CTR from the SERP: The future of traffic

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Branding here at Wix, the fantastic, the marvelous, the absolutely unequivocal, the amazing, the fantastic, the wonderful Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Thanks very much, Mordy. That was very kind, and nice, and very good. Thank you. Yes, thank you.

Mordy Oberstein:

Insert clip from Latka from Taxi. Thank you very much.

Crystal Carter:

You're welcome to save the day.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, that's great. By the way, if I sound different, I don't know if I do because I can't really hear myself talk, I have a terrible cold that I can't get rid of.

Crystal Carter:

This is very, very true. I've been hearing this cough for every day.

Mordy Oberstein:

Every meeting is me-

Crystal Carter:

Every meeting.

Mordy Oberstein:

... packing my brains out.

Crystal Carter:

We've been planning what to do if Mordy doesn't make it, but he will. He will. It'll be fine. He's going to be fine. We're sending help.

Mordy Oberstein:

Share me a mint chocolate chip ice cream. That's my wish. Yeah, remember. From Spot from Star Trek too, remember. Anyway, this SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix for not only can you subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can level up your blog's SEO with our brand new-ish, was in Beta, SEO assistant. Audit your On-page SEO like never before, literally, because not only will we give you the foundations like it's a title tag optimize, on your headers optimize, alt text, and so forth, but will literally tell you if the page is indexed or not if you have your site connected to search console. Boom shaka laka laka, like it's NBA Jam 1998.

Crystal Carter:

It's an amazing tool. I cannot recommend it enough. It is so useful because it puts it all in a list. Not only can you check it off, but you can actually action it from the list. It's amazing.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's amazing. Just like NBA Jam 1998, which is a great arcade game. You got to optimize those title tags and meta descriptions because they can help you with your CTR. I mean, should there be any CTR in the future, gasp and cry me a river at the same time, because today, we're talking about the future of CTR. Will AI and SGE kill clicks from the SERP like raid kills roaches and all other sorts of hyperbole? Okay. Okay. Everyone chill. Today, we're taking a hard and mature look at the current state of web traffic, how Google's SGE might impact web traffic, and whether or not it's all good or all bad, or most likely, perhaps somewhere in between. Plus, SEO goat, Mike King, stops by to chat about AI and SGE and its impact on affiliate traffic.

Since we're talking about CTR, let's make sure your pages actually do what they're supposed to do once folks land on them from the SERP. As we talk to Wix's very own CRO aficionado, Amanda Weiner, she'll join us as we go across the Wixverse. Of course, we have this snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social. In the spirit of Devo, you must click it as episode number 45 of the SERP's Up Podcast clears up all of this congestion and conjecture about SGE, and AI, and traffic from the SERP. You must click it. I feel like every time I optimize a page for SEO-

Crystal Carter:

Oh, I have various songs. There's the Beyonce song called Let Me Upgrade You. I sing that one. Missy Elliott has the song Work It. I sing, "Metadata, data. I read descriptions like blah, blah, blah."

Mordy Oberstein:

SEOs, we all have our little song we sing, get our head off as we optimize our way.

Crystal Carter:

Indeed. I have others. I have a whole, a Baby One More Time.

Mordy Oberstein:

A whole playlist? Let's just share it on Spotify with the world.

Crystal Carter:

It's not a playlist. They're originals. Well, not originals.

Mordy Oberstein:

There's original Crystal songs about SEO?

Crystal Carter:

No, not yet. Maybe there should be.

Crystal Carter:

Oh my god. Okay. People who are listening, tag us if you want to be in the SEO album.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes, our SEO album. We're dropping it on a record label soon.

Crystal Carter:

Exclusive worldwide like Pit Bull and DJ Khaled. Another one.

Mordy Oberstein:

I would love to have a record. Which our guest today, Mike King, he's got records literally though.

Crystal Carter:

That's absolutely true. He does. He is indeed Mr. Worldwide, like he is indeed out there worldwide talking about SEO and making stuff happen.

Mordy Oberstein:

On Twitter, he is Mic King, M-I-C King. I like that. It's good. Yes, indeed. Okay. Just a quick refresher about SGE, Search Generative Experience, and why there's concern. Google IO 2023, which we had a whole podcast about, so we'll link to that in the show notes, Google announced its AI experience on the SERP, which is known as SGE, Search Generative Experience. What will happen is you're going to ask Google, "Hey, what's it like to hike," I don't know, "whatever canyon with kids and a dog?" Google will spin up a generative answer like ChatGPT would and give you a whole summary of what you need to know about hiking that canyon with dogs and kids. I'll tell you right now, it's easier to hike with the dog than the kids, having kids. Yes.

At the same time, there'll be a couple of organic results sprinkled in there on the side. You can expand that and get some more organic results with more SGE breakdowns. But the question is, how is all of this going to impact clicks to websites if the main results or the traditional or organic results are going to be beneath this box? How are we going to get clicks? Everyone's wondering what that's going to be like. "Oh my goodness." Some people have gotten access to the SGE through the Search Labs at Google. Let us have a trial of. Some folks have been like, "Oh, no. CTR is going to die. No one's going to get clicks." Other people have been like, "Well, I don't think it'd be as bad as you might think it's going to be. I think it'll be just fine." That's what we're talking about today. That's where we're at.

Crystal Carter:

This is a conversation that SEOs bring up a lot in terms of zero clicks or click-through rates and things like that. This is the conversation that goes back a good couple of years to when featured snippets came through, which actually featured snippets started being a lot, lot more prevalent. Featured snippets, we think of as normal, but they weren't always there. When Google started putting that through, the number one ranking position would be underneath the featured snippet. People were like, "Well, what's going on?" From the days of position zero, this has been a conversation. I think that what we learn from the position zero situation, we can apply that to what we're seeing with SGE, is that being present in that top. In my opinion, being present in the search feature is a brand asset and is something that tends to be illustrative of a wider domain authority topic knowledge.

For instance, if you're showing a featured snippet, which is also AI-generated and AI-enabled, if you're showing a featured snippet, people also ask, you're also going to show it knowledge panels. You're also going to show in lots of different parts of the search, for instance. That is going to give you a lot of visibility in front of consumers. That's going to show consumers, it's going to show users that you know what you're talking about with regards to that. If somebody enters a search generative experience search about going to a mountain with their children, and their dog, and their grandma, and everybody, and trying to get the whole family up the mountain top, then if they see you there and then they see you another time, they're not always going to use the search generative experience.

I've used things for a while now. Sometimes it's useful and sometimes it's not. There's some topics where I don't even know where to start. I'm just like, "I don't even know what this is or how to get going with this conversation." Or, I've mentioned this before where I've tried to figure out what to do with Magic: The Gathering, for instance, and I went through some of the search results and there was so much. There was so much to read. I was just like, "I just need to answer this one question so I can play in my turn. Can you just answer this one question?"

I think that when you have your brand showing up again and again and again in the search generative experience, then when they go to just do a regular search, they're going to look for you. They're going to find you and they're going to see you. When they see you there, they're more likely to click. I think that the nature of search will likely change, and I think the nature of clicks will potentially change. But at the end of the day, the brand visibility and the brand value that comes from being present within the generative search experience is going to be valuable as people use the web.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't even know where to start with all of that. There's so much there to dive into. Someone hold my beer. I don't have a beer. Someone hold my coffee. Okay. Let's talk about the zero click thing really, really quick. By the way, the point you mentioned before... Okay. Actually, no. Let's start. My mind is overload right now. Let's start with the not always using the AI. We actually just covered this. When I say just, when we're recording on the EDGE of the Web news podcast that I do, which is a great way to keep up with the news. Check out that podcast. A little shout-out to Erin Sparks. There was an article on The Verge, I think it was, and they were basically looking for something around Ted Lasso. They used the SGE to get an answer and a summary of Ted. They just wanted to know what time was the show on, which is not the actual question because it's streaming... It's on whatever you want it to be on. But the point where they ask a very straightforward, "I just want the answer. I don't want that summary thing."

Crystal Carter:

Right. Precisely. This is very similar to you. You did had a similar experience where you were... I'm trying to figure out the Yankees score or something.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Being updated, I should cover this also on the same podcast, being updated its AI to have more current sports scores. I was showing you how literally, it's like it doesn't make sense to me. Because you go to Bing, you type in Yankee score, it gives you a box with the answer. Now, I need it-

Crystal Carter:

Right, and it updates.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. Now I want to go click on the chat experience and have it spit out the same answer that I already saw in far more time. I don't understand.

Crystal Carter:

Right, exactly. I think that we're putting AI on lots of things that it doesn't always necessarily need to be on everything. There's lots of things that are just intelligent.

Mordy Oberstein:

Which is my point about the zero click thing at the same time, because when we did that, I think it's a very similar conversation. When Google started showing more direct answers, "How many home runs did Babe Ruth did?" There's telling you, "714." I don't want to go to a website for that information. I know SEOs took that as Google stealing my clicks, but is that really what happened? Or is Google just giving people what they want? When I search for the weather in New York City, I don't want to go to Google anymore. I just want to see a card on my phone.

Crystal Carter:

I have it on my watch.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, the weather. We want to consume information super quickly and sometimes that's not the best... Conflict of interest aside, sometimes a website is not the best place to do that.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. I think there's a couple of things to remember there. Again, I say this all the time to SEOs, Google's mission is to organize the world's information. It's not to organize the world's websites. Websites are a great source of information. They're a fantastic source of information. They're a fantastic way to curate information. However, Google will give the information however they get it. I think one of the things that's tricky with LLMs in general is who owns the information? If somebody's done the research to find out, "Oh, they..." Somebody found some ancient stone and they finally translated that ancient language, and they did a full dissertation on the history of some ancient civilization and their ancient language and all of that sort of stuff, and then they publish their dissertation on a website or on wherever. Well now, that's just into the pot. Who owns that information? If somebody asks the question of, "What did that ancient tablet say?" Then the thing, she goes, "Oh, it says this." Then the person who spent all that time-

Mordy Oberstein:

It's a really good point because... I feel it's a separate point, but tangentially, I feel like with Google and search, we know the rules of the game. You don't want them to take good content, no index the page. But when the AI conglomeraters, for lack of word, came around, no one knew they existed and they were going around the web taking people's content. We didn't know the rules of engagement and they just took it. I do have a point of contention with that. I feel now, at this point, you know the rules of the game, you got to find a way to block them if you don't want it. I know Bing has actually talked about being able to block its AI from going to your website, which that does make good and healthy sense for the web, in my opinion.

Crystal Carter:

I think it'll be interesting because I think if that's the thing, is that when we compare this to featured snippets, for instance, so featured snippets will pull out extracts from your site. You make a list full-

Mordy Oberstein:

And Highlight them on the SERP and Blue. The exact thing they are looking .

Crystal Carter:

Right. They'll go to your website, they will call the good information, they will pull it out, they will put it on the SERP in the way that they want. If you have things at a big long table, they'll take it out of the table. They'll put the table on there in a way that fits with the beer. They do that all the time. They've done that for years. People have said before, they're like, "Hey, what about this? What about my..." You can say like, "No, if you can put a tag and that tag... It's like no snippet. Don't drop featured snippets from my site." People go, "Oh, okay, all right, fine." I think that that still comes to the same thing about that. Now with regards to the SGE, you get different kinds of results depending on the query. For instance-

Mordy Oberstein:

Shopping results.

Crystal Carter:

Right. The demo of Google IO, they showed an example of shopping and they showed the shopping-

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:14:04]

Crystal Carter:

... Google I/O, they showed an example of shopping and they showed the shopping one coming all the way down and what's a good mountain bike, for instance. And they have like, "Oh, this one's good for this, this one's good for that, that one's good for this, and that one's good for that." But I think that part of the thing that's tricky at the moment is that there's a lot of, and they said this and we know this to be true, but there's a lot of duplicate content on the web. So that mountain bike is on 25 different websites. And so the SGE is able to sort of curate if they're able to do the same thing that Google Shopping does, which is to curate all of that information about where that bicycle is being sold.

And then they'll offer the people who are selling them, and I think that this also comes down to making sure that you understand your brand's USP. Because at the end of the day, when people do click to your website, what is going to make them click? What is the thing that's going to make them actually come and seal the deal at your website? So lots of people sell mountain bikes, but I know that this one place that sells the mountain bikes gives a certain amount to charity. Or I know this one place that sells the mountain bikes, I'm already a member. I've already got a loyalty card or something with them, or I know that they can deliver to me locally or whatever it is. In order to get the click, you have to also understand your USP, make the click valuable to you and them.

Mordy Oberstein:

And let us say amen. This is such a good point and it's so overlooked and it feels so foundational. Let me think, walk through history, how I think we got here and why I think that actually makes sense. Google has been figuring out that, hey, when you search for best vacation, you don't actually want the super top level best vacation spots. You want best vacations in the winter with my kids, without my kids. Best vacation in the winter without my kids-

Take that back. I don't know what I was thinking.

Crystal Carter:

You did that other mountain trip and you were like, "No, not this time. Next time we're not taking them."

Mordy Oberstein:

And Google's trying to figure out ways for them to filter you through in order to get you from best vacation to best vacation without my kids in the winter. And they've added, I actually have data from this, I'm not sure it's going to be out yet by the time we release this episode, but I have data from nozzle.io, great data that shows that relatively recently, like 2022, since 2022 basically, end of 2022, there's been a huge increase in unpaid URLs at the top of the SERP above the fold on the results page. Not organic results per se, but links like carousels. People also search for links, site links, all these ways to filter you through because Google realizes that they have to take you from the very general search to what you actually want and they need to give you the opportunity to refine the query.

Crystal Carter:

So, a few years ago, Redfish can do the whole report on zero-click searches and things like that. He said 62% of searches or 64% of searches are zero-click. And Danny Sullivan from Google responded with an article that said very similar to exactly what you're talking about, is that we roll out lots of helpful features to help people quickly find what they're looking for, including maps, videos, links to products, services you can buy directly, flight and hotel options, local business information, hours of operation, service and delivery. And so, through that, they've said in this, our search results page, which used to show 10 blue links, now shows on an average 26 links-

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you.

Crystal Carter:

... websites on a single search results page-

Mordy Oberstein:

There you go. I didn't even know that existed. I totally forgot about that. Thank you, Nozzle. Thank you, Danny. Works perfectly.

So I'll throw one more stat at you. CTR has not gone up commensurately. It's gone up a little bit since they've done this, but not a ton. When I say CTR, I don't mean too organic, I mean to any link above the fold. It's gone up a bit, but not a lot. Meaning the refinements working a little bit, but it's not very efficient. You're throwing a whole bunch of links at people to trying to get them to refine it, refine, refine it. But I think it's been a spattering of links, but it hasn't been truly effective in getting the user to where exactly they want to go.

Crystal Carter:

I'm interested in that actually because I'm just thinking about Google Business Profile, for instance. Google Business Profile, which Google has invested a lot in in the last few years and Google Maps generally, which they're investing a lot in. And also things like Google Hotels for instance. So, in terms of that, if I want to know if a business is open, previously I would've had to click onto their website to find their opening hours. Now I can see if they're open when I go to the SERP because it says Morty's Ice Cream Emporium is open from 9:00 AM to-

Mordy Oberstein:

We only serve mint chocolate chip. That's all we serve.

Crystal Carter:

And everybody wears Yankees jersey.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's right. It's like, "Is this heaven?"

Crystal Carter:

They just played Billy Joel's best song.

Mordy Oberstein:

And my kids are not there.

Crystal Carter:

And it's not on a mountain. Okay, so on Morty's Ice Cream Emporium, it'll say the hours are this, here's where it's located. Yes, they have mint chocolate chip ice cream because it has their menu on there. And it'll say like, "Is Morty's Ice Cream Emporium good for kids?" And they'll say, "No, we don't allow children in this place." No, I'm kidding. No, I'm kidding.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, no, we allow kids, just not my kids.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, just not yours. I'm good. No, I'm kidding. So I think that there's also the case that they're putting a lot more information onto the SERP as well. So, for instance, sometimes they will export, if they look at the address, if it doesn't have a Google Business Profile for instance, they might just put the snippet underneath the search results. So, instead of the meta description, they'll put the extract of the rich snippet of the address onto the SERP.

So I think that there are opportunities where sometimes they're helping the business by providing the information rather than providing something that you need to click on because you don't actually need to click to get the address, for instance.

Mordy Oberstein:

And that's exactly my point. Throwing up a bunch of links trying to refine it, whether those links are irrelevant or whether you don't want the link at all, it’s not efficient. What is efficient? SGE is efficient. I hate to say it if you're one, but it is efficient in helping the user refine and get exactly to where they want to go.

And you see Google does that. They have it at the bottom of the SGE box, I want to call it the AI box. The bottom of the AI box, they have follow up questions. You can also expand the box to get a breakdown of the original answer that Google gave via the SGE with links associated with each one of those answers. Meaning it's just helping you refine, refine, refine way more efficiently than what's going on now. And I think it's really important to understand because it actually, I think makes sense for what users do want. And I think what's going to happen, let's get to the heart of the issue, I think traffic is going to go down.

Crystal Carter:

I think that we are going to see a situation where the way that people search and the kinds of content that people expect to see is going to change. Even now as I think about creating content, when you think about it, it's like what can we do that's unique? And I think that that's really important.

There was, I mentioned it before, but Joe Hall has a great article about how to write better than ChatGPT. And one of the things that he talks about is having an actual opinion, having something actually unique. And I think that one of the searches that I'm starting to see a lot, I know that "Near me" for instance, was a search that used to show up a lot. But examples is something that I'm starting to see a lot, where there's like a query about X, Y, or Z with examples, for instance, so that people can know, can actually figure out how to do it, how to see it, how to implement it.

And I think that I've certainly found that when I'm searching using LLMs, using generative search, that the kinds of queries that I ask are different because I know that it's like it's not just long tail-

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. It doesn't even need to necessarily make sense all the time, but it's able to understand and discern what I'm saying. And I think it's very similar to, obviously I've done a lot of research on visual search, but one of the things that I think is great about visual search, particularly using Google Lens and those sorts of things, is that you can search and find information about something that you can't name. And that's very difficult to do in traditional search.

In traditional search, if I was just to type in, if I found a berry or something, let's say I'm camping on this mountain, I don't know why we keep talking about this mountain. And let's say we're in this mountain and I think that I can eat this because I foraging-

Mordy Oberstein:

Don't eat it. Don't eat it.

Crystal Carter:

Well, but I like foraging. So let's say I'm looking at this hedge, I'm like, "Oh, I think this is one of those. I think I could eat this berry." If I search it on Google Lens, I'm in the woods. I don't know what the name of this berry is. If I search it on Google Lens, they can tell me if this berry is a berry and I can see from the different things whether or not this is edible or whether or not there's something similar to it that is not edible.

Mordy Oberstein:

If it's red, it won't make you dead. Isn't that the berries?

Crystal Carter:

Raspberries are red. But I think that in a generative search sort of thing, if you're in a situation where you're like, "How do I play this game?" Or "I found this thing that has this, this and this. What is it?"

Mordy Oberstein:

You're not going to get an answer.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Right, right. So if you were add that into a search, it wouldn't make any sense. If I were to Google red berry on a hedge, I'd just get a million different search results that wouldn't make any sense. It'd be like, "What are you talking about?" I'd be like, "I don't know." But what I find is that when I've done searches with generative search, generative LLMs, ChatGPT, et cetera, if I find something that I don't know and they give me an answer and I don't understand the answer, I can say, "I don't know what you mean. What does this word mean?" And they can go, "Oh, I mean this, this, and this." And I'm like, "I'm still not with you. Try me one more time."

And so, you can do the refinements based on your understanding and based on your level of knowledge, which is something that is more efficient because I've definitely had it before where I've tried to search for things that were a bit complex and just gave up in the end.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'll throw another scenario. You search, and this is kind of when traffic is going to go down, I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. I know it's a hot take and people have different opinions. This is just my opinion. But many times I've searched for something and I'm not very explicit because I don't know. And you run a search and you go to a website thinking, okay, maybe this is I. And it's not, and you leave. And then you go to another site, maybe that's it. And it's not, and you leave.

Now, for that site, that's traffic. But is that real traffic? I say no. I say that's not actual... Unless you're working with the number of visitors to the page and this is how you get ads. Leaving that model aside for a second, that's not real traffic. And then my example, I don't know if I said on this podcast, but I know I said it on Twitter is Matlock.

Back in the day when you were home from school, there was five channels with the bunny ears. This is before cable. That's all you had. And you had an antenna and you had the channels and there was five of them. And there was basically one o'clock in the afternoon, there was All My Children, General Hospital and Matlock. I was not watching General Hospital, I was not watching All My Children. The only other option was Matlock. So Matlock's numbers way up.

All the sick kids at home who aren't watching soap operas, they're watching Matlock. Do people really want Matlock? Now, I do love Matlock. I have nothing against Matlock at all. Andy Griffith is great. It's a great TV show. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Google Matlock, it's awesome.

Mordy Oberstein:

But the numbers were inflated because there was nothing else. I couldn't find anything else. I feel that way with web traffic. I feel like the numbers are inflated because we're all googling this stuff, it's not exactly what you want, or there's nothing better, I might as well go with this.

Crystal Carter:

I think there's definitely a place for well-crafted, well-curated with a good user experience. I think there's definitely a place for content that has a good user experience, because the search experience, for instance, that one you were talking about with the baseball scores, that's not useful. That's not helpful. And content that doesn't just give you what you want but helps you discover new things as well, I think that that sort of thing I think is really valuable.

I'm definitely, if I think about getting old school or whatever, the time I used to spend in the library, and don't get me wrong, I still go to the library as well, but in a library or a bookstore or something, one of the things that's nice about going to a library or bookstore or even a record shop or whatever is browsing. I've definitely discovered new music and stuff from just seeing something on a shelf that I thought looked interesting.

And Amoeba Music in Los Angeles is a fantastic record store. It's absolutely incredible. And somebody said, "What is it?" I'm like, "It's the happiest place on earth. It's literally Disney." And they curate everything. And there aren't that many record stores around anymore. There aren't that many music shops or whatever. But it's worth visiting that place because they have highly curated, verified, really good stuff that you can't find anywhere else. And they also have live music and stuff like that. So they're adding a lot to the experience in order to make it good quality and-

Mordy Oberstein:

And that's what's going to happen with content. People are going to want, okay, I got the basics down. You give me the information about the mountain and the hiking. I need something niche, I need something specific. That overall traffic might be less, but it's going to be more targeted, more specific and going to be more intentional. And that's more high quality traffic in my mind. So I think that's what's going to happen.

Crystal Carter:

And more experiential as well. I think that's what the-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes, that's all, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

... the experience and the EEAT is super important.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's what separates it out.

Crystal Carter:

And also, the examples, people asking for examples. So not only a website that says "This mountain is great to hike with children because I read it on six other blogs so that it's-"

Mordy Oberstein:

No, give me something the machine can't give me.

Crystal Carter:

Right. So I've hiked this mountain with my family in September and it was like this. I hiked it into January and it was like that. I hiked it in May and it was like this. Don't hike it in August because it's too hot.

Mordy Oberstein:

You want the information that says the book might say it's not really rocky, let me tell you, it was way rockier than that website said.

Crystal Carter:

Right. You're going to need some shoes. Bring appropriate footwear. Do not skimp on the footwear.

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:28:04]

Crystal Carter:

Shoes. Bring appropriate footwear.

Mordy Oberstein:

Exactly.

Crystal Carter:

Do not skip on the footwear. These are things that are going to be really, really useful. And I think we've seen this in some web communities. For instance, mom blogs can be incredibly explicit about some of the ins and outs of early days with kids and stuff. And that kind of real world, real experience stuff is going to be really valuable. And I think that that is the kind of thing that will get you actual clicks.

Mordy Oberstein:

You know what's also really valuable? Whatever Mike King says is really valuable.

Crystal Carter:

It's true.

Mordy Oberstein:

Literally.

Crystal Carter:

It's true. It's true.

Mordy Oberstein:

I literally mean that. True. He's amazing. We did a webinar with him about AI and the future of SEO and web content. So definitely check that out. He was amazing.

Crystal Carter:

Fantastic.

Mordy Oberstein:

We thought to ask him about affiliates because affiliates, they really need that traffic. What's going to happen? Here's Mike King on the impact of AI and SGE on affiliates.

Mike King:

The impact on affiliate marketers for SGE, I think it's going to be pretty wide-sweeping as far as it's going to cut out a lot of the sites that are just about, let's do an article that's a list of 5 to 10 products that they're reviewing, so that they can put the links back to those products and then drive that affiliate revenue.

I think that's going to drop a atomic bomb in the middle of that business model because as you're seeing already with the products, you can pull a formal query, and I think I did this one. It was like, what's the best microphone for recording in a New York City apartment? And it effectively generated me an article on that very specific use case.

And the reality of it is that because of how generative AI's context windows work, it's actually going to be a better result for the end user because it's going to be very specific to that set of queries that the user made in successive order. And so it's going to be better than what you're getting out of affiliate marketers content because again, it's more specific.

But the other aspect of it is, what's likely going to happen is affiliate marketers are going to make the switch to using generative AI for this. And so it's going to be one of those snakes eating its tail sort of things. And then Google's going to have to progressively get better at it by using structured data to then make their results better. And then it's just going to continue to be this cycle of like, well, how can we make it better?

I think for the end user, it's going to be a overall better experience, but it's going to drive down affiliate commissions for these businesses. And then there's only going to be a handful of sites that remain. But again, because Google is going to put that front and center for users, I think over time more and more user behavior is going to be like, oh, I want to see the AI snapshot because it's going to give me exactly what I want.

All in all, I think if you're in the affiliate space and that's what you're primarily doing, you're going to have to think about other types of content to support this more video content and things like that. Other formats that Google isn't in yet. But even so, it's only a matter of time until they get there. So really, it's just going to shift affiliate marketers into other channels.

Mordy Oberstein:

Mike always has something amazing to say. I think hands down, it's always super thoughtful and deep.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely. And I think he's very down to earth in the way that he talks about things. He speaks in plain English, but he is also talking about some very complex topics.

He's been working in the AI space for years now and has some proprietary software around AI as well. So it's absolutely, absolutely worth following Mike and checking out more of his stuff because he just drops gems all day long.

Mordy Oberstein:

Truth. It's @iPoll rank on Twitter, we'll link to that in the show notes. Thank you again, Mike. We really appreciate you greatly. You're a treasure to the entire SEO community. Legit.

Now, being that we're talking about clicks from the SERP, it's one thing to get clicks. It's another thing to have the people coming who are doing the clicking actually pay you the money and convert. Which is basically like you have to make those clicks mean something. So basically SEO without CRO is like Rocky without Adrian. It's like Arnold without Willis. It's like the A-Team without Mr. T. It's like Night Rider without the talking car. I could go on.

So with that, let's travel across Wix first as we talk to our own CRO specialist, Amanda Weiner, about what you can do to make sure that your web traffic earns the thing that you're looking for, which is an increase in your bottom line.

Speaker X:

3, 2, 1. Ignition. Lift off. Lift off.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm with Amanda Weiner. Amanda, first off, thank you for joining us on the SERPS Up podcast.

Amanda Weiner:

Thanks so much for having me.

Mordy Oberstein:

Of course. You're one of our favorite people at Wix. Just like...

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely.

Amanda Weiner:

Do you say that to everyone?

Mordy Oberstein:

No. No.

Crystal Carter:

We don't.

Mordy Oberstein:

We had Nati Elimelech on, our head of SEO, and I told him the actual opposite of that. He's one of my least favorite people. Yikes, I'm just kidding. Nati and I are like brothers who fight a lot.

To get us started. CRO, what does it mean to you?

Amanda Weiner:

Well, conversion rate optimization to me is actually just being super aligned with our users and understanding the intent that the user comes to the page with and providing them with the experience that fits them.

For me, it's super connected to UX and everything that we do on our pages in order to make them user-friendly and usable. And in order to actually get your money, that's what you got to focus on. You got to focus on making sure that your page is usable in the most basic sense of the word.

Mordy Oberstein:

I love that because usually when you think of CRO, you're thinking, okay, I think of CTAs. How do I get conversions? How do I drive the user down the funnel? Not, how do I make this page actually usable so the experience is pleasant, logical, and efficient, which will then lead them to the conversion?

Amanda Weiner:

Yeah, it's definitely the biggest thing. Not to say CTAs aren't important, but for sure you need a page that hits the intent right. No matter what.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think hitting the intent is something that's really important. I was teaching some folks about competitor research and one of the things that you learn very quickly from competitor research is the folks that show up at the top or the folks that are meeting the intent straight away.

If I look up a taxi firm in New York or something, I want to book a taxi. I don't want to see loads of pictures of your taxi drivers hanging out, having a lovely time. I don't want to hear about the history of your taxi firm on the homepage. When I get there, I want to see where I can book a taxi. Don't bury that information. And I think that that's important.

That leads me on to a question that I think is a decent question. How do you decide what's a priority for users in terms of CRO when you're carrying out CRO optimization?

Amanda Weiner:

Like you mentioned yourself, it's super important, first of all to hit that intent right away, but also competitor research. We need to know what is out there, what is the other information that our users who are coming to our site are being bombarded with? Because we are assuming that our users are...

They're smart these days. They're doing their research, they know what's out there and we want to make sure that we're providing them with the information that they're looking for, the information that's unique to us. We want to provide a proper proposition. We're giving some value here, and that makes us stand out.

And even though it might not be the only element, for sure we want to provide them with an easy entry point into our funnel and a CTA that really stands out so that they know where to go. Users shouldn't have to look for where to go. You should be able to give it to them wherever they are.

Crystal Carter:

And I think with CTAs, people expect to be able to... They look for them. If I go to a hotel website or something, I want to see the Book Here, Book a Room, Start Your Vacation, whatever it is. I want to find that and I want it to be easy to find.

I think sometimes people will add things into the top nav bar or something so that there's always a place where you can find a Book Now and it's fairly low-key. Even if you're on another page or something. Let's say you decide you want to book while you're reading some lovely blog. That blog really seals the deal for you. Then you can find that there.

What considerations do you make when deciding on the prominence of a CTA? When do you just go like, yeah, this is a CTA page, book now? Or when do you roll it back?

Amanda Weiner:

Like many other things with SEO for example, it comes down to is there transactional intent on this page, or is it meant to be informational?

If it's transactional, then the first thing people should see, it should stand out the most. It should be in the center of your page is that main CTA. No one should have to find it. People are coming with the intent to give you your money. You should let them do that.

Now, if a page is meant to be more informational, then it becomes a little trickier. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't give them entry points. Sometimes information is that last key thing that they need in order to commit. And we should be sure that we're giving them entry points. We should be proud of our products and say, even if you're coming with this informational intent, "Hey, here's the product that can support what this information is providing."

But of course, they're coming with intent to learn something, so it has to be a little more subtle. Maybe on the side, maybe as you said, just making sure they could find it in the header, maybe a slur. If we're talking about blog articles, a natural mention of our products in our blog articles, things like that. That can really help those people who are looking for the information also get to our products.

Mordy Oberstein:

How do you balance that, though? If I was in a courtroom right now, the other attorney would be all, "Leading." Which I'm not a hundred percent sure what exactly that means, but from watching enough Matlock, I'm pretty sure that I do.

How do you balance all of that? Because I feel like when I'm thinking about CRO and I'm thinking about users, I think of my father. And my father is not computer savvy, but he's computer savvy enough to be highly, highly skeptical. And I think that in the age of the web right now, people are far more skeptical. I think they've caught on to us, kind of thing. "I know what you're up to. I know what you're doing."

My wife is the same thing. "Oh, how do they know that I was just looking for something and now I get a Facebook ad? That's creepy." How do you balance out all of the skepticism and all of the cynicism and all of the concern that people have and push the conversion at the same time?

Amanda Weiner:

It's a great question and it's really a difficult thing that we grapple with a lot. Especially on things that are more informational, like blog articles, etc. I think there's a difference between putting a flashy banner that says Click Here, which is understandably sort of sketchy. And putting something that says, "Hey, you want to read about something vaguely related to websites. By the way, here's something that you can do to also create your own." Which is what we do here at Wix.

Meaning, there's a way to put it in the text, to say we are adding value for you by showing you this product. And the key is that the user should believe that what we're offering is truly an added value. It's not just an annoying banner. It's really an added value that they could find. "Oh wow, how did they know? I was actually really curious now to create my own website. So nice that they added that little link there for me."

Mordy Oberstein:

Note to self: Remove blinking banner from website. Thank you.

Okay, follow-up to that. How do you create a CTA in that sense? Because sometimes they're very Click Now! Buy! Buy Now! Do it now!

And I always think of the Office of Dwight. Do it. Do it now. Do it now. And that to me are CTAs. And sometimes I feel like even when you don't mean to be pushy, they are pushy.

Amanda Weiner:

Yeah, also another good question. I think there's a lot of debate about this in the little CRO world that exists. Do you want to give that time-sensitive, "you need to do this now, you need to do it today"? Is that what gives the push?

Or is it creating a CTA that makes you feel that you want something? There's a lot of directions that CTAs can go in and depends also on what's surrounding it. If we're talking about our product page, what does the H1 say? Whatever they H1 says, the CTA should be aligned with that. They don't live in a bubble, CTAs.

It's important to remember that there's context, and it depends what are the other values and the other things that are elements that are happening on a page that can direct you toward what the content of your CTA should really be.

Crystal Carter:

I think it's very interesting to talk about some of the nuances there. There's a great article in the Wix SEO Hub about beginner's guides to CTAs, and they break it down into lots of different types.

I don't know if you know, and I don't know if I've mentioned it on this podcast, but I recently went to see Beyoncé and when I was buying Beyoncé tickets-

Mordy Oberstein:

You did?

Crystal Carter:

Did I? Yeah. No, I did.

Mordy Oberstein:

You did not tell me this.

Crystal Carter:

Oh my gosh. I recently went to see Beyoncé, and when I was trying to get Beyoncé tickets to see Beyoncé, basically when you go onto the ticket thing, they'll tell you there's only a few left. Many people are looking at this. Six people have looked at these tickets recently. And sometimes you get this with flights as well, where they'll say there's only five seats left or there's only... And I think that-

Mordy Oberstein:

Amazon.

Crystal Carter:

Amazon, lots of people are... And you see this for-

Mordy Oberstein:

Three products left.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And tons of people are looking at this dress right now. You better get it now while it's hot because they might buy it and then you won't.

And I think that they will vary depending on the type of product, depending on the type of customer expectations. So if it's something time-sensitive or if it's like, we only have so many of these things...

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:42:04]

Crystal Carter:

If it's something time-sensitive, or if it's like, "We only have so many of these things," then you can add in something that adds a sense of urgency as well, into those sorts of elements. So, it's interesting that you talk about the nuance and how it varies depending on the product and the product experience.

Amanda Weiner:

Yeah, for sure.

And I'll just add here also, something that we do on our homepage, that everyone can see, is we have a little disclaimer under the CTA. Now, this isn't hardcore CRO best practice of you must have a disclaimer under CTA, but I do think that it's exactly what you're touching on here, Crystal, that there's something, it's that last minute thing that pushes the user over the edge.

But again, it has to come within context, right? It has to be the right disclaimer, the right thing that you're sharing with them according to the product that you're offering or according to the page that you're on.

Crystal Carter:

Right. So like, "We have 15% off until Monday," just letting you know, until Monday.

Mordy Oberstein:

Monday is now.

Crystal Carter:

Right, Monday is now. You have 15% off until Monday.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's always Monday. Tuesday is also Monday.

Crystal Carter:

But that creates a thing.

I think also we would be remiss if we said anything about CRO and we didn't talk about testing. I know for a fact that we test a lot of our CRO across the website.

Mordy Oberstein:

I get the emails.

Crystal Carter:

All the time. Like, "We tested this, and we put it in this color, we put it in this color blue, then we put it in light blue and we saw a different..." No. So-

Mordy Oberstein:

I love light blue. It's my favorite. It's my favorite CTA color.

Amanda Weiner:

It makes a surprising amount of difference, the CTA color.

Mordy Oberstein:

It does. It does. A blinking purple didn't work. That's why I made it.

Amanda Weiner:

Note to self.

Mordy Oberstein:

Note to self.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know if you can talk to us about some of your testing methods and your favorite things to test or ways to test?

Amanda Weiner:

Yeah, for sure.

There are a couple different ways that we can test and that we do test here at Wix. I would say the most common testing method is a classic A/B test, where you make one change on a page and you expose 50% of users to one change and 50% of users to the old version.

And then you see what happens. You give it some time and see how the users interact with that. Now, a lot of what we do here on our CRO team is thinking a lot about what's a worthwhile test, what's a test that'll move the needle? What's a test that we should be thinking about?

Because when you think about it, you can run a test on every single tiny element on the page and everything makes a difference. And you can run endless tests like that. And there's a certain prioritization that has to happen there in that process.

And I have to say that it's not always what you expect to move the needle that moves the needle.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Amanda Weiner:

That's the beauty of testing, I think.

Crystal Carter:

And also, I've had it before where I've done CRO and I'm like, "Oh, this will definitely..., and it does nothing. It does nothing. And I'm like, "what?"

Mordy Oberstein:

But intuitively, it makes a lot of sense that it's going to be something.

Crystal Carter:

Intuitively you're like, "Guys, this is going to be amazing. My hypothesis is to the moon," and then nothing happens.

Also, I think you say like 50% of users, it's interesting the way you can split out users as well. So it might be like users who've come from one website, or users who are on mobile, or users who are in a certain language, or that sort of thing.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right, geos can definitely make a difference.

Amanda Weiner:

Yeah.

So we do that. We split our tests per device, per geo. Also, per like, is it someone who it's their first time to the page or not? Things like that. Those are the things that we think about.

Mordy Oberstein:

So I would be remiss if we didn't ask before we have to go, what is your favorite generic CTA?

Amanda Weiner:

The text you mean?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, like "buy now" or "click here," which is the best of the generic ones?

Amanda Weiner:

"Start free" is strong.

Mordy Oberstein:

Ooh, start free. It's very existential, like "start free."

Amanda Weiner:

It's no commitment here. You just start for free.

Crystal Carter:

Yes, yes, yes. It's like, "You could start, it doesn't cost anything. I've told you all of the things you need to know. What's holding you back? Just go for it."

Amanda Weiner:

"Just do it."

Mordy Oberstein:

And buying or clicking on this thing will not lead to imprisonment. You'll be free.

Crystal Carter:

You'll be free.

That's very similar to the Amazon's like classic "Buy now with one click." It's like, not only can you buy now, but also you're setting the expectation. You're explaining something about it as well. So you're adding the value proposition into the CTA in a couple of words.

And I think you're right, when you hit that sweet spot, that's brilliant.

Mordy Oberstein:

Also, it could be really predictive, like if you're signing up to be part of the mafia, start free. How you end up is a totally different story. We don't know. "Start free."

Crystal Carter:

He’s a made guy!... and watch out for Fredo.

Mordy Oberstein:

Amanda?

Poor Fredo.

Amanda, where can people find you?

Amanda Weiner:

Ooh, I'm not a big social media person, but you can find me on LinkedIn.

Mordy Oberstein:

All right, follow her. Follow here. Follow free. Follow free.

Amanda Weiner:

Follow free.

Mordy Oberstein:

Follow free.

Amanda Weiner:

No extra charge.

Mordy Oberstein:

Amanda, thank you so much for joining us.

Amanda Weiner:

Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

Three, two, one. Ignition. Lift off. Lift off.

Mordy Oberstein:

So now that we know about getting clicks, you know what you should click on? You should click on the SEO news articles that Barry Schwartz puts out and also the folks over at SEJ and Search Engine Land which is also Barry Schwartz. Give him those clicks because those are always worth reading.

But in the meantime, to wet your appetite, we'll just get into a little bit of the news with this week's Snappy News.

Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Universal Analytics is officially replaced by Google Analytics. More of that coming from Nicola Agius over at Search Engine Land.

Yep, Universal Analytics is dead. It is no more. We are in a GA4 world now, good luck to us all.

We have a bunch of resources for you on the Wix SEO learning hub where you can learn more about GA4 and how to use it, and so forth. Again, good luck to us all.

Also gone or to be gone, Buy on Google. Boy, we're dropping life flies here. Put of the great Barry Schwartz, Google to shutter Buy on Google program in the U.S. This will happen on September 26th. The Buy on Google program let you check out without ever visiting the merchant site. You just checked out on Google. Hence, Buy on Google. This comes as Google is testing a new construct that takes you from Google right to the merchant's page, or rather their checkout page on the actual site.

I believe Glen Gabe was commenting on Twitter about this. Do users really want that? Is that the right experience for them? He's not so sure. I am with Glen, good place to be. But if I am somebody who's buying, I'm a little bit old-fashioned when I buy online, I like to see the experience. I don't want to go right to a checkout page. I want to see the site, get a sense of things, have a little bit of context before I check out. So we'll see.

Also from Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable: Bing gains AI shopping features for a price match buying guides and review summaries. So basically via the sidebar feature on edge, you search for our product. Well, you don't search in the sidebar feature, you go to Bing, you search for our product, let's say, new wireless headphones. You go to the page that is selling the headphones, open the sidebar in edge and Bing may show you a prompt in the chat feature that will let you explore information about the product. So basically a buying guide, it's going over specs. So for headphones it would be specs like battery life, that sort of thing. You'll get a review summary and so forth.

I love this. I think a more integrated approach to using the AI chat features is more powerful than just having the user enter a query initially, and that's their first exposure to anything. They're starting off with the query, getting an AI response. I feel like this integrated approach where you catch the user at the right moment, and then throw them into an AI chat experience is far more powerful.

But that's just me. But it is super interesting. I really like what Bing is doing here. It's very cool.

And that is this week's Snappy News.

So again, make sure you go over and click on those articles from the show notes. Give those websites some traffic that we sent you, give all the SEO news websites that high CTR they deserve.

Crystal Carter:

It's absolutely worth it. Barry is the hardest working mountain in search, easily.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's not even close.

Crystal Carter:

Not even close.

Mordy Oberstein:

John Mueller or Aleda like number two?

Crystal Carter:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

And when I say it's not even close... They do a tremendous amount.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I don't know... Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Unbelievable. I don't even know how do they keep up?

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

But Barry's just a different level.

Crystal Carter:

Just thousands upon thousands-

Mordy Oberstein:

Somehow he manages.

Crystal Carter:

... upon thousands, upon thousands upon thousands of articles

Mordy Oberstein:

Now who might help you find some of these articles? Always sharing some amazing things on Twitter, repurposing content, sharing content, shouting out content; Jeannie Hill.

Speaker 2:

Jeannie Hill. She's absolutely fantastic and she's so clever as well. Absolutely follow of the week. She's super friendly, super nice, and also just super, super clever. She's particularly good at machine learning sort of stuff and just super fantastic.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and she'll always share a really good article whether she wrote it or someone else wrote it. So it's a great follow because it's basically a curated feed of SEO relevancy.

Also fellow Minnesotian, and I'm not from Minnesota, but there's so many... I made it sound like I'm from... I'm not from Minnesota. There's so many great SEOs out of Minnesota. I meant search crew and Nick Leroy, Susan, tons of great Minnesotan in SEO. Jeannie's another one.

Speaker 2:

She's fantastic. And she's got some great knowledge, particularly about Semantic search. And I remember being in a Twitter conversation with her about that. She's incredibly, incredibly clever and incredibly kind. And just a brilliant member of the SEO community.

So shout out to Jeannie.

Mordy Oberstein:

So make sure you give Jeannie a follow over at Essential Skill, E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A-L S-K-I-L-L on Twitter. We'll link to her profile in the show notes. So make sure you click that follow button for Jeannie.

Is there click-through rate for Twitter follows? Is that a thing?

Crystal Carter:

No.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, I don't think it's a thing. Not every click requires a CTR number next to it.

Speaker 2:

Doesn't it? No.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't know. I feel like I put my foot in my mouth with that one. Although Mark is like, "Yeah, it does."

Crystal Carter:

I like a green arrow. I'm not going to lie. I log in, seeing my little green arrow makes me happy.

Mordy Oberstein:

Clicks are up.

Crystal Carter:

Clicks are up.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's all you need to know. Clicks are up. It's almost like a Wall Street of SEO, you walk into like "What's going on?" "Clicks are up!" And you're good to go.

Well, that'll bring us to the end of this week's podcast. Thank you for joining us on the SERP’s UP Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with an all new episodes we dive into. Does Page experience still matter? Short answer, yes.

Look forward, wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO learning of over at wix.com/seo/learn.

Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and our newsletter on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guested 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.