How to build your career at an SEO agency

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 putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Branding here at Wix and I'm enjoying life. Check this. She's not AI. I ran it through an AI checker. It's 100% human. Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Oh wait, you forgot. I've got a bionic leg. No, I don't have a bionic leg, although I wish I did.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, that would be awesome. I wish I had a bionic... Maybe my knees wouldn't hurt so much.

Crystal Carter:

My knee is such a mess. I wish I had a better knee. Maybe AI can fix my leg.

Mordy Oberstein:

My wife's like, "Why is your chair so low?" I'm like, "Well, because if I sit high up and then my leg half dangles a little bit and my knee hurts at night."

Crystal Carter:

These are honestly the things that you have to think about.

Mordy Oberstein:

I've reached that stage. Now I feel officially old, my knees hurt.

Crystal Carter:

They have that... What is that, there's that standing up sound, the...

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes, I totally do that. I totally do that.

Crystal Carter:

These are the things. You've got to pace yourself these days. You have to pace yourself.

Mordy Oberstein:

The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Advil. No, I'm just kidding.

Crystal Carter:

I know.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search that at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can work efficiently and at scale with cutting edge SEO technology that helps you work as efficiently as possible. It helps you even leave broken links with automatic redirects, inspect indexation in a single bound, and apply tags to all pages within a folder faster than a locomotive. Look up in the sky. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Wix SEO for scalability and efficiency. Heck, by the way, you can even spin up content with our inbuilt AI tools. Make sure you edit and review the content that comes out.

I feel like I need to have that disclaimer in there about all things AI. Scalability, by the way, why? Because today we're helping you scale the company ladder by talking about how to move up from a junior to a senior at an SEO agency. By the way, the advantage of moving up to being from a junior to a senior is you'll get discounted tickets to the movie and on the bus.

Crystal Carter:

That's a fact sponsored by Advil again.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right, bad joke. Just kidding, not that kind of senior. We're going to dive into what holds SEOs back from taking on a senior role at an SEO agency, what skills actually help you thrive in a senior role at an SEO agency, the mindset that matters for thriving as a senior at an SEO agency. And to help us, we have a special guest host, all around great guy, all around nice guy and co-founder of StudioHawk UK, Anthony Barone is set to join us in just a wee bit. Plus we'll take a look at Google for jobs and some red flags in SEO job listings that you might want to avoid. And of course we have the snap piece of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So get out your climbing shoes as episode number 44 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you reach the top of the SEO agency mountain.

Crystal Carter:

We're climbing up.

Mordy Oberstein:

We're climbing on up. It's really moving on up, but we're just going to go with it. So agency life is a hard knock life, cue music from Annie. I wouldn't know, I've never worked at an agency, but from what I've heard, that seems to be the general consensus.

Crystal Carter:

I had a lovely time working at an agency. There's some great agencies. We are going to be joined by the head of a fantastic agency, as a matter of fact. And so I think that there's some great things and it's not without challenge, but I think the challenge could be fun.

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, that's what I was about to say, that you can meet these challenges and really grow and advance your career by checking out as much as you can as a junior, learning as much as you can, and then taking on a senior role at an agency and really putting your SEO career on a very different trajectory. So to do that, to help us climb the agency, scale the agency ladder, give a warm welcome to the boss. Also, again the founding member of StudioHawk UK. The one, the only, Anthony Barone. What's up? How are you dude?

Anthony Barone:

Very well. Thank you very much for having me today. Morning, Crystal. Great to be here.

Crystal Carter:

It's our absolute pleasure. Such a big fan of StudioHawk.

Mordy Oberstein:

Love it.

Crystal Carter:

The team is fantastic. I love your energy and I'm sorry that every time I see y'all, I kakaaw at you. I just love it.

Mordy Oberstein:

Great logo, by the way. Love the logo. So cool. Check if you're listening, check it out.

Anthony Barone:

Thank you very much. Some of the team have actually taken on that kakaaw actually.

Mordy Oberstein:

Really?

Anthony Barone:

Internally, yeah. So we start to do it. So Logan and a few other team members, when we're doing things, the kakaaw will come out.

Mordy Oberstein:

I feel like whenever there's success, landed a big new client, optimize a million pages, it should be an official kakaaw that goes off around the office.

Anthony Barone:

Pretty much.

Mordy Oberstein:

Nice.

Anthony Barone:

Pretty much.

Mordy Oberstein:

We're glad we can do that for you.

Anthony Barone:

Thank you very much.

Crystal Carter:

Hawks assemble.

Mordy Oberstein:

It just reminded me of the Silver Hawks, which was an amazing 1980s cartoon, but let's not get too down, yeah, check that out. That's a deep cut. Let's not go down too far the 1980s wormhole because I can get very much stuck there.

Anthony, you obviously know a lot about working on an SEO agency, having founded a branch of one. Let's just start from basics, the most fundamental thing. If you're trying to move up from a junior role to a senior role, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?

Anthony Barone:

The strategy. You can learn about SEO on the internet. You can go onto many different platforms to try and learn... All the stuff about SEO is out there. You don't have to tell, I don't have to tell you. It's the execution and then understanding how those individual parts that make up SEO are relevant in an overall strategy for a business. Whether you're working as an agency like us or working in-house, how do these moves move the needle for the business to achieve their goals?

Crystal Carter:

I think that's so important. You talked about, "Yeah, you can learn it online." I think in an agency environment, what's great is that you can learn from other people. So one of the things that I learned... And this is why I said I love your team. So the team element of an SEO agency is so fantastic and if you've got a good team, like I know that you do, you have a good team, then you can learn from each other. So somebody says, "Oh, I tried this thing and it worked really well", and says "Really? Oh, what did you do?" And then you can apply it to another client and you say, "Oh well I did this a little bit different and I added that." And so, that I find is a really fantastic environment for learning and for bringing together all those component parts that you're talking about.

Mordy Oberstein:

For us, we've got a team of eight here, whereby some people working on an e-commerce client, some people working on B2B, they'll be working on Shopify, they'll be working on this, they'll be working on that. I've tried one thing here that might work there. So yes, working on the team and being able, so that's what we try and do. We try and collaborate and foster that learning and growth between each other. So we'll have a Slack channel. I do things like team brainstorms every couple of weeks where we'll look at a client and go, "Hey, what's maybe the problem with this one? Or how can we grow this one?" And then so someone will come who did mention it before, "Oh, how about you try this? Oh actually, have you done a proper technical SEO ordered on so and so? Or actually we tried improving location pages for this."

So the team, because you got the... Instead of just one person learning everything, the more members you add to your team, the more people that can read, they'll learn, they can understand what's going on in SEO, they're working on different platforms, they're working on different clients, they're working in different businesses. All that knowledge can then... You want to try and foster that sort of knowledge sharing.

So you're saying, at the role of someone in senior in the SEO agency, it's really to foster collaboration.

Anthony Barone:

I would be fostering collaboration, leadership, lead by example and then overall strategy. So being able to understand the business or understand the client and go, all right, what will move the needle? Like a site map in robots TXT, that's default. No one's really going to care. But a full on hub and spoke approach, content approach. Great. That's the type of stuff where I think as a senior you're looking more at that strategic level because you've got really good knowledge in SEO and how it works and all that. But it's then putting it into place for different clients, businesses, people, websites. That's where I think you make that leap. You can go and teach a junior how to do title tags great. But it's understanding the data and analytics and strategy behind that.

Crystal Carter:

And I think also being able to demonstrate your strategy. So certainly with one of the key components of any SEO agency is maintaining good client relationships and being able to build on your client base to minimize churn so that you can maximize growth and all of that sort of stuff. So to be able to evidence the strategy that helped you to achieve that for the client is really, really useful. I was lucky enough to see an entry for StudioHawk and awards and I know that you guys are great at evidencing your work. What advice would you give to somebody who wanted to demonstrate the high level strategies that they have in order to be seen as a more senior role, and potentially move up?

Mordy Oberstein:

So it's matching that with the business goal. So this is where SEO struggles because it's an intangible thing. I can't sit there and guarantee you 10,000 views a month from Google. It's just not the way it works. So you use things like forecasting and then Google search console data and you use their Google analytics data as the baseline and then try and map out points along the way where you can then match up, okay, these are the tasks you want to join the SEO front and this is why. So using that data, but for me, reporting is a big one to be able to showcase the intangible thing that is SEO in a tangible way so that either, your team can understand what you're trying to do, clients can understand what you're trying to do, stakeholders are trying to understand what you do. But that's the way I see it, is fundamentally understanding what you're trying to do, the data around it, explaining that clearly and then matching that up with the business goals.

Because not everyone's going to be as good at SEO as you, that's why they're paying you either in-house or they're paying an agency to tell them how this matches up with their business goals. How is this going to get me more sales of chairs? That's what you want to try and do.

It's funny because I wanted to hone in on that, being good at SEO, not just related to that. I do have a question about this, but also to pivot back to a point you made before, I feel like there's like a pink elephant in the room, white elephant in the room. I always get the two phrases confused. I'm so bad at English. Just because, I feel like just because you haven't moved up to a senior role doesn't mean that you are not good at SEO. I think that something you hit on before that it's very strategy driven, it's very top level view, holistic view of everything that's going on, understanding the impact and aligning it, the business, all that kind...

That in itself is a unique skill and a unique way of thinking. And that I don't think it means that if you're not good at that, you're not good at SEO. It just means that you're not good at this particular part, which happens to coincide with what is important to being in a senior role.

Anthony Barone:

A hundred percent. And this is where the collaboration comes together. There's people who are just SEO specialists, they love that, they want to do that. Fine, jump into a WordPress website, jump into a website, jump in and do the work and see the results, great. But in terms of high level strategy, some people will like it, some people don't. Honestly, you are right. It shouldn't disqualify you from thinking that you're not good. Because mate, you've got SEO specialists at bigger companies who would be better than senior SEO specialists at other companies. So you're a hundred percent right there.

Crystal Carter:

In my career, I had a situation where I made a role, they didn't have a senior role, they didn't have a senior SEO role. And I was like, we should because in our current structure we need one. And I basically was looking around and I was like, I'm training everybody. I'm doing the role.

Mordy Oberstein:

I am the senior now.

Crystal Carter:

Well I'm training everybody. So we had a new group of people and sometimes with agencies you'll have a growth spurt, you'll suddenly get a bunch of clients or suddenly you'll get a really big project and you have to hire quickly and get people on. And I was training everybody and I was like, I'm training everybody. I should be acknowledged for all of this because they're taking all of the things from my brain. So I think that that's something that you can think about as well. So if you, certainly in my experience, I found that the new thing that comes along, let's say there's a new mobile first and maybe we need to be doing more mobile or maybe there's a new other thing as well. And I think that sometimes people feel like, oh, I have to stick to whatever role is currently available to me. But... I can see you nodding, Anthony, there can be sometimes that where, maybe we should create a new role and maybe you should advocate for yourself to be that person for that new role, if you see that there's a need.

Mordy Oberstein:

Understand. Honestly as an agency owner, when you can see that drive and determination for people who are willing to put it all on the line to be like, "I could do better than that." Great, because you have done so well to be able to force me or force an owner to consider creating that role. Whether you call that head of role, head of training, head of SEO, head of strategy or whatever it is, like you did, you proved your worth, you showcased what you were doing and forced your way into creating that role, because sometimes the business owner just doesn't think about it. They just, recency bias, they like what's happening. It's always worked, so why change it? But with SEO, as we know, you have to keep, if you don't innovate, you die.

And with SEO, it's probably one of those industries where you have to keep on top of everything because we are throwing so many challenges at all times. You look at every facet of SEO, Google changes, you've got other search engines that'll keep changing, you've got CMS's that'll keep changing. Businesses keep changing. There are so many factors that keep changing. You have to keep on moving because there are so many working parts that make up our day-to-day lives to be able to get that traffic from search engines. If we're not doing that, we are left behind.

It's so much of that goes into it, is more so I feel like business acumen, business skills, business navigation, however you want to define it versus actual SEO, it's like almost ironic in a way.

Anthony Barone:

Hundred percent. And that's why we are trying, that's the strategy point of it, where you're just understanding, dig into those client's understanding what are your goals, what do you want to achieve?

Because they don't understand what a robust TST file is. But if you say you have disallowed Google from calling your website and that stops you from, that stops you from ranking on Google to get some more customers, they'll maybe understand, but I don't actually know what the hell a robot's txt file is. So that's some of the stuff that you want to try and match up, which as a junior, you're learning the ropes, you're learning the basics, that's what you want to do. But as you grow and develop, it's having that commercial mindset of you are an agency or you are a client, you are an in-house that's getting paid, and it's simple like money in money out, ROI, what am I doing to be able to provide the ROI?

Because if you think in terms of how a business owner thinks, they're looking at simple P&L, money in money out. I'm paying this person for X job, what's it going to get me? And as an agency you look at that and go, all right, we've got X amount of time and investments to be able to do what we need to do. How can we make the biggest impact?

Crystal Carter:

How do you feel about opportunity? So within an agency space and within a single SEO space or if you are a freelancer, if you are in-house or whichever. In my experience I've seen that being able to spot the opportunity, spot the gap can be really, really useful. Do you find that that is something that would lead you to progressive project or a progressive person to lead that project? How do you find that that plays into reading opportunities for progression?

Mordy Oberstein:

I love that type of stuff because if you can see someone who's actively used data to find those opportunities. There's one where, speaking to a local bar and their SEO's no good, but I looked at the Google search console and found three or four opportunities to create events, pages, and hubs because they just had no idea. So using that data to be able to find those opportunities. And when I see people who do use that same methodology, using data or trends, and then even just a little bit of an understanding of the business, that's where you can be like, all right, awesome.

You are now thinking about it differently. It's not just the SEO bit like, "Oh, I'm going to use Google Search Console to see if I can improve impressions." No. Actually using Google search console to see what Google and the users are clicking on and Google showing you for, and they're looking at the website and going, oh actually people are searching for this, they're looking for it, but it's not on a website. And then there's an opportunity, there's a content plan, there's a whole strategy around it. So I love that when I see that from people.

I think it's something that's universal at a certain level of, we'll call it business or involvement in a company, that hunting for opportunity is the key difference between one level of functioning within an organization and a different level of functioning within an organization. And on that point, and you think about spotting opportunity, I'm curious, as somebody who is high up in the agency world, to toot your horn for you, what are you looking for? If you are looking to move somebody up? And I know maybe you want to speak very generally about this, because who knows who from StudioHawk is listening, Ethan Marlbauer.

Crystal Carter:

You're taking notes right now.

Mordy Oberstein:

Taking notes, but what are you looking for, universally speaking?

Anthony Barone:

So for me it's the attitude to learning and the attitude to taking on a challenge. Because like you said, in SEO, nothing ever stops. Just because something worked six months ago doesn't mean it's going to work today. And the businesses are changing. People shut down their website, Google will drop the bomb at Google IO.

Mordy Oberstein:

And SGE.

Anthony Barone:

There you go, like SGE. So these are the types of things where it's attitude to learning, being a perennial student SEO. And for me with SEO, it's having a lack of ego. And I say that because SEO, there is always someone harder, better, faster, stronger as staff, I would say in SEO. So it's about learning from each other and learning others who have done it with bigger science, smaller science, bigger ecomms, smaller ecomms, because there's always someone who's done something somewhere that we can learn from and either replicate or improve. So that's what I say.

Crystal Carter:

I agree with that a hundred percent. In my agency team that I was working with, I mean my team now, which is fantastic as well. Shout out, Mordy Oberstein.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you. Thank you.

Crystal Carter:

I think sharing is caring and I think remembering when you were in an agency... People say, and I'm not sure if I like this term generally speaking, but we're all going to eat. We do well on this client, then we are all going to benefit from that. And we as a team, if you see somebody in your agency that's struggling and you can help them, then that means that we can all do well out of it. If you see someone in your team that's doing well, you should think, how'd you do that? How did you do that? How can we do that for everyone? How can we roll that out? And that perennial student, that's a great phrase. Perennial student is a really good way to keep on top of learning and to end and keep on top of new trends, new ideas. That's a great scope.

Mordy Oberstein:

And it could be scary. You want to bring somebody in who might be better than you are at something. I've had that experience multiple times and it's something that I now lean into on purpose. That person's better? Great. That's actually a good thing. And that's your job as a leader. First off, let's work for me. Right? No, just kidding. But as a leader, that's what you want to be doing.

Anthony Barone:

I wish us, but all the team better than me SEO, you know, these days. And that's what I want, because for me to be able to run the company, run the agency, I'm the MD, I'm the co-founder, I'm supposed to be the orchestrator. If I'm still doing day-to-day work and telling everyone, if I'm still micromanaging and saying that title tag's not right and hover and not trusting them, then yeah, what am I doing here?

So for me, it's about instilling the values, the high quality, the standards that they can replicate, but leave them to do the SEO and lead that team because I've got to run the rest of the agency and then find people who are better than me at other sections and then orchestrate it off. So that's my job. I started off as an SEO, as a junior SEO, but now it's up to me to foster the culture, foster the team, foster the learning so that they can take it and run with it. And then I do all the stuff in the background.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're living proof, you're proof of the success of going from junior to senior.

Anthony Barone:

There you go. Thank you very much.

Crystal Carter:

Kakaa.

Mordy Oberstein:

A hundred percent, a hundred percent. That's my story, man. I started off as a two day week junior SEO, and I knew nothing about SEO. I had so little idea of SEO that I didn't even bring my laptop to my first day with Harry. I printed off the Moz Beginner's Guide in a binder folder and had highlighted sections. And then my first six months were pretty terrible, but I stuck at it, did audits, read Search Engine and Barry Schwarz, all these guys, right? What's going on? What's going on? And then it clicked for me at about the month five, month six mark as to how the technical came in with the content, came in with the links, came in with the local and then go, oh, okay. And then Google search content and using all these tools and started to click for me because it was more like the Mr. Miyagi approach of understanding why am I waxing the car? Well, you're going to wax the car because it's going to lead you to be able to do that move.

Same thing with us at StudioHawk and the way I learned was do a title tag here, do this, do that, and then all of a sudden after, well not all of a sudden, but after six months it started to click. And then that's how I did it. And then I started to develop further and further. And then, I think it was maybe, I was in hospitality and retail before this and had to deal with a lot of people and had to do a few things in those areas where you're looking at that ROI and go, okay, so how is this SEO matching up with the business goals and trying to be a bit more commercially minded when I was just an SEO specialist and then developed to be senior back in Australia and that's my story. And then being able to move over here and create an agency. You said it, that's my journey as well.

Crystal Carter:

We've discussed this before about the value of doing that repetitive SEO task of going hard on the copy/paste. You do a lot of time, you go do a lot of time strategizing, planning, research, and things, and then you upload it or onto a sheet or you upload it onto a document and then you got to get it on the website and you do that 700 times, then you're going to learn a lot. And I've heard from juniors who are like, "Oh, I've had to do this loads of times, I have to do this over and over again." And I'm like, "Yeah, but that's learning. Every time you do it, you're going to refine it every single time. And if you do it enough times, you'll figure out the best way." They say 10,000 hours, learn an instrument or whatever it is. And I'm not saying necessarily you should do 10,000 hours of SEO, but that practicing, practicing again, practicing with intent, moving forward, that does make a really big difference and helps you get that high level strategy from having done the practical.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hundred percent. I love SEO. So when you practice it, I regard it as just doing SEO, just like that's what you want to do. You are practicing this through doing, and if you call it practice might have a negative connotation, but that's just doing SEO. The more and more that you do it, the better you get at it. The more understand... And think about how flexible you have to be. You have to do this on one CMS with, you have to do it with different agencies. Someone sells dog food, someone's a lawyer over here, someone does this, someone does that. You're going to be like, you are learning so much, you're going to be so flexible. So I've had days where I'll be having six calls a day and I'll go from women's fashion to dog food to automotive to marketing to men's fashion to marketing again. It's just like all talking about SEO, because you're continually learning, continually understanding SEO.

Crystal Carter:

I love that.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's amazing. And that learning process that... Kind of goes back, we talked about a different episode about learning SEO. One of the great things that you should be doing is taking that initiative just to dive in and learn. I remember I started with, not the Mazda beginner, but I started with the periodic table of SEO from search engine land. But you take that on, you dive into it, okay, what's the next thing that's like, let me read SEO Roundtable every single day to get a sense of what's going on. And as you get a better sense of what's going on, you really get a feel for SEO. That kind of thing is really, really important. If people wanted to learn from you, Anthony, where could they theoretically find you on the internet?

Anthony Barone:

LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one that I'm trying to really grow in terms of SEO tips or agency staff or the events that we do. So LinkedIn is probably one of the channels that I'm doing again. So probably LinkedIn.

Mordy Oberstein:

So we will definitely link to your LinkedIn profile.

Anthony Barone:

We do run an event called the Agency Social Club, which is geared towards agencies in the heart of shortage. Then we're just trying to create a fun, friendly vibe on the night and shortage, which is Thursday nights. So look out for the next one.

Mordy Oberstein:

All right, well follow Anthony. Or is it follow on LinkedIn? I think it's Follow or Connect. I'm not good at the whole LinkedIn verbiage. Whatever it is on LinkedIn, do that and see when the next event is. Anthony, thank you so much for joining us. This was super fantastic. Say Hi to Ethan Mar for me.

Anthony Barone:

Will do. He's always asking about you. Thank you Crystal. Thank you Mordy. Appreciate your time.

Crystal Carter:

Thank you so much.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much.

So, since we're talking SEO careers, we thought we'd give you some tips on what to look for in an SEO job listing. Maybe point out some red flags because some of them are great and some of them you need to be careful with, I think. So we're going to do that by taking a look at a little All SERP feature, which is called Google for Jobs, which means that we're doing a very special from the top of the SERP because Google for Jobs shows at the top of the SERP. So here's the SEO jobs version of from the top of the SERP.

So Google for Jobs, you may not know, you may know because it does depend on the geolocation, doesn't show everywhere, it's box. It's a SERP feature. And what it does is amazing. It aggregates job listing. So for example, if I search for accountant's job in New York City, this box, the top of the SERP will pull in listings from, I don't know, monster.com or career builders. Am I dating myself? Is career builders still a thing? I think I am, right?

Crystal Carter:

Possibly. Possibly.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's indeed.

Crystal Carter:

Glass Door, various different places.

Mordy Oberstein:

Indeed is another one.

Crystal Carter:

Indeed, indeed.

Mordy Oberstein:

Indeed is another one.

Crystal Carter:

Indeed.

Mordy Oberstein:

That was not on purpose, by the way. Indeed. It's a great feature that helps you really explore the jobs that, the listings that you might want to explore because you might need a new job and you might want to move careers or whatever it is you're trying to do.

Look for a friend. I don't know. However, with SEO jobs, sometimes they're great and sometimes you need to be careful.

Crystal Carter:

This is true.

Mordy Oberstein:

What we did was we looked for SEO jobs for you and pulled out some listings and these are from Google for Jobs, which shows at the top of the SERP. And here's a couple of things that you might want to look out for. So for example, I pulled out a job listing and it talked about the usual two plus years experience and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then it says something like strong foundational knowledge of whatever. I don't want to give away the full listing. I don't want you to find it. I don't want you to be able, that listing was bad, that company was bad. It's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to give you tips. We're not trying to get people in trouble.

And what it said was strong foundational knowledge of HTML, CSS, analytics and reporting. And that's not out of the order, in my personal opinions, necessarily for certain types of SEO job. But then it said knowledge of social media analytics and tracking technologies.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Whoa, wait a second. That seems like it's a very technical SEO job, which is great. And a social media marketing manager at the same time.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. And I think this is something that you get a lot of, I've seen a lot of SEOs discuss this where there will be a job description and it seems to be asking you to do everything.

Mordy Oberstein:

And I think it's very common in SEO.

Crystal Carter:

It's very common. I think a lot of teams will be looking for somebody to help them with SEO, potentially in-house. I think you see this less from agencies, these kinds of job requests. But I think, particularly for in-house things, they'll be asking for everything under the moon because they know that they need digital marketing support. And so they'll try to throw everything all together, not realizing that social media is a specialism. And there's a whole different ecosystem for social media.

And I think that sometimes this can be a sign that the team is less experienced in their digital marketing journey or less sophisticated in their digital marketing journey. It might mean that they need more guidance. And I think also if you see this job description, if you do get to interview, let's say this is a job description and you're like, oh my gosh, but actually the salary's okay, and there's other things that might work. You can also talk to them about some of this. You can say, I can offer you this, but I would recommend that, you get somebody else to do that part. Or I know a great consultant.

Mordy Oberstein:

What we're pointing out might not be like, don't apply for the job, or this is a terrible company. It's not what we're saying at all. These would be things to red flag to ask at a job interview, let's say. I mean, I think there are certain things, there are enormous red flags that maybe you shouldn't apply altogether. I don't think we're getting into those. I think those are relatively obvious, but I think it's a common theme. One of them, another one that I saw was talking about, you love technical SEO, can quickly identify issues, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And another bullet point was, excellent writer, you believe grammar editing is not subjective. A lot of heavy detail, wait a second. My point of view is sometimes those are very different people, very technical SEO and someone who's really into content writing, personal experience only here. And that's a little bit biased. Those two things, generally, it's a real unicorn to find somebody who does both of those at that level.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. There will definitely be some overlap. And you want somebody who's a good communicator. But if you've got, but I think that depending on the job title for that, you've got somebody who's super technical and you also want somebody who's a super writer. I mean, that person is going to be worth a lot, is going to be very expensive. It's what I say.

Mordy Oberstein:

And if that is you, you're listening to this ask for a lot of money, I think.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. That's what I'm saying.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's very rare to find somebody who's so in depth into technical grammar and technical SEO. At the same time.

Crystal Carter:

And I think that there's a difference between, so people who are working in semantic SEO, again, will also be doing some work that will include some understanding of grammar and stuff, but maybe not necessarily with the stylistic, I think more of the LLM functioning of grammar. And I think that if you're that person, then you are worth a lot of money. And if you are that team, then you should expect to be paying that person well to be able to do that. And it might even make more sense to split that job between somebody who is one or the other, potentially supported by an agency or supported by a freelancer or supported by a consultant or something to that effect.

Mordy Oberstein:

And by the way, if you're listening to this and you're an SEO agency or in-house and you're listing the job listing, you might write things like that because from your point of view, those are things that you're concerned about. And I think it's a matter of just wording them in a way where it's clearly understood. That's something you want, you're focused on. But this is the main part of the job. And I think a great example of one is something similar that I saw was it talked about being successful in the role that you need to be comfortable moving between high level strategy, in the weeds work. And it's for an SEO manager, it wasn't for an SEO strategist. And I think if I were applying for this job, I would be wanting to clarify, well, what exactly is the role? And again, this comes back to the same sort of thematic theme.

Sometimes it's a lot and certain things do and don't mesh, being high level strategy and then being in the weeds, it's a very different mindset. Forget the hours in the day, how do I get all that done? It's a very different mindset of, okay, how do I be a super efficient updating all the title tags and how do I make sure this whole high level strategy thing is working are different ways of thinking. So if you're creating this listing, I might want to phrase it in a way where you're making it clear that you don't expect that person to do all of the things.

Crystal Carter:

Right. I think that that's something to think about. I think when you're speaking to agencies, so if you are somebody who's looking for an SEO job and you see a job listing like that, I think call them up, have a chat. Have a chat, because I think the other thing is there's a lot of flexibility, particularly from an agency point of view, there's a lot of flexibility with regards to agency roles, because an agency will be made up of a team. They might have a specific person in mind, but if you have a lot of the skills and if you have some of them that are high priority, then there's very often a lot of space to negotiate what's required and what's not required. But for instance, for that both strategic and in the weeds thing, you're absolutely right that they're individuals, they tend to be individual skills. But also, I mean, it's possible to do some of that, but it will also have to do with how much time you're giving.

Mordy Oberstein:

And that's what you need to clarify.

Crystal Carter:

So you need to clarify, what is the workload? How are we doing this? How many clients should I be expecting to be managing at the same time? Because there's no way that you could possibly be in the weeds on 15 clients at a time and do your strategy at the same time. And also think about what is the team framework. Because if you have a situation where you're expected to be the one man band per client, or whether or not you have assistance or a technologist that works in your team or whether you have developers at your disposal or that sort of thing, that will change what the role is and what the demands are on your role. Because I think, with SEO, there's a million things you could do. And as an SEO, an account manager, you need to think about prioritizing those things and what resources you have available will impact your effectiveness and whether or not, what becomes a top priority. And if you want to be successful in the job, you need to be able to manage that well.

Mordy Oberstein:

And again, a job listing, you're trying to really, if you're creating a job with, and we've never done this before, but you're really trying to mesh all these 4 million points that you're thinking about into basically an email. And it's hard to get that right. So while these might be red flags, just because there's a red flag there, again, it's something for you to think about and discuss. It doesn't necessarily mean, whoa, bad place to work. It's hard to get that listing right. So inquire.

Crystal Carter:

Right, absolutely inquire. And I think also we see fairly often that there are people who tend to be from marginalized communities who are less likely to apply for a job if they don't have all the qualifications, like statistically speaking, apparently it's quite common for people to not apply if they don't have all the qualifications. Whereas there are people who are from more privileged communities or whatever you want to call it, who tend to be more likely to be like, "Yeah, I'll like throw my hat in the ring. We'll see what happens." And I think that if you see jobs that have these sorts of things, try to clarify with them and try to make sure that you aren't selling yourself short if it is an opportunity that you think might work for you, but also think about some of the other elements that you can bring, even if it's not listed. And think about some of the things that you are not willing to do, even if they are listed. And so if they've listed a bunch of things, just say in the interview, I don't do that, but I do this really well.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a great point because again, in the format of a job listing, it's very hard to indicate what you are prioritizing and what you're not prioritizing. You're just listing all of the things basically.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. Precisely.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's exactly why. Now with that, if you want to see what's happening on the SERP, the top of the SERP, new things, new changes, you would have to read the news in order to know that.

Crystal Carter:

The news.

Mordy Oberstein:

The news, the SEO news, and what better time than I think than for us to dive into the snappy news.

Crystal Carter:

The snappy news.

Mordy Oberstein:

Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. INP has arrived, sort of kind of. A little while ago we told you that Google was going to replace first input delay, better known as FID as one of the core web vitals and replace it with INP interaction to next paint. Long story short, FID is very easy to pass because it doesn't require a lot to get that first input. INP is a little more, let's call it, thorough. Anyway, per met southern over at Search Engine Journal. Google's search console adds INP to core web vitals report. So basically, Google is starting to add INP to the Google search console core web vital reporting as it will replace FID in March of 2024. So new data in GSC, but not part of the ranking equation yet. And just a reminder, don't freak out, in my honest opinion, as the data tends to show that core web vitals has not been a major factor in sites improving losing rankings.

Obviously there are cases where it does, but as Google has said, it's more when there is a tiebreaker scenario that core web vitals really factors into that extent. Speaking of freaking out, by the way, per the King of SEO news, Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google search ranking volatility exploding. Where is the confirmed algorithm update? Where's the cream filling? Usually I don't report on these, but this time the movement is so extensive and so unusual from beyond what we normally see with these unconfirmed updates that I thought I would share it here. It's not just, by the way, I'm not just seeing this in the SEO weather tools like the Summer sensor in actual sites that I'm monitoring. I'm seeing a lot of extensive movement. It's hotter than usual for a unconfirmed algorithm update. My SEO sense, if you want to call that my spidey sense but in the SEO sense, is tingling. Seeing this makes me feel like Google is prepping for a bigger, wider, official Google update coming, which is why I guess Barry's asking, where is the confirmed algorithm update?

Famous last words, by the way, famous last words. And with that, that is this week's snappy news. And again, what a lovely edition of the Snappiest of the Snappiest of Snappys of New's.

Crystal Carter:

So snappy. I really enjoyed how snappy it was.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's what I aim for when I do it. I really, I want to snap like a snow pea, like a really good crisp snow pea. It's like Snap.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, you're right. That is nice.

Mordy Oberstein:

They call Snap peas. I don't know, maybe I'm confusing this.

Crystal Carter:

No, I know what you mean though.

Mordy Oberstein:

You know what I'm talking about?

Crystal Carter:

I know what you mean. I know what, the other one that I think of is of is like a nice crisp apple. I love a nice crisp apple.

Mordy Oberstein:

That does make a nice snap. It does make a nice snap. If only this pocket were about vegetables and fruits that make nice snaps. But there is something to it, right? There's something to it...

Crystal Carter:

That's true.

Mordy Oberstein:

The sound of a carrot.

Crystal Carter:

This is true. We should just start a podcast that's just us eating vegetables.

Mordy Oberstein:

But I feel like might not be what our target audience is really after. I don't know. I speculate.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Okay. Okay. We can do some research.

Mordy Oberstein:

What they might be after is who they could follow on social media for more SEO awesomeness. And this week I have my favorite, one of my favorites, I should say my favorite because Barry Schwartz is also a favorite. It's like Ty, like Barry Schwartz level favorite. It's Carolyn Leiden who's like my SEO BFF. I love Caroline Leiden. Why is she a great follower? Because she's a great person and you'll get great parenting tips, but you'll also get tips about your SEO career because Carolyn is at aficionado at giving advice on SEO career, negotiating for yourself in your career, how to negotiate. She had a newsletter, at one point, all about this. So a great follow at Carolyn Leiden on Twitter about advancing your SEO career and getting a career tips and advice.

Crystal Carter:

She's a fantastic follow and such an anchor and a wonderful, wonderful part of the SEO community. She's really encouraging and supportive and just fantastic. And she's done so much for the community over the years and it's, she's a fantastic, fantastic follow.

Mordy Oberstein:

I cannot more highly recommend a follow, so extra emphasis on Follow Carolyn Leiden over at Carolyn Leiden on Twitter. We'll link to her profile in the show notes. Carolyn, we love you. You're amazing. Keep at it. By the way, she does share a lot of job listings, so it's a good follow, practically speaking, if you're looking for a job.

Crystal Carter:

And her discussions around salary are fantastic. So she had her salary newsletter and I think they're available in archive about negotiations and about making sure that you, she's very frank about it. She's like, get your money, get your money, go and get paid. Go and get your money. Get paid for what you do. And it's really important because I think that SEO salaries can vary significantly. So make sure that you're doing your best for you.

Mordy Oberstein:

So cha ching. It's a good follow, cha ching, cash register sound. I can't do that sound. I don't know how to, I'm not the guy from Police Academy. I can't make sounds.

Crystal Carter:

Oh gosh. He's great.

Mordy Oberstein:

He's wonderful. What happened with that guy? Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next with the new episodes we dive into, does Speed Experience still matter? Short answer, yes, but we'll see why we're asking the question, if you tune in next week. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check out all the great content and webinars we have 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 a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO.