SEOs working well with non-SEOs for success

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahala. We're joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I am joined by she who works well with others, plays nicely with the sandbox, with everybody. She is our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Hello, internet people. Hi. Yes, it is very important to work well with others, to get along, to make friends, and influence people-

Mordy Oberstein:

Play nicely in the sandbox.

Crystal Carter:

... It's very important. It's very important. It's very important.

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, it's very hard, because in a sandbox, the one thing you want to do was fling sand at other children. Not that I am an adult, go into the sandbox and fling sand at children, but when I was a child.

Crystal Carter:

No. I was all about digging a hole from one side, digging a tunnel, a full tunnel, so that you had the-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

... sand... I mean, because that was a challenge. You'd have to maintain the integrity and you also have to judge it correctly, because otherwise it will collapse. That was my favorite thing. I was like, "Can we dig a tunnel? Yes or no? Let's see."

Mordy Oberstein:

That's interesting. You right-

Crystal Carter:

Can I step up?

Mordy Oberstein:

... when I dig a tunnel and I'm like, "Hey, can I fling sand at this kid over here?" Look at what we both turned out.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, there you go.

Mordy Oberstein:

This SERF's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix. You can only subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also manage projects in one unified workspace of multiple teammates, work on one site at the same time while sharing live comments, and all while setting specific roles for specific team members on specific sites, with our new agency first offering with Studio. Learn more about that over at wix.com/studios.

Today, we talk about working well with non-SEO teams, or as my language, don't fling sand at the design team or the dev team. Work well with them. We're diving into joining together with the band to make beautiful music on the site that you're working on, as we cover why jargon is not an SEO's best friend when working with other teams. Why everyone is different and their different priorities are A-okay. Why common sense ain't so common when working with non-SEO teams. It ain't so common, to be honest with you, when working with anybody, but whatever.

To help us make SEO accessible to non-SEO teams,

Neha Khanna:
will stop by to help us make SEO accessible for non-SEO teams. Hello, redundancy. I think I has said that. Anyway, we'll also talk with one of our in-house influencers, Marissa Brower on how to build your personal brand, but do it in a way that works well, not just for you but for your whole team. We're all team this week. So put on your cooperation caps as episode number 60 of the SERF's Up podcast takes Sesame Street's cooperation makes it happen to a whole other level. (singing) Remember that song?

Crystal Carter:

No.

Mordy Oberstein:

Ah, it's a classic Sesame Street song.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, right. I mean, I was a big fan of Sesame Street's. Still am. Still absolutely am, but I don't remember Cooperation. I remember (singing)-

Mordy Oberstein:

Also a classic.

Crystal Carter:

That's a good one. Also-

Mordy Oberstein:

That's the classic.

Crystal Carter:

Right? Also, Martina, know is a tennis player is a person in your neighborhood, and they had Martina Navratilova, and I was like, "What's up, Martina? Okay."

Mordy Oberstein:

"This isn't my neighborhood."

Crystal Carter:

She's not, she's really not.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's like on Park Avenue somewhere.

Crystal Carter:

Right. I think I'd know if Martina Navratilova lived in my neighborhood.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right.

Crystal Carter:

But also, what was the, the other one is put down the ducky. That is like...

Mordy Oberstein:

That's, also B is for Bubble is one of my classic favorite ones. (singing)

Crystal Carter:

There was a New York Giants one that they did or something as well, I think.

Mordy Oberstein:

Billy Joel was on Sesame Street. Wow, we-

Crystal Carter:

Ooh. Sorry, last one. The best one is it's like that Paul Simon song, You got to get on-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes.

Crystal Carter:

... make a new plan, Stan. And it was like, God, what was it? Oh no, I'm sorry, it's Kermit the Frog. It's Kermit the Frog, and I think it's a wrench or something? What's the name of that song? It's like make a news plan stand. You don't need to be coy, Roy, just listen to me.

Mordy Oberstein:

Didn't Kermit sing that Carpenter song also? Maybe the Carpenters sang the Kermit song.

Crystal Carter:

Lever. It was love your lever. It wasn't learn to love your... leave your lover, it was Learn to Love Your Lever.

Mordy Oberstein:

Nice, nice.

Crystal Carter:

That's what they did. It was brilliant. Anyway, it was worth it. Anyway.

Mordy Oberstein:

Anyway, we're talking about not-Sesame Street today, although really we could. Talking about creating, managing, and growing a website and a business along with it. And when you're doing it, it's like an onion, or for fans of Shrek, like an ogre, it has layers. And the success of the site, as much as it pains me to say this, is not all about SEO. I know, hot take, right? Everyone's, "Oh, no. It's about SEO." It is, and it's also not. There are multiple things going on, from the organic success to the branding, to the social media marketing, to dev, to whatever that means. Getting along with others in the wider sandbox and not flinging sand at them.

Nay, it means more than getting along with them. That means actually being productive. It means digging tunnels in the sandbox together. And I can tell you from personal experience, that's very hard. It's hard, because it means you have to not only explain things the right way, but it also means bringing in other teams at the right time, which can be tricky, but your ability as an SEO can make or break the efficiency of getting that site going. And at that level of organization, especially on bigger sites and bigger organizations, it's really, really tricky. And it means being very well organized, I think, and very well aware of what's happening around you in the organization.

And it also means, in my personal opinion, hard it is for me to say, because I have a hard time with this, being able to let go. I feel like SEO's hard because we fight for every inch of the internet, but when working with non-SEO teams, you need to know how to accommodate their goals and their needs and how they see things. And it's going to mean knowing when to and when not to push the envelope. If there's a big branding push on the site's homepage, and that may impact some small SEO tasks, maybe don't fight it. Save your capital.

And that's not always very easy, because at times, you do want to push the SEO agenda, but not all the way, meaning you have to be strategic and know how to start a conversation without finishing it so that in the future, other teams may eventually adopt your SEO outlook. Meaning you're starting even though you think, "Yes, we should do this SEO thing." Sometimes you want to start the conversation but not finish it. Let it simmer, let it stew, and all those sorts of cooking analogies.

Crystal Carter:

Let it marinate.

Mordy Oberstein:

There we go. That's another one. Wow, good pull. Good pull. That's why you're my favorite co-host. You're also my only co-host. Whatever it is, when working with non-SEO teams, my opinion is play the long game. Crystal, your take.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I totally think so. And also I think it's really important to understand what's important to them and how you can make SEO important to them based on what they value. So if you're working with sales teams, how can you connect SEO to sales? If you're working with PPC teams, how can you connect the value of your SEO to making their ads cost less? Because if your SEO is good on the pages that you're using for PPC as well, then that's going to help you to get a good value there. If you're seeing that you're getting good PPC traffic... I think I saw a really good presentation at Brighton SEO, and I cannot remember who it was off the top of my head just now, but they were talking about prioritization.

And they were saying that sometimes you can have a look at your information and your keyword research and you can say, "This keyword should be used for PPC," "This keyword, we're crushing it on SEO, so we should not be doing PPC on that, because we're getting that traffic anyway." "But this one is something that we're in the ballpark, and if we did a little PPC on there, we could get some good reaction there." So I think don't just go to people with your own agenda, go to them with something that's of value to them and understand what things are of value to them so that you can work genuinely together. Genuinely.

Mordy Oberstein:

At the same time, it's also explain the value to you. If you want something done, if you're able to explain, "Hey, this is why I think it's really important and here's the impact and the outcomes, and maybe the long-term impact," or whatever it is, if you're able to educate and explain why it's important to you. So even just outside of, okay, now they understand what you're looking for and why it's important, but they know that it's something that actually is important to you for a real reason, and they'll identify with that and identify with you. And that identification, not to get too psychological here, is super important working with non-SEO teams.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And it also means that they'll come to you ahead of time next time. So-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

... if if you're working with a PR team or something and they're doing all this stuff and you're like, "Hey, can we just make sure that we get a link there and that the link doesn't say learn more, the link doesn't say click here, the link doesn't say something completely useless. And if they're like, "Oh yeah, we can get a link." You're like, "Cool. If we can get a link there, then we can track some of the value of the PR that you're doing." So make it a give and take. How can you help them to help you? Think about those opportunities?

And also feedback. Right? So in the PR example, for instance, sometimes people will say, "Oh, we're sponsoring this event." It's like, "Have we got an event page or have we got a sponsor page with a link on it to us and with some keywords around that?" So let's say, I've had it before where I had clients sponsoring the local marathon or half-marathon or whatever it is, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, we're sponsoring this thing. We got things on the banner, we have the logo on the finish line and all that stuff." And I'm like, "Do we have some real estate on the webpage?" And they're like, "No."

I'm like, "Can we get some? Can we get a paragraph? Can we get a logo link? Can we get a page? Can we get a blog? Can we get a quote somewhere? Can we get something online?" Because that will give us a long-term value out of that. They're like, "Oh, okay." And make sure that you make it as easy for them as possible to help you to achieve your SEO goals. And then after the event, for instance, let's say this marathon example, after the event, tell them what information you got from that.

So, "We found that this many people clicked through the website, this page had that many views, this helped our rankings this much, we saw this uplift." And then they'll go, "Oh, hey, I do see the value of that.: And next time they have a sponsorship, they'll say, "Hey, talk to the SEO team, just to make sure that we're ticking any boxes that we can to also get a little SEO lift off of that." So make sure that you're illustrating to them the opportunities.

And make them as simple as possible. Lay it out for them, because they don't need to know the technical details of link-building and all of the ranking algorithms. They don't need to know that. They just need to know that they need to put a paragraph or something on the page that has a link back to your website that includes the keyword that is relevant to you. That's what you need to do. So write them that paragraph. Give it to them. Spoonfeed them if you have to, but get that done and then give them the feedback, and then you will get buy-in from them, because they'll be able to see the value from that.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Two great points, then, right? You don't want to use jargon when you don't have to use jargon. Oh, this is... Imagine it's a page, you want to add author bios onto the page. You need to put a dev ticket in order to have that done."Oh, it's very important, we're in a Y and YL niche, and it's very important for our EEAT. Of course, I'm so smart, they look at the abbreviations I know." It doesn't help if you actually get rid of the jargon and flush out, hey, look, one of the things the algorithm that Google's looking for is actual experience from actual people. One of the ways you can send us signals by having an author bio there, but our pages just don't have them. What can you do there?

And a second point is being specific. And I've had this a lot of times where I'm trying to do a run an experiment and try to see what's going on, and I need the help of the dev team to do that. And whatever it is that you want, in this particular case, I wanted to set up the experiment, be as specific as possible. Because if they're left trying to even figure out the smallest details, they're out. They're just out right away. Unless you have a really good dev who's like, "Hey, let me help you here." And I have had that, but sometimes I haven't had that.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that brings up another point, is that you need to know your team. So it's really worth introducing yourself to multiple teams, having, and I think this is something that Eli Schwartz talked about in his in-house enterprise SEO tactics as well. It's really worth introducing yourself to some of the other marketing channels and the teams there in a casual space. It could be that you're all doing CPD and you're doing some CPD that's nothing to do with anything, but I don't know, it's like health and safety training, and the marketing person is there, or the PPC person is there and you're like, "Oh, hey. Just saying hi, nice to meet you," that sort of thing, so that you get to know them.

Because the devs really vary. Sometimes with devs, you have some devs who you literally have to give them every single thing, or you have a dev where you're like, "Hey, I want to get from A to B. I've seen this website that does this, I've seen that website that does that." And they're like, "Cool, I'll get in the kitchen. I'll cook you up something nice." And they come back to you with a surprise.

And some devs want a recipe and they want all of the different things. So depending on which kind of dev. But you need to know which kind of dev you're working with. Because the one who's more like, "Oh, yeah, I'll make something that's beautiful la, la, la, la, la," they don't want you to be super prescriptive. In fact, they find that irritating. Whereas, the ones who really want a recipe, it's like, "Yeah, do what you like," they find that really, really off-putting as well. So it's really important to know what kind of teams you're working with and their schedule, their calendar, all those sorts of things.

Mordy Oberstein:

Which goes to our last point, that common sense isn't always so common. You might think this is quite obvious. And by the... I'll say this, if you're listening to this podcast, you're not an SEO. In fact, you're looking to hire an SEO, let's say. You're looking to hire an SEO agency and your business and your goals are quite obvious to you when you're communicating them to the SEO, because from your perspective, the SEO is a non-business team. They're not part of your business team, they're not an SEO. They don't always understand the full scope of what you're doing in your business model. What might be obvious to you and common sense to you is completely not obvious to us SEOs. I have no idea. It's the same thing with a dev. What's obvious to you and obvious to you if you... Don't use a PNG. Obvious to me. That thing is massive. GIFs? God no. Although I love a good GIF.

Crystal Carter:

I know.

Mordy Oberstein:

But to someone on the design team, JPEG is less quality. Why would I use a JPEG? That's crazy.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. And I think it's important to understand those things. And I think that when you're working with folks, you have to meet them at their level in order to get the results that you want and in order to get the results that they want and stuff. And think in terms of common sense. The way I always describe it is two things. First of all, if you're hiring an SEO company and they're using jargon, they're using language that you don't understand or they're taking for granted certain things that you know, don't be afraid to ask what people call "stupid questions."

Don't be afraid to ask those questions. Because I've definitely been in meetings where somebody was telling me this acronym or that acronym, and I just raised my hand and I was like, "What does that acronym mean?" And they were like, "I don't know." I was like, "Well, what the F is going on here?" So don't be afraid to ask that question, because if you're spending money, they should be able to tell you. And if they can't explain it to you in plain English, then they don't know what they're doing.

The other thing I would say on that is, in terms of common sense is, make sure that you know what you want out of it when you're going into it. And also, make sure that... If you've ever been to a hotel, every hotel shower is completely different. Right? And I've been in hotels before and I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to turn on the hot water.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. It's the most annoying thing, then you burn yourself and flood the bathroom at the same time.

Crystal Carter:

Right. So whole drama. So sometimes, even if it's something that you take for granted, just say to them and be like, "Look, I'm not trying to patronize you, but let me just explain this to you quickly for five minutes and then it might save you another half an hour of faffing around with whatever this thing is. Give me these couple minutes just to explain it, and if you know all of this, cool. You can just go, 'I know all of that.' If you don't know all of this, then great, we've made sure that we have a baseline here." So make sure that you know what you want out of it and that you know which things they need to know.

So it might be that they need to know that you don't work on a certain day of the week, or they need to know that you only have one receptionist. So on this SEO campaign, if you're setting up a, "Yeah, we'll get you lots of phone calls." And let's say you only have one receptionist and she can't handle all those phone calls, that's something that they need to know when they're getting that stuff together. There's going to be certain things that they need to know.

Make sure that they know those things and make sure that you have, you are like, "Oh, well, actually, we have a quarterly report that we have to do and that we need to have those metrics by that..." Make sure that you know, that they know those things. Don't take these things for granted. And it might seem obvious, that's fine. Just quickly tell them the obvious thing quickly. If it's obvious, they'll go, "Great." And if not, they'll go, "What?" And then you know that you need to spend some more time on that.

Mordy Oberstein:

Last point, real, real quick, bribery. Bribery works. The point that Jack Chambers-Ward made to me a long time ago over at Candour, bribery. So like, "Hey, dev, I got your tickets for the Jets game." Actually, don't do the Jets, that's terrible. "I got two tickets for the Steelers game. Come on down." Bribery works.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. You're trying to make friends and influence people, bring in cake, bring them candy, do what you need to do.

Mordy Oberstein:

Not the Jets tickets, that would be insulting, that's how bad the Jets are. With that, we asked Wayfair's own

Neha Khanna:
how she goes about and what metaphors she uses to explain SEO to non-SEOs that you can use when you're explaining SEO to other non-SEOs. Or, if you're not an SEO, here's a great way to understand SEO, from Neha.

Neha Khanna:

I love going back to the basics. Today, we talk about search engine optimization or SEO. So the first thing is think of it as a roadmap of getting your website or content noticed by search engines, like Google. Imagine the internet as a vast library of billions and billions of books inside. Now think of these books as your websites. Now, when people want to find information, they often turn to a librarian for help, right? Think of this case, librarian is a search engine.

Now, SEO is all about helping the librarian find and recommend your book, which is a website in this case, when someone asks for a specific topic. Now this topic becomes a keyword. Keyword is the basic foundation of SEO. Think of keywords as phrases or words that people use when asking the librarian for a book. Now, SEO helps you to choose the right keywords that match what your website is all about. For example, if your website is about cooking, your keywords might be easy recipes or cooking tips.

The second way to go about it is organization. Now, just like books in a library are organized by categories, your website should be well organized, too. SEO helps you to structure your content so that it's easy for both the librarian, that is a search engine, and the readers to understand. In this case, the customers are your readers that are coming on search engine to look for your book or your website.

Quality content. Now, in our library story, the librarian wants to recommend the best books to the readers. SEO encourages you to create high-quality content that provides valuable information, answers question, and solves the problems for your readers. Now, in this case, your readers are looking to find something, which is why they're on Google, and your website is helping them find that right answer.

Popularity. In library, popular books get recommended more often. Similarly, SEO considers how many other reputable sources or other websites link to your website. Now, these are like recommendations from other librarians and they can boost your website's credibility.

User experience. A well-organized library, with clear signs and comfy chairs, really makes readers happy, right? So SEO focuses on improving your website's user experience, ensuring it's easy to navigate, it loads quickly, and looks great on all the devices.

And last but not the least, regular updates. Now, libraries adds books and new books, and removes the old ones. Similarly, SEO encourages you to update your content regularly to keep it fresh and relevant to the current environment.

In a nutshell, SEO is all about making a website or content more visible and accessible in the vast online library of information. It helps ensure that when someone asks the librarian, that is the search engine, for a specific topic, your book or your website is one of the top recommendations. It's all about helping people find what they're looking for on the internet.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much to Neha. We definitely appreciate that. Always love a good SEO metaphor to explain SEO. By the way, we will absolutely link to Neha's LinkedIn profile in the show notes. But yes, I always love a good SEO metaphor, and that was an SEO metaphor on steroids.

Crystal Carter:

She's brilliant. I've seen her speak at SearchLove, and she used some really great metaphors there as well. And I think that her real skill is just making things really, really clear. I think that if you're working on the team with her, it'd be really great to explain whatever you needed to. And I think that that patience with folks who are maybe new to SEO, maybe understand the value but maybe don't understand the implementation, is really, really important when you're working with various teams.

Mordy Oberstein:

Amazing. Now, with that, so it's always hard to balance working well as part of a team and balancing your own personal needs and goals and whatnot. But more often than not, you could probably find a way to balance both. If not to balance both, you can actually leverage your own personal oomph for the sake of the team. The question is how does that work and how do you do that? That's why we're going deep into how to work well as a team, but also build up your own personal brand, with a very special deep thought with Crystal and Mordy, as our own social media extraordinaire here at Wix, Marissa Brower joins us for a deep thought with Crystal, Mordy, and Marissa.

Crystal Carter:

Welcome, Marissa.

Marissa Brower:

Thanks for having me. Hi, Crystal.

Crystal Carter:

Hi, Marissa. Happy to have you here. It's so fantastic.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're all so happy, because you both grew up in the same place and you all know the same thing.

Marissa Brower:

Yeah, we're Californians.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Marissa Brower:

Right.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. Just like all of that Golden State shine, just shine, shine, shine.

Mordy Oberstein:

All that sunshine. I'm just from grumpy New York. "Get out of my way. I'm walking here."

Marissa Brower:

We don't walk, we drive.

Crystal Carter:

No. Okay.

Marissa Brower:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. With lots and lots of traffic, too.

Mordy Oberstein:

I know about traffic. It's on my website.

Marissa Brower:

Oh.

Crystal Carter:

Oh. Very nice!

Marissa Brower:

That was a good one.

Mordy Oberstein:

So before you joined us at Wix, and according to Google, you have your own knowledge panel, which in our little SEO world is quite the thing.

Marissa Brower:

I'm so happy you to find that for me. Because I looked that up the other day and I was like, what? I mean, first of all, who did that? And secondly, what's it called? I just told my parents, I'm like, "Someone's calling me an internet personality on the internet, and I don't know who, but I love it."

Crystal Carter:

They found you.

Marissa Brower:

It's a knowledge panel. They found... they identified me.

Crystal Carter:

It means they found you. It means that, it's normally, as an indicator that you're doing great stuff and that you're involved in lots of really great projects, and that you're yeah, involved with some great stuff. I don't have a knowledge panel yet. I'm working on it. Mordy has one, which he's very proud of.

Marissa Brower:

Mordy, you have one?

Crystal Carter:

Mordy has one. It's very exhaustive, and so does George as well.

Marissa Brower:

Okay, that's good.

Mordy Oberstein:

We write a lot of content. But Crystal, you also have a ton of content. Why is that? Maybe Google doesn't... See, I always had to think about Google not liking me, because I had a search console problem that maybe Daniel Waisberg had a thing. Maybe Daniel's doing it to you now, because my search console works now.

Crystal Carter:

Shout out to Daniel Waisberg. Where's my knowledge panel? But I think also a lot of it has to do with data and projects that you've worked on and things like that. Yeah, but well done. Fantastic and well-earned, I think.

Marissa Brower:

Thank you.

Crystal Carter:

I think, if people aren't aware, Marissa has an incredible following on Instagram, makes incredible content, and has a fantastic doggo who is adorable, who you should also follow.

Mordy Oberstein:

With you being an internet personality...

Marissa Brower:

Uh-huh.

Mordy Oberstein:

... and that was before you started at Wix. How did that help your career being this internet personality?

Marissa Brower:

Well, I actually had a very interesting career... I studied statistics in college. So I have a degree in statistics. And then I moved to Israel, and I lived... When you move to Israel, I feel like there's not a lot for English speakers to do, so I was pretty fresh. I was 21, so I started working in customer support and I hated it. So I was doing that for a little bit. And then also, I'm living really far.

I'm in the Middle East, my parents have no idea what's going on, so I started making YouTube videos so that my parents could... More of a way to connect with my family and friends to show them like, "Hey, everything's same-old. I'm just, this is my routine here." So I was making these YouTube videos weekly, and then I got this opportunity with my work to relocate to Boston. And then this was during COVID, right when COVID started, March, 2020.

And TikTok was just taking off. It was the early days of TikTok, right when all those kids were hitting... And I was like, "You know what, I want to try it, too." So I'm in Boston, quarantining and trying to get a flight back to Israel. And I noticed when I was in Boston that the only people that would see my videos, even though I'm experimenting with the app, were people that were in Boston. And then, as soon as I flew back to Israel, the only people that would see my videos were Israelis. So I realized it was based off of my location.

So I thought to myself, I can't do anything in English. If I'm going to be in Israel, I have to start making Hebrew videos if I want to... I was just really doing it for fun. So I made one video about translation fails, stupid translation fails that I've made as an American trying to learn Hebrew, and it just blew up. And at that moment I thought, okay, this is the niche that I'm going to go into is being an American in a foreign country.

And then from there, I just, I kept leveling up. I did different kinds of stuff with translation and just being an American expat. But it's not consistent. When you're a freelancer, it's stressful. So I wanted to leverage what I had done into a more professional career, and that's how I found Wix. Very different brands, web design and American translation fails.

Crystal Carter:

So I think there's a couple of fantastic things there in what you're saying that I'd like to pick up on. One is that one of the things about being a, so-called influencer or being somebody who is building up a personal brand is that you're able to learn at your own pace and you're able to apply different knowledge as you see it when you want to. And certainly, in my experience, I have people and they're like, "Oh, I can't do SEO, I don't have a website." I'm like, "Make a website. Make a website."

People are like, "How do I get good at digital marketing?" I'm like, "Do digital marketing. Make something. Make a YouTube channel, make a Instagram, make a Facebook, make a TikTok." How much of the stuff that you taught yourself do you apply to the work that you do for the brand? Now, I don't know if we mentioned it, but Marissa is one of the masterminds behind the Wix social things. No disrespect to the rest of Wix social team, they're fantastic, but Marissa does a lot of great stuff as well. So how much of the things that you learned, while you were learning all those different platforms and applying all these different techniques, are you applying daily in your work?

Marissa Brower:

Absolutely, 100%. I'm self-taught. I have no background in video creation. I know nothing about cameras, but I just had to teach myself doing green screen, editing programs. Everything started as doing it for my YouTube channel and for my TikTok account. And then technically, my job is a social media manager, it's not a video editor. But I have this background in video, and so it's really helps me create content and get it out really fast, which is all, it's the nature of social media. It's fast, short-paced, snackable content. So it's been really helpful for me to have that base, and everything was really just self-taught.

Crystal Carter:

And I think also, the other thing that I thought was really interesting, you said you studied statistics. My degree is in English literature. I know somebody else who's a fantastic SEO and his degree is in archeology. How much of your statistical background are you bringing into your work? I imagine quite a lot, actually, with some of the content.

Marissa Brower:

Isn't it funny, how I think they'd say in college, "You're probably going to major in something and do nothing with that major and do something completely else." But luckily for me, statistics does play a little bit of a part in social media. We're always looking at performance, like how a video, the engagement, saves, likes, all that kinds of stuff, and trying to identify why a video outperformed another video. So I think I wish statistics came in more of a play. It's very basic statistics. Yeah, there's definitely a need for it with social media and trying to just figure out what your audience likes, and it's all based on numbers.

Mordy Oberstein:

So if we can move away from math forever-

Marissa Brower:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

... and numbers. Because you have such a strong personal background and what you're doing and all things you've done in the personal success that you've had, do you feel when you're now going back to the team and saying, "Hey, we're going to do X, Y, and Z, what do you think about this?" That it gives you a different, I guess, weight to your voice, because you have that personal background and that personal success that came along with it? As opposed to somebody who's like, "I've been working..."

I guess what I'm asking is, if you have somebody who's working as social media manager for, forget Wix for a second, just for a company and they're on your team, and then you are on the same team with that person, but you have your own personal history, your own personal experience to doing social media, in this particular case, and I think would apply to any other vertical, does that give you a different kind of voice? Not maybe more weighty, but does it give you different outlook and different perspective? Does it help you bring a fresh perspective to the team? Wow, I finally got the question out.

Marissa Brower:

I think it does, but it's totally different working for your personal brand than a brand like Wix. I have learned so much just trying to make a strategy for Wix. It's completely different... As a viewer, I think you're more skeptical of taking advice from a brand than you are of taking advice from just a regular individual on the internet. So it's trying to like... Something that I would do on my own TikTok account or my own Instagram account wouldn't come off the same way on a branded account.

So I think I do have a little bit more experience just working within the app, knowing there's a lot to do with SEO and TikTok, and knowing how to write a good caption and what hashtags to use and just navigating the app itself. I think I have a lot of expertise in that. But in terms of strategy, that was a whole new learning experience for me when I came from my personal brand to Wix, trying to build that strategy, see what resonates with your viewers. It's very different than being an individual creator.

Mordy Oberstein:

And do you think that's helped your personal content creation process for your own channels?

Marissa Brower:

No. I like to keep my personal content very authentic. What I'm making for Wix is there's a lot of heavy editing, a lot of green screen. I don't think it translates well. My videos are comedic, my personal videos. I'm not really trying to teach someone something. I think if I were, I would take more of that professional aspect that we've used in the Wix strategy.

But no, I think for personal creators, the best thing, especially right now, is authenticity. I think we've had so much in the past, the previous years of very filtered, perfect videos, circulating in pictures, circulating the internet, and now people find just authentic content really relatable, and that's what people stay around for. So I try and, I really have to separate the two, personal creation and branded creation, because it's super different.

Mordy Oberstein:

On behalf of my generation, we apologize for all that perfect content that was completely just schlock. Anyway...

Crystal Carter:

I think it can be very important. I certainly, I think that brings into the idea of channels and brand voice and things like that. Because I think that that awareness is really important when people are thinking about bringing some of the knowledge that they have from their personal branding, development experience, into other avenues. So people might have a personal blog and then start writing for a company blog, or people might have a personal Facebook account that gets a lot of engagement, or I know, bless Facebook.

And then maybe they're writing for the company one. And I've seen this when working with juniors, working with people who are just getting started, and they're like, "Oh yeah, I can do the same thing. I'll just share these same..." And it's maybe sort of sometimes, but you really do have to experiment with that. Can you give any advice of when people should draw the lines between one brand voice and another brand voice?

Marissa Brower:

I think it takes so much experimentation to understand what works on a particular channel. I'm only working on TikTok, and when I came into Wix's TikTok, it was really underdeveloped, one post a month compared to what we're doing now, which is three to four a week. And the ones that we were posting before I joined was just recycled content. It was nothing specific for TikTok.

So when I came in, it was like, "Let's build a strategy and let's figure out what to do for our channel." And we tried a bunch of different stuff. Trending sounds, it's huge and it still is huge. And then the user showcases, educational content tutorials, and just the educational content and the tutorials just blew out all the other ideas. Once we started really figuring out what do our viewers stick around for? It was really providing value for them.

So on TikTok, even though it's really this fun, light app that a younger generation is engaging with, I think that people still want to walk away from the app retaining something, especially from a brand. So that's how we got into these tutorials. Whereas on Instagram, I think that there's an opportunity to be more, to use more design on TikTok. Using design is the worst thing you can do on TikTok. We try and stay away from design, because we want to keep it still authentic to TikTok.

So it's just learning what each platform... When you're on Instagram scrolling, you want to see something beautiful. On TikTok, you won't want to walk away feeling like you learn something or that video wasn't a waste of your time. So it's just learning the landscapes of different social media apps, I think.

Mordy Oberstein:

To quote Jimi Hendrix quoting Bob Dylan, "The hour is getting late." Where can people find you, Marissa?

Marissa Brower:

My Instagram is @marissabrower, and my TikTok account is @marissabrow. That's pretty... And then I have a YouTube account that I've deleted. Same thing @marissabrow.

Mordy Oberstein:

Links in the show notes, so look for Marissa there. Help build up her knowledge panel by linking to her content all over the place. Marissa, thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you around on TikTok, or at least Crystal will, because I don't do TikTok.

Marissa Brower:

Thanks, guys, for having me.

Mordy Oberstein:

Again, major kudos to Marissa. The stuff that she does on TikTok is awesome. She did a great one. We did Semrush and StudioHawk reviewed a Wix website called WhatSugar, and they put out a whole SEO audit template based on WhatSugar is doing and the SEO success. It's very awesome Wix website has seen. And then Marissa took that SEO template and created a whole Instagram and TikTok wrap-up of it that we posted on our TikTok and Instagram account. So it was super cool. It was full-circle infographic, SEO audit thing into TikTok, Instagram content. So a way to knock it out of the park without repurposing, Marissa.

Crystal Carter:

Nice.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I always have a good repurposing, right? You know who doesn't repurpose a lot of content?

Crystal Carter:

Who's that?

Mordy Oberstein:

Barry Schwartz does not repurpose a lot of content. It's always fresh and always new.

Crystal Carter:

So fresh, like a summer's breeze.

Mordy Oberstein:

Although sometimes, it is semi-repackaged, like, "Here's Google again telling you for the eight millionth time, word count doesn't matter."

Crystal Carter:

My favorite thing is when he, well, to be fair, he does do the, in-case-you-missed-its, which I'm very grateful for, because he publishes so much.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, I'm a different time zone, so I get the, in case you missed it in the morning sometimes. So yeah, I do appreciate that. That is repurposing. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I insulted you.

Crystal Carter:

He also does pull out those pictures from random bits of Google around, which are really fun.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's a Google cake in Tel Aviv.

Crystal Carter:

Right. There was a fantastic one of Daniel Waisberg blowing a horn from-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, the shofar.

Crystal Carter:

... his balcony or something?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes. I said that to Barry, like, "Oh, you-"

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. Oh, you did.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

It's amazing.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

It's amazing.

Mordy Oberstein:

I was so wrong again, Barry. I'm wrong. You're right, Barry does repurpose content.

Crystal Carter:

Do you know what? Admitting that you're wrong is a really important part of working with teams.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the first step to recovery. And with that, here's the snappy SEO news. Snappy News, snappy news, snappy news. Got three for you this week, and the first one's not from Barry Schwartz. Sorry, Barry, they can't all be from you. From Nicola Agius, from SearchEngineLand. Google testing ads between organic results. There's been a spattering of examples from across the web of people seeing Google ads among the search results. Meaning you usually see ads at the top of the results or at the bottom of the set of results. But now, lots of folks are seeing ads within the results.

I think, by the way, this has a lot to do with the fact that I think users are wiser than they were before, and they're looking to not be sold to in the same way. So perhaps they're not clicking on those ads up top the way that they used to before, and Google wants to be more subtle about it.

Number two, article number two from, okay, it's from Barry Schwartz. This from Search Engine Roundtable. Google about this image. About this image now live, recency of image, AI details and more. This is really interesting. Google's now offering the ability to see some history or some information about an image. You go to image search, there's a little three button setting thing that you can click on and it will show you how old the image is. Google said it may also indicate if the image has been generated by AI and so forth.

Have a look at the GIF that Barry shares in the article, which we'll link to in the show notes. It's really interesting to look at. Obviously, this makes a lot of sense, because the web is going, it already is inundated with AI images, and it's good for people to know what's real than what's AI, if we want to put it that way. So it makes a lot of great sense to have something like that. I think it's a really nice little feature.

Okay, this one, well, I guess it comes from Barry. I saw it first on seroundtable.com, but it's actually announced by Google. We'll link to both sources. There's your link. Barry, from Google's own blog. Three new ways to check images and sources online. So Google has an About This Result feature that'll let you get some more context about why that particular result shows in their search results for you and some information about that result. We'll link to the article in the show notes.

You can have a look at where that actually is and what it looks like. But just know there's this little feature out there that gives context to a result shown to you on the SERP. Google is now using AI to generate information or a description about a result that you may see among your search results within this About This Result feature. I'll just read to you what Google themselves wrote. It'll make this a little bit clearer, because without seeing it, it's hard to understand it.

Google writes, "One of the best ways to evaluate information online is to learn more about the source. Say you stumble upon some cool new hiking boots, but they're from a small merchant you're not familiar with. You might want to do research on the seller, but in some cases, it can be hard to find information about lesser-known sites. Now we're starting to experiment how generative AI can do some of that digging for you to help you search with confidence." So the AI will generate a little bit of a description about who the seller actually is or who the website actually is, so you can better understand, contextually, who they are and may say, "You know what? I do want to buy it from them. They do seem reliable."

I think it's really interesting that Google's using AI for this. I think it's a little bit of a shame that it's hard to actually know that this feature even exists unless you stumble on it, like you are now, if you haven't heard of it before and you're listening to this podcast. I think it's fabulous that Google is trying to democratize the web even more than it currently is.

And I think Google really is trying to democratize the web in a lot of ways. I know some may push back on my claim that they are doing that, but I think they are doing that, or trying to do that, rather. And I think giving context to smaller or lesser-known websites is a great way to do that. So kudos to Google. I like the feature. I think it's cool. And that's this week's Snappy News. And once again, as always, thank you Barry and the other SEO news authors who are out there.

Crystal Carter:

Yes, other people talk about new things, too.

Mordy Oberstein:

Barry, and it's not just you.

Crystal Carter:

Other people, too.

Mordy Oberstein:

There are other people, like Matt Southern and Roger Montti, Denny Goodwin, Loren Baker, Kristi Hines.

Crystal Carter:

Kristi Hines, exactly.

Mordy Oberstein:

A lot of great people.

Crystal Carter:

Ellie DeMasellis.

Mordy Oberstein:

Ooh, Glenn Gabe's always covering something.

Crystal Carter:

Billy Ray. Things are happening, things are happening-

Mordy Oberstein:

Things are happy-

Crystal Carter:

... moving, shaking.

Mordy Oberstein:

You know what's always moving and shaking, our follow of the week, who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness over on social media. This one is former Wix SEO advisory board member Nikki Mossier, over at Niki Mosier, SEO. It's N-I-K-I-M-O-S-I-E-R-S-E-O, over on Twitter, the platform I formally call X. Did I get that backwards?

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. But Niki's a great follow. She's really, really good at talking about lots of different SEO stuff, and she's also, she's a consultant, so she works across lots of different groups. So she's a great person to follow for SEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

And she has a course for non-SEO, is about SEO.

Crystal Carter:

Which is incredibly valuable.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the perfect tie-in.

Crystal Carter:

I think that's why we picked her.

Mordy Oberstein:

Was that on purpose?

Crystal Carter:

I think we did it deliberately.

Mordy Oberstein:

No. We were deliberate?

Crystal Carter:

Brilliant. I think brilliant, genius.

Mordy Oberstein:

Brilliance. I will say brilliance is deliberate.

Crystal Carter:

We're delivering brilliance. Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Deliberately. Well, thank you for joining us for the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with the new episodes. We dive into the money bin itself. We're looking at, too, how much should SEO cost? That's a taboo topic right there.

Crystal Carter:

Mm-hmm.

Mordy Oberstein:

I will tell you it was hard to find a guest who wanted to talk about it. Little spoiler alert. Anyway, look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars over at the Wix SEO Learning over 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.