coming on and really say hi to all the great folks over at RicketyRoo.

Melissa Popp:

I will, I will. I'm sure they'll all send their love to you too.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, bye.

Melissa Popp:

Bye.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you again, Melissa, she's one of the best people in the whole SEO industry.

Crystal Carter:

Melissa is, she's just the gold star human being. 10 out of 10 recommend following Melissa. Not only is she amazing at SEO, not only is she super warm and friendly and really nice when you meet her, but she also has fantastic music taste.

Mordy Oberstein:

And movie taste.

Crystal Carter:

Right, Melissa is just, she's just the best. And also, she's on team RicketyRoo. Team RicketyRoo are the best, they're so good. Don't get me wrong, lots of love to lots of other agencies as well, but team RicketyRoo are fantastic, I'm not going to lie. Amanda, Celeste, Tess, everybody there is fantastic, they're just a great squad.

Mordy Oberstein:

On that note, you might be fighting for your rankings and your own market share, but you know what else is fighting for their own rankings and market share? Search engines. Like love is a battlefield, so is search engine market share is a battlefield. So, sometimes they do borrow ideas from each other in order to maintain market share. So here's a look at how search engines maintain their market share with a little segment we call, Going, Going, Going, Google. Well, I guess in this case Going, Going, Going, Search Engines.

Going back in the day, multifaceted feature snippets and there was, I think I wrote an article about this on the Wix SEO about Google is moving away from the one true answer to a multifaceted kind of approach, because that's what people expect, they don't want one answer, they want options. And to do that, Google had a whole bunch of formats, has been testing with featured snippets and multiple URLs and feature snippets and multifaceted feature snippets, which is a feature snippet on top of a feature snippet on top of another feature snippet. You know what's doing that forever?

Crystal Carter:

Who?

Mordy Oberstein:

Bing.

Crystal Carter:

Bing.

Mordy Oberstein:

Bing's been doing that for years before Google was doing it.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

And I'm pretty sure Google took that from Bing.

Crystal Carter:

One of the things I love about the team at Bing is that they do a lot of innovation. And we had Fabrice Canel from the search team at Bing on a webinar talking about Index Now, which you should definitely check out that webinar, it was great, but also he talked about that we build new things, we drive change and they do a lot of innovation and they're always coming through with that consistently. And so yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they were looking over the shoulder a little bit to see what's going on there.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, I mean, look at AI on the SERP.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Bing puts in what's called Copilot now, Google go code red, red alert, whatever it was. Also, now we need to add AI onto the SERP the same way, not different, the exact same thing.

Crystal Carter:

One of the things that we're talking about, at one point Google was talking about contextual links. Bing has been doing that for ages as well. And one of the other things that Bing does is they'll pull in lots of information from other sources into their knowledge panel type things, but they also cite those sources there really, really clearly. I think that's really interesting.

Another thing that you sometimes see on Bing is that sometimes Bing has rich results as well. So we think sometimes that rich results only happen on Google, but rich results happen on Bing as well. And so for instance, FAQ schema is no longer as prominent as it was on Google search, but it is still pretty prominent on Bing search, for instance. So that's something to consider as well. And I think that also, there's been some recent discussion about Bing's market share with some interesting statistics coming from World. Is it World Stat?

Mordy Oberstein:

Something like that, Stat Counter?

Crystal Carter:

Stat Counter, that's it. Some interesting statistics coming from them, and I think that it's definitely the case that I've heard a lot of folks using Bing. I've started using Bing a little bit more for different things as well. But yeah, they add in lots of different features and they're really innovative. Sometimes the SERP can be a little bit busy at Bing, but I think they're really innovative and it can sometimes give you an idea. Optimizing for Bing can sometimes give you ideas for optimizing for Google in the future.

Mordy Oberstein:

And I'm not saying this is bad, this is just the nature of how things go. You would open SERP, anyone can look at it, and Bing structures like, for example, you Google who are the Yankees, you get a big sports box at the top of the Bing SERP, that came from Google. The way they have site links, that came from Google. The way they have a people also ask kind of similar result, the related searches in that little gray box, that came from Google and that's fine, that's how it goes, everyone's kind of keeping up with the Joneses, keeping up with the Googles and the Bings, and that's just the way it is to quote Bruce Hornsby.

Crystal Carter:

But I think also one of the things, Google has started doing those really rich knowledge panel things like particularly for people. For instance, if you look up Beyonce, you'll get a picture of her, her date of birth, the music video panel, a Spotify panel, that sort of thing. And Bing have been doing things like that, particularly for location for a little while. So, one of the ones was like the Paris catacombs was one of my favorite ones because I've never been there but I'm like, oh, that looks really interesting. But I'm looking at one for the Grand Canyon right now and it's got a real mix of stuff all across it and there's lots of different ways that you can connect with it.

One of the other things I find really interesting is the way that they parse things out. So this can help you to understand how search engines are seeing your content as well. So for instance, if you go to look up something like the Grand Canyon, they have these little explore this page button on the side, which is a little light bulb.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right, yeah, that's why I like that feature.

Crystal Carter:

Right, and it'll pull out different things from it. So it'll pull out the images that are related to it. It will also pull out some of the topics from it. So for instance, I found one that's like, everything you need to know about Grand Canyon National Park, and it's a National Geographic article, and it says, about this website, which talks about, about this website on the little explore this page. And then it says topics on this page and it pulls out some of the headers from the page. So, there you can see whether or not a search engine is able to parse that, is able to see all of it, is able to understand the topics that you're trying to cover and whether it all makes sense. It also allows you to get a summary of some of that information there. And we talked a little bit about competitors. It also lets you see your competitors at a glance really easily as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

By the way, on that Grand Canyon SERP, Bing had this really cool 3D exploration tool for seeing the Grand Canyon, it's got nothing to do with anything, but you see, it is just interesting to me how one follows the other, how competitive they are, how they borrow from each other.

Just for example, Barry Schwartz covered in searches at Round Table that after Google announced that they're getting rid of their cache link, on April 8th, Bing tests removing cache link from search results. Interesting how that is. So they do follow each other's, it's interesting to see what they find. I find it's interesting to see what they find meaningful, that they follow each other on, what they tend to steal and not steal from each other or borrow from each other. And it's just how it goes, it's not good or bad, I guess it's a good thing. It makes everybody better. Rising tide lifts all ships.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely, if you are somebody who's interested in search engine marketing and search engine optimization, it's definitely worth becoming familiar with Bing and also with Bing webmaster tools. So that's something that also drives innovation I think on both sides as well. I've spoken to folks at Google before who said, yeah, I think Bing webmaster tools are pretty solid and I think that they're really great. I think it's worth being familiar with both so that you can understand how search engines work overall.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yep, and if you're looking to understand how search engines work overall, another great resource for you. It's not Google, it's not Bing, it's the king, Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine land. So, that means that we're now about to head into Barry Land, also known as the Snappy news.

Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Got a whole bunch for you this week. So I'll try to keep it snappy, but I also like to talk a lot. So, I'll still try to keep it snappy, but I might not succeed. From Barry Schwartz over on Search Engine Land, Google Unleashes June 2024, spam update. I like that, Barry, unleashes, it feels so aggressive. Google released it's June 2024 spam update. It is a regular spam update. It's not, I repeat, it's not and do not ask Danny Sullivan on X this question. It is not the algorithmic integration that will result in Google being able to algorithmically go after third party content hosted on websites that should not actually be there, also known as site reputation abuse. That was implemented thus far only with manual actions, this is known as parasite SEO within the SEO industry. The spam update of this June 2024 is not that. I cannot be clearer. It is not that. If you want something clearer, then go to X and look at the search liaison account, it'll be clearer but not much clearer. Perhaps a little bit more aggressive though, unleashes.

Anyway, this from Barry Schwarz, but this time from Search Engine Roundtable. Google Search bug not indexing or serving new content. So news websites noticed that there are content which they're constantly creating because there's news and they're creating new content for the news wasn't being indexed by Google. This has happened in the past before, it's not the first time, won't be the last time, but it's obviously super, super scary for a publisher. Google said that the problem has been fixed. They said we identified and fixed the issue with indexing. Sites may still experience some delayed indexing until the previously affected URLs have been reprocessed. There will be no more updates, end transmission. They didn't say end transmission, I added that. Crystal pointed out on X, perhaps LinkedIn, I saw it on X. You should make note of this if you are in that category of publisher and make a note because you might see a dip in your search console and traffic data and so forth. And you might go hey, what happened there? But if you make a note, you realize, oh, there was an indexing thing there. So that explains it.

Okay, onto Search Engine Land, but not from Barry this time. Barry, you can't have them. This from Danny Goodwin. Google AI overview is showing less often with less Reddit, data shows. We've actually covered a bunch of studies showing there's less AI overviews being produced by Google. In this study by SEO ranking, Danny notes also that Reddit's visibility in the AI overviews is no longer a top 10 most cited domain, which is interesting because on June 19th, Barry Schwartz reported, there's Barry, on seoroundtable.com, report on if Google's showing fewer Reddit links in search.

So some guy who's name rhymes with Gordy Boberstein, sent a whole bunch of data from Semrush showing that there's just a little bit of a slight drop off in the Reddit and Quora URLs that Google is showing within its discussion and forms. ERP feature. I'm not talking about, I mean, Gordy Boberstein wasn't talking about the entire SERP on the organic results, only the discussion of form SERP feature, but there's a little bit of a trend from April through June where Reddit URLs used to show in 49% of these SERP features, now is down to 48.56%. Same for Quora and other forums have seen a more noticeable rise in visibility within the platform. The same time, by the way, the Semrush data I looked at, I mean, Gordy looked at, was indicating that there are less instances or fewer instances if I'm going to speak grammatically correctly, of multiple Reddit URLs showing up in the discussion and form SERP feature. So there's less cases of Google using multiple URLs in the same SERP feature box from Reddit.

That combined with the data that Danny's showing in the AI overview where Danny's discussing from SEO ranking, creates this picture where we're kind of seeing Reddit being scaled back just a bit. I do think Google realizes that it's a little bit too much on the Reddit front, but I don't see any dramatic shifts, I don't think advantage coming soon, but perhaps it's Google trying to act on that. I don't know, the data story is still to be told.

However, continuing on that data story, wow I'm really threading the narratives together. This comes from Lily Ray over Amps of Digital, SEO visibility shifts to review sites to e-commerce and user generated content sites in 2024. What Lily shows is basically, I search for something like best jeans, not bad, or I don't know, I always go blank when I'm trying to figure out query to show an example of, like best cell phone or best mug or best glasses, or I just use Lily's cases, laptops, or bird feeders. There used to be a lot of product review websites showing up. What Lily is showing is that in May 2024, Google seems to have shifted away from the product review site and more to the actual product site, so less URLs being shown in the organic results for, here's my top five best bird feeders and more Homedepot.com, buy a bird feeder.

By the way, that's happened in the past in other verticals. One of the cases I used to always study was insurance. So if I search for car insurance. Back in the day, there used to be a lot of informational content about how to buy insurance versus just places to buy insurance. That narrative switched back a little bit, and that's the last time I checked a few months ago, is a little bit more commerce side and less informational side. So, intent does change.

But it's interesting to see this considering the fact that Google is not happy with affiliates. We spoke about this on our episode with Glenn Gabe, where we basically asked, is Google at war with affiliate sites? And the answer is yes, Google is at war with affiliate sites. Product review sites tend to be very heavy on the affiliate side, so this makes sense in that context of that narrative. Another thing going, making this full circle that Lily also noticed is that instead of relying on product review sites, she sees a shift from those affiliate review sites to user-generated content like Reddit and Quora and YouTube. So, maybe it's not the end of Reddit on the SERP. It already wasn't, but you get what I'm saying.

Do I have another story? No, that's it. Okay. I thought I had another one. Wow. We covered a lot of ground this week. I try to keep each story snappy, so maybe it still is, the snappy news.

How was your trip to Barry Land, Crystal?

Crystal Carter:

It was fantastic. We stand and optimize King.

Mordy Oberstein:

You have to be this short to ride.

Crystal Carter:

Leaving that, I have no further comment.

Mordy Oberstein:

I have another further comment.

Crystal Carter:

What's that?

Mordy Oberstein:

My further comment is that this week you should be following Roxana Stingu as your follow of the week. She's at Roxana, R-O-X-A-N-A S-T-I-N-G-U over on X. Head of SEO over at Alamy.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, she's fantastic. She's so clever and has such a great technical knowledge across lots of different elements, and I think that she works across Alamy, which is trying to maintain brand reputation and maintain ranking across lots of different elements. And I think that it's that in-house play when you're an in-house SEO, you really have to guard your keywords, and she is an in-house SEO, who's been there for a while. And I think that when you've been there for a long time, you're able to, you know your keywords, you know them, and you need to know them inside out, and you need to know who comes for you, who your competitors are, and I think that she does a great job of it.

Mordy Oberstein:

I can't believe it took us this long to mention how maintaining reign comes into focus when you're in-house, but here we are, took us this long to mention that point. On the ball.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, it's really, really important in-house.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, make sure to give her a follow over on X and check it out on LinkedIn as well. Links in the show notes. That's all the maintenance I have, I can do today.

Crystal Carter:

Okay, all right. Well, we will keep going. We will maintain the podcast for next week. We will also be on the podcast.

Mordy Oberstein:

We'll maintain our rankings on Spotify.

Crystal Carter:

And anybody who wants to help us with that, please leave a review.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah and a rating. Yeah, please.

Crystal Carter:

Thank you.

Mordy Oberstein:

Because maintenance is a team effort.

Crystal Carter:

Indeed.

Mordy Oberstein:

Indeed.

Crystal Carter:

And it's so fun.

Mordy Oberstein:

And a whole bunch of other cliches. Thanks for joining us on The SERPs Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how agency SEO is changing. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or as Crystal already told you, a rating on Spotify. Until next time, piece and love and SEO.