How to do SEO & marketing for sub-brands

Mordy Oberstein:

It is the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who is a fanatic of all things SEO, because fan is really short for fanatic, the head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Let's go team.

Mordy Oberstein:

No. Team?

Crystal Carter:

Give me a D. Give me an A. Give me a link. Can I get a link? Is that possible?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, no problem. How much are you willing to pay for them? I have many high DA.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. Lots, I guess.

Mordy Oberstein:

I would sell you Forbes, but they kind of got hit. So there goes that. I'm being that spicy that early on the show.

Crystal Carter:

Is that too soon? Too soon?

Mordy Oberstein:

No, by the time... We're recording weeks in advance.

Crystal Carter:

Got to keep it above the belt, Mordy. That's also a sports thing. There you go.

Mordy Oberstein:

That is, yeah. But look, the real winners bite other people's ears off, in sports.

Crystal Carter:

I remember watching that live and I was like, "What is that? Did he ju... Oh my God."

Mordy Oberstein:

You want to hit a home run, you take steroids. That's my idea of sports. Cork the bat, deflate the ball. There's so much, I can endlessly go on about cheating in sports.

Crystal Carter:

No, we don't have to. We will triumph. We will win. If you build it, they will come.

Mordy Oberstein:

Ease my pain. When we talk sports on the podcast, usually it's me just going off on a tangent. This week, it actually makes sense. But we'll get to that in a minute. As the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter. But where you can also take our SEO course, and where you can also set up and monitor sub users, so that you can collaborate in real time with advanced sub user permissions, all on Wix Studio. As this week, we explore the Cs that are SEO for sub brands, the unique characteristics of SEO for a sub brand, how to prevent overlap when doing SEO for a sub brand, what universal truths you could take away when doing, you guessed it, SEO for a sub brand.

Full steam ahead is SEO sub brand supreme, Claudio Cabrera of The Athletic, now the sports thing makes sense, will join us in just a few minutes to chat about his experiences. Plus, we'll get into the thick of it, as Matt Davies and Steven Picanza chat how to best market a sub brand, as things get a little bit complicated pretty quickly. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO News, who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So it's one ping only, as we batten up the hatches and down periscope, and dive, dive, dive into SEO for sub brands, on this the 110th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. If you can tell me where the one ping only is from, I'll give you, I don't know, a chocolate bar.

Crystal Carter:

Hunt For Red October.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes. I owe you a chocolate bar.

Crystal Carter:

And he's like, he's drinking his tea and Sean Connery is just cool as a cucumber, and the missile's coming right at him and he's like, "I need to finish this Earl Gray." I can't remember what tea it was-

Mordy Oberstein:

One ping only. But the best part, he's playing a Russian commander and he doesn't bother to change his accent. "One ping only."

Crystal Carter:

Sean Connery plays Sean Connery, whatever he's doing, and nobody's mad at it. I mean lots of people do that. Like Jason Statham, he's Jason Statham wherever he goes. But it's fine. It's fine. That's what he does. It's fine.

Mordy Oberstein:

I got to find a way to use that line on my wife, like, "One ping only."

Crystal Carter:

You can play ping pong, I guess. I don't know.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, one of my kids plays ping pong. There we go.

Crystal Carter:

There you go.

Mordy Oberstein:

So before we blink Claudio on, let me just explain really quick, enterprise level SEO is complicated. And one of the areas that complicates it the most, maybe not the most, but one of the ways that it gets complicated a lot is because there's often brands within brands, and it gets really complicated when trying to do SEO. And the problem only compounds itself a gazillion percent over, if there's overlap between what the sub brand is doing and the actual brand is doing, and then becomes a giant mess. So with that, we have a well-smart person who knows how to handle all of us. He's a Lions fan and a Padres fan, and he's from New York. Make sense of that. Welcome to the show, Claudio Cabrera.

Claudio Cabrera:

Hey, Mordy. Hey, Crystal. Thanks so much for having me. I'm super, super happy to be here. Super happy that my Padres are in the playoffs, the Lions are doing well, and my Spurs are coming to play in the NBA season soon.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's Wembee time.

Claudio Cabrera:

Crystal, you're just going to hear a bunch of sports references throughout this whole part.

Crystal Carter:

It's fine. I went to high school in San Diego, in the days of Tony Gwynn, so I'm very familiar with the Padres when they were at Qualcomm Stadium. Now they've moved on. So I know some sports. I know. I'm familiar.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hold on. If we're going to do sport, there has to be... I know people with sportsmanship and whatever. But hey, Claudio, how do you feel about 1998?

Claudio Cabrera:

Oh, that was a bad year. It was a good year, but a bad maybe week and a half within that year, when the Yankees beat the Padres-

Mordy Oberstein:

How do you like Scott Brochus? No name, third baseman.

Claudio Cabrera:

Look what I have right next to me.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, nice, nice. Mike came for my birthday one year, drew me like a Yogi Berra card.

Claudio Cabrera:

That's super cool.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, super cool. Sports is fun. I enjoy all of it. But you know what's better than sports? SEO for some brands.

Claudio Cabrera:

I know a little bit about that. Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Where did we get started? Because we had this problem, like break the fourth wall, pull the curtain back. We had this problem also, because there's the Wix blog, then there's a Wix SEO hub and then there's Wix Studio, it's all these other entities. There's a lot of overlap. You're at The Athletic. Does that mean the New York Times doesn't cover sports anymore?

Claudio Cabrera:

Yes. So essentially when The Times bought The Athletic, they bought them in 2022. The thought there was that, number one, I guess the alignment between the two brands is that The Athletic does a lot of original journalism across local markets in the US. And some local markets that The Times may not necessarily have deep penetration into right. The Times has huge audiences on the coast, but also in the middle of the country, but not everywhere. Whereas The Athletic has fans pretty much in every single market. Additionally, the main thing that I would say is that they were really, really focused on the original journalism aspect. There's not a lot of brands in the sports space now that are still creating original journalism at scale. So it seemed like a really, really natural fit. Right? Now, when the brand was acquired in 2022, there was obviously still The New York Times sports page, and it was still operating and it's obviously a very historic sports page that's been around for...

I don't even know, 150, 200 years at this point. And I think the overall goal was really to, throughout those first few years, really acclimate The Athletic to The New York Times audience. As you can see us now, we're like the sub folder, we have a presence on the page, we have a module, so many different things. And last year at some point, The New York Times sports page pretty much closed down, which was a big deal, just because of the historic nature of it. And now how we kind of view each other is, The Athletic is the home of that real time, day-to-day coverage for sports. But if you look at the Olympics, if you look at the World Cup in the last few years, when both brands were covering it, The Athletic was the real time.

The Times kind of leaned into the cultural aspect of these events. Like, what was the scene in Paris? What was the scene in Qatar when the World Cup was there? So many different things. So it feels like we continue balancing ourselves out. But what you see continuously is The Athletic just increasing their presence on The Times platform, and familiarity with their audiences overall.

Crystal Carter:

I think you brought up some great points there. First of all, I'm not sure if we cleared up, and I think you kind of did in your description anyway, but in any case, if anyone isn't entirely sure, when we mean sub brand, we don't mean... It's not a question of hierarchy in terms of quality or anything like that. It tends to be like you have a parent brand, say The New York Times, and then within that parent brand, they'll have a brand like The Athletic that we're describing now. And what you're talking about, that process, acquisition is very often a way that sub brands emerge, like you're talking about with The Athletic.

Or sometimes it's a case that a team might think, "We need to have a dedicated entity for this particular topic or whichever." And a couple of things that stood out in the way you described The Athletic and how you've been negotiating developing that identity within The New York Times family, as it were, is the USP. You were very clear on the USP of The Athletic and what The Athletic brings to the table, that's unique to the core offering of the brand. Are you able to share how you articulate that or how you make that more clear to your users?

Claudio Cabrera:

Yeah. I mean, I think overall, when you look at The Times, they have, I don't know, I think four or five sub brands at this point. They have cooking, they have wire cutter, they have sports and they have games, Wordle and those other games that we have. I think in terms of articulation, I'm sure The Times has done a ton of work when it comes to really communicating to the audiences what The Athletic is. But what I would say overall that's been really clear, and the synergy between both brands is that, The Athletic is... When you look at a brand like ESPN, there are ties to the networks. I mean there are ties to the leagues. So there is this belief that organizations like those may not necessarily be able to really report out everything they want to. Right? Now, The Athletic, similar to The Times, is independent of any entities in that sense.

So what we really try to communicate to the audiences when we introduce them to The Athletic is really that this is a brand that's independent of any sports leagues. Therefore, we can report anything and everything. So we can hold the brands to account, we can hold TV networks to account, pretty much anything associated with sports. So that allows us to gain the trust of the audience overall, versus there being this feeling like, whether it's ESPN, NBC or any of these other networks that have lead ties, a viewer kind of saying like, "Oh, are they not criticizing them because of this reason or that reason?" And we try to really just keep that independence, in the same way that The Times does, if that makes sense.

Mordy Oberstein:

I just want to point out by how unique and how important that is in particular in the sports world. Let's say for example, I watch Rich Eisen. Rich Eisen is an old, ESPN Sports Center, newscaster, whatever you want to call him. He also works for the NFL network. So when he is on his own show, you can almost see he's got to be a little bit careful of what he says about the NFL, because he actually works for the NFL. Or Mike Floria who covers NFL and NBC, will literally say, "I don't know if my boss is going to like this or not." Or you see what ESPN did, they brought Pat... I'm really going down the sports wormhole now. They brought Pat McAfee on to make it look like, "Oh, we're offering honest takes. Pat's going to say whatever he wants to say." As if Pat's not playing the game. But it's also nonsense. So The Athletic coming in and offering that USP like, "We're the honest broker," is huge, to me at least, in the sports world.

Claudio Cabrera:

And what I would also say to that, Mordy and Crystal, one of the things that's happened a lot in sports journalism overall, is newspapers locally downsizing, obviously downsizing in different areas and in different sports. I think the NFL and the NBA seem to be those sports that they don't necessarily downsize in, just because of the popularity of them both. But when you look at baseball, when you look at NHL specifically, there's been a lot of downsizing from a local market perspective. So the thought is, all right, at the same time, we have either the first or the second or the third ranked beat reporter in each specific market. So you have someone that you've developed a relationship with throughout time, and someone that's trustworthy at the same juncture.

So it's really multiple value adds. The independence, but also, hey, you could come to The New York Times, but you can also go to The Athletic, if, let's say you don't have the breadth and the depth of sports coverage for your local team in Minnesota, Phoenix, wherever it may be, and kind of follow your team in that way as well. So it's really centered around the fan. Everything about the product is really centered around the fan, and just making sure that the fan feels like we're speaking to them in a way that feels original and doesn't feel like we're just producing content for audience scale.

Crystal Carter:

And I think that's really interesting, the way that you described. Because most website folks, most people who are producing content, et cetera, would say, "Oh, the users. The users." And you're like, "The fans, the fans that come to our website, because they're fans and we are providing a service for the fans." And I think that perspective is really valuable and it clearly, clearly resonates with your fans, and with the fans of sports who come through. And also, I think that from a sub-brand, parent-brand sort of relationship, it helps bring new audiences to both the parent brand and the sub-brand. And I think also, you were talking about filling gaps, essentially what you're talking about is a content gap. Your team noticed a content gap on the sort of local level of say local NHL teams. The only one I know is the Kings, the Oilers. Those are teams, right?

Claudio Cabrera:

Yes. Yeah, those are teams.

Crystal Carter:

Danly Cup. Go Mighty Ducks. Just naming sports things. Anyway, but you notice a gap, and then your team is able to fill that gap. And therefore, both support the fans, but also build your audience. I think, as somebody who works in, like we were saying, a similar brand, we are part of the Wix SEO team, we are part of the Wix SEO hub, one of the things that's great is that you have some of the resources that the parent brand has, in order to fill some of those gaps. How do you manage your resources? How do you get resources for some of the content projects? Let's say you're like, "Hey, there was some..." Mordy, you'll pick me up. Is it like banana ball or something?

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh yeah.

Claudio Cabrera:

Pickle ball?

Crystal Carter:

No, it's like a banana-

Mordy Oberstein:

No, it's the banana baseball league. Where they-

Claudio Cabrera:

Oh yeah, yeah. The Savannah something. I don't know what they're called.

Mordy Oberstein:

Savannah Bananas.

Crystal Carter:

Right. So let's say your team finds the Savannah Bananas and you're like, "We want to make a whole section about this completely new league." Or something. How do you negotiate getting resources for that, so that you can build something that works for those fans, and helps to support both your brand and the parent brand?

Claudio Cabrera:

That's a great question. I mean, I think when it comes to sports that aren't necessarily top of mind but are sort of gaining interest, I think a lot of times, in newsrooms, which most newsrooms are pretty strapped when it comes to resources overall, it really comes down to, is there someone from an advertising perspective that's so interested in this particular product or the particular league, that's willing to really say, "Hey, we would love to buy advertising space on your website for F1 or for, let's say Savannah Bananas." Now at that point, you can either do one of two things. You can say, "All right, we're going to have this huge advertising buy from this company and maybe we can build out a vertical for this."

Or you can actually say, which we do a lot of, is we say, "Well, we don't necessarily have enough research at this point to say whether pickle ball or that league that you mentioned, or let's say even F1, at the interest level that we need to really dedicate a full team of resourcing to it." So maybe we take one writer and really test out content consistently, to see, one, really less so from... I think from an external perspective, you're obviously able to see day-to-day, like, "Oh, wow. We're getting a lot of audience interest on F1." But I think because we're one of the few only subscription products in the sports space specifically, it allows us to understand, all right, the people that are on our website, do they actually like F1? Right? So we have the EPO in the UK, which is a huge market for us. And in the UK, F1 is more popular than it is in the US.

So we started really kind of connecting the dots there and saying, "All right, is F1 something that even our EPO subscribers are really interested in?" We started seeing that interest, and we said, "All right, let's launch F1 vertical." Much smaller than EPL and NFL and all those others, but sort of building it out. So I think multiple things occur, right? I think there has to be interest from an external level on that specific sport. And then I think internally, you just have to do a ton of research, like user segmentation, and so many different things, to really understand, all right, internally, the people that we have as subscribers, do they like this? But also externally, do we have enough that we can provide from an editorial level, to really reach a large scale audience?

Crystal Carter:

I was just going to say that testing point, the proof of concept thing, and testing and monitoring, is super important. People should definitely pay attention to that as a tactic.

Mordy Oberstein:

As you're doing the whole F1 thing, in your opinion, how concerned should you be... And abstract because I don't know if you can get into the details of what you do on The Athletic side. I don't want to put you in an uncomfortable position. But as a concept, how closely do you feel the sub-brand should be working with the main brand? Or how concerned should the sub-brand be about keyword targeting, considering what the main brand or the other sub-brands are also doing? Or should it be as independent thing, like do what it does and that's it? Should there be connection? How strong should that connection be?

Claudio Cabrera:

Yeah, it'll be fully transparent. I think what's been really good about the relationship with The Athletic and The Times, is that it's been pretty independent, for the most part. So there hasn't been like, "You need to do this or you need to do that." We are like two separate newsrooms, one is remote, one is in-person remote. When it comes to keyword targeting, those types of things too, there hasn't been any clashes or anything of the sorts. I think the main thing that we've been really collaborative on is the understanding that our audience is much smaller than theirs. And what The Times is trying to do is really make sure that they get as much visibility to The Athletic as possible. And that takes a lot of things.

That takes homepage visibility with a module, that takes email targeting, that takes push notifications. So on their part, it's been, how do we present The Athletic on a day-to-day level when it's just a regular sports cycle? And how do we present The Athletic when it's the Olympics, a World Cup, the NFL trade bill and the NFL draft, and more? So overall, what I would say is that I think there needs to be a relationship, unless the brands are so alike, then I think you're going to run into those issues around keywords and topic pages, and tagging and so many different things. But because we're so different, I think the parent brand, in a lot of respects, unless it's totally disassociated from what the other brand is, probably has the opportunity to really just build up the profile of that specific brand over time, if that makes sense.

Mordy Oberstein:

Makes a ton of sense. And I love the fact that you guys are taking it from an audience-first point of view. It's so refreshing to hear.

Claudio Cabrera:

Yeah. And I think one of the things that was really great about... And we obviously migrated, so we did a migration. But even before that migration, we were just getting all this link equity, right? Because we were getting links from The Times every single day. And The Athletic was already kind of growing its authority over the six years since it launched. But just kind of having that presence overall is really important. And what you find is this. Right? I came from The Times, I was leading SEO there for about six or seven years, and I never really looked at The Times audience as this sports audience. I looked at them as more of a casual sports audience that's not into the day-to-day, but is more into the moments.

And what ended up happening when The Athletic was acquired, is that we had that module, and we would find sports like baseball, Mordy and Crystal, were the sports that were most popular. And it was like, "Wait, MLB is more popular with this audience than NFL or NBA." And then you would see it kind of fluctuate by season. But it really kind of gave us an idea of what types of stories Times users like, how we program for that specific homepage. So how our homepage looks is very different from how we program for them. Because our audience is very intense. Their audience is more like, "Give me the really, really cool story around sports. Or the things I need to talk about near the water cooler with my coworkers." I think-

Crystal Carter:

Was that break dancing or not?

Claudio Cabrera:

Exactly. Exactly. So it's two different audiences. And what I would say is that, we don't tailor our content for The Times audience, but we have the ability to frame headlines for The Times audience. So I'll give you a great example. Wembanyama last year, when he entered the league, we could easily say, "Victor Wembanyama is taking over the league." Right? We could say that on The Athletic, but no one at The Times knew who he was. So we said, "The 7'7" unicorn that's taking over the NBA." Right? So the framing is different, but it connects with that audience as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, that's awesome.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I think that's so important. And I think that it's a question of warm leads or general leads. So you have the resources of the NYT audience, but it's going to be so many people coming through there. And like you said, you're competing with all of the other headlines of everything else that's going on there. So yeah, I think it's absolutely important to filter your content for the main part of the brand's audience, as opposed to your core audience. But the differentiation I think is key there. I think it's great that you're focusing on differentiation for your core audience and the mainstream audience. I think that's a great tactic. They're highly effective.

Mordy Oberstein:

And yeah, it is highly effective, because as someone who consumes way too much sports media, you'll always hear, whether it's a New York radio talk show or the national guys, "So-and-so reported on The Athletic more than any other source." So kudos.

Crystal Carter:

I was literally going to say, and then there's some of us who just... I only know the Super Bowl by who did the halftime show.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're The New York Times audience.

Crystal Carter:

That me. I'm like, "Is it the Rihanna Super Bowl or the Shakira Super Bowl?" I'm not sure. I don't know-

Claudio Cabrera:

The Rihanna Super Bowl was huge. It was like biggest audience. It was huge.

Crystal Carter:

Massive.

Mordy Oberstein:

As we ebb away here, first off, this was an amazingly enlightening conversation. It really resonated with me, just want to say on a personal level. But I have two questions for you. One is, do you know Ken Rosenthal?

Claudio Cabrera:

I met Ken Rosenthal, yeah. I met Ken Rosenthal. Loved the bow tie. Fantastic. Really, really good guy. Really warm, really collaborative. I think the interesting part about... And there's a misconception about star reporters. Some star reporters can be a little tricky, but Ken is the guy that, with every MLB reporter and editor literally at The Athletic, if the beat reporter for the Padres is like, "Hey, I don't really know this, but Ken, can I give you a call to see if you have any more information on this?" Happy to collaborate. So Ken is a baseball legend, as you know, and a reporting legend, and really, really warm and nice guy.

Mordy Oberstein:

So I'm mad jealous. That was a follow-up to that. And the second question is, who do you have winning the Super Bowl? No, no, not just winning. Who's in it? And who wins it?

Claudio Cabrera:

I think it's going to be the Lions and the Chiefs.

Mordy Oberstein:

Ooh. Lions win?

Claudio Cabrera:

Yeah, I'm a Lions fan, Crystal. So yeah, the Lions are going to win. I think the Lions will make it happen. But I mean if I remove myself from everything and all my biases in the situation, I would say probably the Chiefs. Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay. But the Lions still in it?

Claudio Cabrera:

The Lions still in it. Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Even with the bias. Okay, I'm with you on this, by the way. I can't stand the Chiefs. I can't deal with another dynasty in the AFC. I had enough.

Claudio Cabrera:

Oh yeah, I had enough of it. Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

So I'm going Texans-Lions, knowing full well the Chiefs are going to be there, but I will not verbalize it. And I have Lions either way.

Crystal Carter:

I'm looking forward to Kendrick Lamar.

Claudio Cabrera:

Kendrick Lamar is this year. That's right, it is Kendrick.

Mordy Oberstein:

My kids always ask, it's like, "Who's playing the Super Bowl halftime show?" I'm like, "I don't know. I don't care."

Claudio Cabrera:

It's like the highest rated 20 minutes of the year for... I don't know. Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't care about the halftime show. I want to see some-

Crystal Carter:

That's the sub brand of the Super Bowl. The halftime show is the sub brand of the Super Bowl. It's its own thing. And sometimes it eclipses it.

Claudio Cabrera:

It's so interesting that you say that because it's spot on. We've gotten to a point even here, where most sports brands at this point, do a separate live blog for the halftime show.

Crystal Carter:

Oh wow, okay.

Claudio Cabrera:

Yeah. So you have your Super Bowl live blog, which is full of all the stuff. Right? Some people have a commercial live blog, which is with an expert on just commercial.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, right. That's also another sub brand.

Claudio Cabrera:

And then you have the halftime live blog, which is like Rihanna, Usher, et cetera. And I think the interesting part about it is that, before it was like, "Oh, we could get millions of views for this. Let's just put whoever on it." And now you actually have people who are experts about specific artists and things, handling that live blog. Which is pretty cool.

Mordy Oberstein:

You have experts about people who know about Doritos handling the commercial.

Crystal Carter:

Also people who've been reporting on it for years. So people who will be comparing it to all of the other Super Bowl shows, or comparing it to all of the other things.

Claudio Cabrera:

Yes, ranking them and, how good was this one versus the other? All that stuff. Yep.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, fine. So now I have a question for Crystal. Favorite halftime show?

Crystal Carter:

Favorite halftime show, it's got to be Beyonce. I'm just going to say that, just because I'm biased. Katy Perry, you cannot knock Katy Perry for effort. She did everything. She did all of the things. You can't knock Katy Perry for effort. And I liked Rihanna, but I liked the lady who was doing the sign language better, in terms of dance moves. So there we go. But Usher was fantastic. Usher was brilliant. It was brilliant to see all of that. And I really enjoyed the roller skating.

Claudio Cabrera:

Oh yeah, the roller skating was pretty cool too.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm going to go old school, I'm into the Chili Peppers, but my favorite one was when it had Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent and, was it Dr. Dre also?

Crystal Carter:

That was very good.

Mordy Oberstein:

That was really good. I really enjoyed that-

Crystal Carter:

I don’t know why 50 Cent was upside down.

Claudio Cabrera:

That one made me feel so old.

Mordy Oberstein:

Everybody felt like, "Oh my God."

Claudio Cabrera:

Yeah, I was like, "Oh, man, I'm old."

Mordy Oberstein:

We are old. On that note, Claudio, where can people find your old self?

Claudio Cabrera:

Where can people find my old... In terms of socials?

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, I wanted to hand out your address on the podcast, just giving some advice.

Claudio Cabrera:

I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Twitter. I'm always kind of lurking on Twitter, and hanging out there and reading stuff. I'm actually mostly on LinkedIn, but not from a posting perspective, but just talking to people in messages and things like that. That's mainly where I kind of hang out. And my email is always like... I always tell people I'm always open and willing to answer any questions if they have any. So I'm pretty open on that front.

Crystal Carter:

Thank you very much for being open and sharing all of your insights today.

Claudio Cabrera:

Of course. Thank you for having me. This was great. And I'm glad we finally made it happen.

Mordy Oberstein:

So glad. It was really, really great. Look for Claudio on social media. We'll put the links in the show notes, or just read The Athletic. Support Claudio, subscribe to The Athletic.

Claudio Cabrera:

Please.

Mordy Oberstein:

Check out Ken Rosenthal. All right. Thanks, Claudio.

Claudio Cabrera:

Thank you guys.

Mordy Oberstein:

So as I mentioned before, sub-brands are hard because you have multiple brands to work with, consider, dance around and whatnot. How to deal with a sub-brand is really one of my favorite topics, because literally what I spend almost my entire day doing, managing a sub-brand. Like the Wix Studio, Wix SEO, sub-brandish thing, that's what we do. That's our jam. So we're stoked to have two great brand marketers join us in just a second, Matt Davies of the Just Branding podcast, and Steven Picanza of Branders Magazine, are going to join us as we go into a deep thought. Welcome to the show, Steven and Matt. How are you?

Steven Picanza:

All right. Mordy, good to see you.

Matt Davies:

Great to be here. Thanks for having us.

Mordy Oberstein:

Super stoked. The pre-Paul part of this recording was epic. We should have recorded and that should have been the whole thing.

Matt Davies:

It was wild.

Steven Picanza:

Well, Matt and I have a history, so I think, get us in a room together...

Matt Davies:

It's going to be a problem.

Steven Picanza:

Yeah, there's a lot of magical problems.

Mordy Oberstein:

I love magical problems. Like my finances, magical problems.

Steven Picanza:

Right. Beautiful chaos, whatever. Dynamic tension, you keep going with these.

Mordy Oberstein:

So before we get dragged down this whole wormhole, pitch away and plug away whatever you got. Marketers are going to market, that's what we do on our show.

Steven Picanza:

Well, Steven Picanza. I am the host of the Talking With Branders podcast, which is part of Branders Magazine. I also am a consultant, brand consultant for startups and a lot of nonprofits recently, a lot of associations. And I also run a content studio here in New Jersey, where as I was telling the gang, we're going to have five sets open right outside Philadelphia. We are changing the game on how small businesses can create and scale content, because it should not be a Herculean task. Also, just go to my website, Stevenpicanza.com. I got a cool newsletter, I do content, and I just want to be the voice of the Branders community. There are a lot of smart MFers out there, like Mr. Matt Davies, that actually know what they're doing. I'm just a mouthpiece and a talking head, and I just want to bring people together.

Mordy Oberstein:

What do you say to that, Matt?

Matt Davies:

I mean, wow, how do you follow that? I shouldn't have let him go first, should I?

Mordy Oberstein:

No, that was your first mistake, for sure.

Matt Davies:

I'm Matt Davis. As Mordy has kindly said, I am the co-host of the Just Branding podcast with Jacob Cass. But more than that, I also am a consultant, and I tend to work with leadership teams all over the world, who basically need to align around their strategy for the future, and to position their brands powerfully in their marketplaces. So I won't bore you with all of that. I guess a couple of accolades. I've written a book called Storyategy, and I also sit on the editorial team at Branders Magazine, alongside Steven. So that's probably enough for now. Bore you with more stuff another time.

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, I'm just going to double down on that and say that, your website and the Branders Magazine website are on Wix. Which is not why you're here, it just happened to be a nice little find.

Matt Davies:

I like that you've done your homework Mordy. I'm a huge fan of Wix. No one is paying me to say that, by the way, folks, but I am. I find it super easy. I'll tell you a very quick, little story. I used to run an agency about... Well, many moons ago, maybe 20 years ago or something. And we used to do a lot of hand coded websites. As time went on, I could see that the potential of high-end CMSs was coming in. And I've actually pivoted completely, over many, many years now, completely away from execution because I just think technology is catching us up. And Wix is a great example of that. And I use it all the time, and I find it fantastic for my project. So thank you.

Steven Picanza:

I'm all for Clint after that.

Crystal Carter:

Great. Thank you for coming on our podcast. It was great talking to you. Bye.

Steven Picanza:

Matt, you definitely got a nice paycheck coming in the mail now.

Mordy Oberstein:

One giant IOU coming your way.

Steven Picanza:

You just can't cash it for 180 days plus.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay. So branding for a sub brand, marketing for a sub brand. We talked about the SEO side with Claudio Cabrera from The Athletic. Let's get into the actual marketing side. At what point does one say, "You know what? We can really go, and should go, with a sub brand here"?

Matt Davies:

Can I take that one? I would just pause for one second and just take a quick step back. I just think it's super helpful. Then I'll dive in and attack your question, but I always like to kind of get definitions out of the way. Because when we are talking about brands, sometimes there's huge confusion. Because the average person, when you talk about a brand, they think of a logo, a name, some fonts, maybe some colors or whatever. And that might be part of it, but I don't think that's the best definition. So my definition of a brand is the meaning that people attach to you and your audience. And the game that Steven and I are in, and those brand marketeers out there, we are in the game of managing that meaning. So it's not about us, it should be about them. It should be about, how do people perceive us? How do people understand us?

And our strategy should be all about doing that in a way that gives the best impact, gives them the best choice, makes sure that they make the right decisions. And hopefully, the right people choose our product, service offering, or wherever it might be. So that's kind of a bit of a segue to then attack what you've just asked, which is, okay, when do you actually create a sub-brand? So my answer to that is, well, we create a sub-brand when it's necessary for the meaning we want people to attach to us, to ensure that it's easily understood and digestible by them. They can understand this is maybe a new offering or a sub-offering, from a main category offering. And so we offer something like a sub-brand when we're targeting perhaps a new audience. So we've got a new offer that might relate to our overarching offer, but needs definition. It needs distinction, it needs signposting in a way that is relevant and meaningful for the people we're trying to speak to. So that's when you decide to maybe branch out of an overarching portfolio and dive into a sub-brand kind of offering.

Steven Picanza:

Matt, brilliantly said. And you set the pace, you paved that road with that definition. So definitely appreciate that. To Matt's point, I think as we drill down more specifically, when your product or service diversifies, and the parent brand can't stretch without dilution, that's when you need to look at a sub-brand. Perfect example, you got Coca-Cola, but then maybe you have more health conscious people and they wanted Diet Coke. And so, it was a perfect opportunity to create these sub-brands. And I think we see a lot of this within food and beverage, as people's tastes get more narrow, as people's dietary restrictions get more narrow, it gives the opportunity to create these sub-brands. But some caution, there's got to be the opportunity there, and the opportunity has to come from the people, as Matt was saying. It can't just be a bunch of board directors and CEOs saying, "We should branch out and do extensions, because I like this idea and I think it'll work." That'll never work.

Matt Davies:

Yeah, that's the number one mistake I see, is people making decisions like this because it makes sense from the business's perspective, but it doesn't make sense from the customer's perspective. And-

Steven Picanza:

Perfect case. No, sorry, Matt. No, perfect point. I did a lot of work with Dude Wipes on launching their latest campaign. And Dude Wipes Shark Tank brand, they do male, flushable wipes. Well six years ago, more or less, they decided to come out to try to attack Dr. Sasquatch or Dr. Swatch, or whatever they're called, and some of these other male care brands. So they introduced a deodorant, they introduced a bath bomb, they introduced all these other male care products. It wasn't until Cuban called up the founders and said, "Stay in your lane, own your category. You do not need to be branching out now because you're going to lose focus." And thankfully they did, because when COVID hit and the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 happened in America, Dude Wipes cleaned up literally and figuratively, and they saw sales skyrocket because of that laser focus. So you have to be really careful on when to branch, and create extensions or sub brands, and when to kind of hold yourself back.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I mean that's something that actually we deal with all the time, because how we sort of evolve into being... I want to call us a sub brand, but we're like almost a sub brand. We function like a sub brand. Within Wix is, there was a reputation issue around SEO for a long, long, long, long, long, long time. And then once that issue started to get dealt with in an active way, it's a whole different story for a whole different time. And SEO started to come around like, "Wait a second, Wix is actually great for SEO."

There started to become an audience interest and an audience shift, and a particular focus on that vertical, different, let's say like Wix and social media, or Wix and analytics, or Wix or whatever it is, around SEO. And the audience determined, "Wait a second, there should be a unique focus for this segment, almost that it operates like that sub brand." And then audience need comes in and says to you, "You need something a little bit more focused and a little bit more defined around that topic or around that category, around whatever that is," that's exactly when you should come in and start doing a sub brand.

My go-to category with this when I go to product rather with this, is Blue Moon, which is really Coors. When Coors saw, and all the big companies saw that, wait a second, people are stopping to drink crap beer, and craft beer becoming a thing, they dealt with it two ways. One is, they dealt with it by trying to control the distribution. And when that didn't work the way that it was supposed to work, some of the smarter brands, like Coors, said, "You know what? Let's just create our own craft beer." And distanced itself from the actual... No one's going to know that it's really Coors unless you're reading the very, very, very back of the label that says, "Coors." But it's Blue Moon and it's craft, and you love craft beer. And it tastes different, I think, than actual Coors. I haven't drunk actual Coors in forever, so I wouldn't know.

Matt Davies:

So it's interesting, because when you start diving into this rabbit hole, there's various strategies brands can take. So let's just imagine we've got a brand and we decide, there's an offering here that feels like it needs its own sub brand. You've kind of got two choices in the management of the meaning. And there's the two main kind of structures, are what we call branded house and house of brands. So let me just briefly, if I may, just quickly reiterate what those are. The branded house is like you are going into a house, and it's all the same house. You feel like you're in the front room, you're in the lounge, you're in the kitchen, you feel like you're in the same house, the same branded house. So for example, if I was in Virgin, I'll be in Virgin Media, I'll be in Virgin Atlantic, I'll be in whatever, all the Virgins. Virgin Galactica, whatever the things are.

So it feels very Virgin. There's the core mother brand essence that runs through everything. The customer understands the connection between everything like that. So that's one. The other one is the house of brands, which is a very different approach, which I think you were talking about there, Mordy, with Coors. which is where basically, you're in the house. So let's say we're in Unilever. But I'm in all the different rooms and I don't really know that they connect to each other, or even to Unilever. So I might be in the Dove room, which is all about the Dove products, but that might be very different to some of the other products that they're offering. So you might ask, "Well, why would I choose one over the other? What's the difference?" And again, this comes down to the management of meaning, and you have to be quite strategic in how you think about this. Because if you go down the branded house model, there are some pros and cons.

The pros are that, if I have a great experience in one room, in one brand, it might encourage me as a customer to move to also experience another brand. So this works really well for example, for Virgin, because I might be buying my broadband from Virgin. And I have a great experience and I think, "Do you know what? That was really fun. I'll go on holiday with Virgin as well." And so there's a plus. The negative is the same, right? Because if I've had terrible experience with my broadband, it'll put me off completely going on holiday with Virgin. So you've got to think about that. But in the house of brands model, that's very segmented. So you can kind of distance yourself, almost like zone off all your brands, positively or negatively, so that customers don't really know that they're buying from the same company.

Again, that can have pros. For example, if your model, your business model is to sell bits off, then it doesn't really matter if you sell off Dove or another brand that you've got, because it doesn't impact the rest of your business. So these are kind of big strategic questions, and there isn't a wrong or a right I would suggest. It just depends on really your end game and what you are really trying to do. But my number one bit of advice is, think of the poor customer. If you're trying to segment it too much, and connect it and not connect, it's just confusing.

Steven Picanza:

Think of the customer. Indeed.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I think that that definitely comes into it, and I think that that will really be the deciding factor between whether or not you want to go with the house of brands model or the branded house sort of element. If you think about Ben and Jerry's for instance, Ben and Jerry's was a very beloved brand for a very long time, with a very distinct audience and very distinct USPs, and things like that. When they became part of Unilever, I think people in the industry knew what was going on, but they don't shout about it. It's not shouted about. The branding still is very, very similar, even though it's Unilever. However, because it's part of the Unilever family, there are certain benefits to it. There's scalability, there's distribution.

There's also the fact that, because they're part of Unilever, they get a lot of the tooling that you get from Swedish Glass, which is a vegan ice cream thing. Which means that Ben and Jerry's is able to do vegan ice cream really, really quickly and really, really easily. So there's a lot of backend elements for that. And a website, this is also similar, we were talking to Claudio from The Athletic. They are able to benefit from a lot of the legacy content, a lot of the infrastructure, a lot of the links from the parent brand of The New York Times. But they're also able to maintain their identity. So there can be benefits to that. In terms of Virgin, their airlines are fantastic, their broadband I was not impressed with overall, if I'm completely honest.

Matt Davies:

Crystal, you make a really great point about infrastructure, connections, all of that side of things. I also think there's another area that's probably worthy of note, and that is culture. So I've got a client at the moment, they're in the B2B space. They are a massive brand in the energy sector, and they're going through a lot of M&As at the moment. So they're buying up smaller competitors. And that causes tension with culture. But what I'm doing with their leadership team is we're saying, "This is actually a really amazing thing. Because now, you might've been in a team of 40 to 100 people, now you've got access to a much bigger company, with more support, with more rigorous training, with more opportunity." So it can be great internally as well, depending on how you handle the messaging and how you build that culture. But that all connects in my view, to the brand and the sub-brand strategy that you employ.

Crystal Carter:

Going back to the people thing, you have to communicate that really, really well between your people. And if you're talking about from an internal point of view, that communication piece is really key. If you're talking about that from a customer point of view, that's also really key. So recently, Brighton SEO, which is a big conference in the SEO industry, they recently merged with PPC... What is it?

Matt Davies:

Hero Con.

Crystal Carter:

Hero Con. And they bought that. And when they joined, they were like, "Hi, everyone who loves Hero Con. We now own Hero Con. We're Brighton SEO. If you don't know us, this is who we are. Hi. Hello. If you'd like to leave our mailing list, then good luck to you. But hi, hello." And they had to go through that process. And that's really, really important, both from a client retention, user retention sort of element. And also as you're thinking about other web assets and things like that.

Mordy Oberstein:

That internal thing is super huge. I want to ask Steve a question also, but the internal thing is huge. I don't know if you're Blue Moon or if you're Hero Con, or if you're Wix, whatever it is, if you don't give that team the autonomy to do their thing as a sub-brand, the way they're meant to do their thing, it does not work. Because by the way, I think it doesn't work so well with Blue Moon sometimes. But for example, with Hero Con, PPC is different than SEO. Right? Or with us, we're talking to SEOs and marketers, as SEOs and marketers.

We do not tie our hands together and say, "Well, we have to only talk about it this way because we're Wix and because we're Wix Studio." We have full range. Because the internal teams understand, if you're going to target this audience and act almost like a sub brand, in our case, you have to have full range to speak about SEO and speak about marketing, the way that SEOs and marketers speak about marketing. If you're going after the craft brew audience, you need to speak about craft brewery, brewing, drinking craft beer, the way that someone who drinks craft beer would normally go about. If you tie their hands together, and try to put a square peg into a round hole a little bit, this is not going to work.

Steven Picanza:

I'm shaking my head in agreement with everything, you've all said it so brilliantly. It is such an opportunity, as Matt was saying, and Crystal, you too, use it as an opportunity to be proactive with your messaging. I think too many brands oftentimes are reactive because they don't think about it, or they don't think the implications, or they don't think strongly enough about how to communicate this merge or this acquisition, or how it's going to impact culture, how it's going to impact your livelihood. Are you out of a job? Is it fear mongering in a way? Which, in this job market, everyone's eyes just popped up. It's fucking tough out there. Excuse me for dropping an F bomb. But use it as an opportunity. Because if you nurture your employees, you nurture your staff, you nurture your customers, and you listen to them and you give them the tools to succeed, they will reward you with their patronage, with their longevity. They'll just reward you by staying with part of your tribe.

Mordy Oberstein:

Pivot. I want to ask you about the tools to do that, because you mentioned tools, so now we're going to talk about tools. Look at that pivot. Okay. What are some tools that you can use in order to either distance or marry the sub-brand together? I'll give you an example, like a podcast. I think a podcast is a great tool because you can decide, I want to keep the podcast super away from the main brand, or I want to tie it super closely. It's the whatever podcast. Where's the branding from the parent? It's not there. Or it could be the whatever podcast, by parent brand. So that's something that you can either decide to pull in really close or something you can decide to keep really far away. And you can move that along as you decide to. Just an example of a tool. What are some of the tools, or things that you can do or use, to either disconnect the sub-brand from the main brand, if that's what you're trying to do, or to marry them together?

Matt Davies:

I mean the basic... Oh, sorry. You go, Steven. We're just super excited. We just can't help it.

Steven Picanza:

Biting and we're chopping at-

Matt Davies:

You go, I'll give way to you, sir, again. Just putting it out there, that's two now.

Steven Picanza:

I think that, and going back to what Matt was saying, it depends on what your strategy is. Are your branded house or house of brands? The nomenclature, which is so subjective on your business and your business strategy and your brand strategy, is going to dictate if you say, "From Unilever. A Unilever brand, et cetera, et cetera. Powered by whatever." But I think a tool that should be used is, how do you incorporate those stories together? As Matt was saying, how do you create meaning with these two organizations together?

There is a shared story. Whether or not it's a shared legacy, but it's a shared future. So how do we make sure that we're storytelling before that shared future, always with, not the stakeholders or the shareholders thought in mind, but with the audience in mind? So I think that that is such an under leveraged tool that can be used to marry or to tie these brands together. Now of course you can go down the road and you can say, "Oh. Well, visual identity is an easy one." Look at FedEx and all the different FedEx properties, and they all share the same look and feel. But I think when you start to think about brands that want to operate with autonomy, and brands that want to operate as their own but are part of a parent company, it's about those shared values, that shared story and that shared meaning, to go back to what Matt was saying.

Matt Davies:

So I've got a few ideas on tools. I predominantly work in strategy, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask about tools in the sense of execution. But in terms of strategy, what I would do as a strategist is, first of all, set about trying to understand what the value of this new entity is to customers. So I love surveys. There's tons of survey tools out there. I would actually ask my clients to give me access to say their top 10, top 20 customers, if that's possible. I would literally speak to them. That sounds ridiculously simple, but do you know how many people do not actually speak to their top customers? It's bananas to me. Particularly leadership teams. Speak to them, or get someone like me or Steven to go and speak to them. Because you get an insight then, that's not based on your hunch or your personal view.

It's based on something that you've been told by your audience. And if the brand is the meaning that they attach to you, that's got to be the primary source of your thinking. So go speak to people, get surveys, get interviews with them. You can do obviously hardcore market research if you like, and there's lots of tools out there that would enable you to do that as well. And then I think the other thing is really, I'm a massive fan of workshops. I just love a good workshop. So armed with good insight from customers, from how the competitors are positioning themselves, from the category itself, armed with that in mind, get the right decision makers in a room and say, "Okay, look. We need to craft this. We need to align around a strategy for this new entity, this new sub brand. We need to understand..."

I mean, I've got four big brand questions I like to ask of any brand, and that is, why do we exist beyond making money? Who do we exist to serve? How should we show up for them? And perhaps the most important, what is the unique value that we're offering? In other words, what is it that people can get from us, that they cannot get from anywhere else? Do we know the answer to that? And if you can answer those four questions, you're on your way to crafting then a focus for the internal teams, which is super powerful. Because they get to focus on the important things, the value that we're offering to the market, in a way that we can communicate it that people would really love. If you don't answer those, then you've got 50 people working on the project, absolute chaos. Because everybody can have their own view of what might be going on here or not, and you end up splintering your brand very swiftly.

Crystal Carter:

To follow that up, my question is, are your brand guidelines a tool?

Matt Davies:

Yes, they should be. They should be. And to my mind, there's the visual guidelines, but that is not what I'm talking about. That is important. There's the strategic guidelines, the narrative, the high level stuff, the answer of those four questions. And both of those relate obviously, but start-

Steven Picanza:

And they live together.

Matt Davies:

For sure.

Steven Picanza:

I might even go as far to say that the day of guidelines is almost passing us, and we need to start living in this idea of an operating system. It needs to live and breathe with us. And those four questions that Matt... And Matt and I come from the same school, mentored by Marty Neumeyer and the level C, and that way of brand thinking. But the greater the foundation that we can build on the brand, I always like to say, theoretically, the less money we're going to waste on marketing at the end. Right? Because we're focused. We know who the hell we're talking to. We know what message to say. We have all the answers. And just to Matt's point about talking to your customers, I tell brands this all the time. There was a famous philosopher 2000 years ago, Zeno of Centium. He said, "We all have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Act accordingly." Right? Listen more than you talk.

Well, if we put that in the lens of brands, today, brands have two ears and one mouth for a reason, and we should listen to our customers more. They're going to tell us things that we would never have seen. And they're going to tell an outside consultant, like Matt or myself, something perhaps vastly different than the CEO or the CFO, who they have perhaps an intimate relationship with, or there's a monetary relationship there. So there's so much that we could pull out, whether it's data, insight or just insider trading knowledge, to get to where we need to go.

Matt Davies:

One really big tip that I just want to share is the concept, if you've not come across it yet, of social listening, and having a look... On the most basic level, you can just see how many times your brand is mentioned in a month, for example, versus your competitor set. So that gives you a bit of a sense of share, in terms of how much voice or how much people are talking about you. But if you want to go a little bit more nuanced, you then need to dive into that. Okay, what are they saying about us? Are they complaining? And if they're complaining, what are they complaining about? And if they're loving-

Steven Picanza:

Is it a positive or negative sentiment?

Matt Davies:

For sure. So you can go really deep into that, and I always recommend that to any marketing team. Because it's not expensive to start. Obviously if you want to get really in-depth and you've got a lot of data to get through, you might need to pay a bit more to start.

Steven Picanza:

And a tool that I've used in the past for social listening, that's a great point, Matt, is NetBase. NetBase is a brilliant tool, and it gives you the opportunity to start to attach positive, negative emotions to what's being said, mentioned. We did that a lot for Dude Wipes, and we came up with a crazy insight, and this is a tip for brands. Dude Wipes, oftentimes their comments would have a more positive sentiment than the actual comment that they were responding to. So for example, Chipotle might say, "Free Burrito today." And Dude Wipes would come out and say, "You're going to need us tomorrow." And oftentimes we would see the insight of, "Holy shit, that comment got more engagement than the actual post." And that was their trick. It's incredible.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's not the amount of engagement, it's the type of engagement. On that happy note, speaking of sharing and listening, could you share where people can find you, so they can listen to you more?

Matt Davies:

Okay, I'll go first on this one. So you can check out my website, mrmattdavies.me. Spelled M-R-M-A-T-T-D-A-V-I-E-S.M-E. And that's a Wix website. If somebody hasn't mentioned that already, just popping that in there.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, no. Say it again. It's fine.

Matt Davies:

Side point. But also, perhaps more importantly, I love LinkedIn. I'm a massive LinkedIn dweller, so please connect with me if you're interested in anything I have to say. I'm often posting content on all this stuff and more. So see you there. Love to connect.

Steven Picanza:

For me, go to Stevenpicanza.com. I unfortunately am on one of your competitor websites.

Mordy Oberstein:

Squarespace, I saw. I know. You'll get there.

Steven Picanza:

But I'm open. Free Agency's coming up. I'm on a month-to-month plan, just saying. So Stevenpicanza.com. You can check me out there. And then like Matt, I am a LinkedIn dweller, if you type in Steven Picanza. But I think more importantly, just look for the peace sign and the pizza slice. We all want a piece of pizza, don't we? Always. Just saying, right?

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, truer words were never spoken, unless you're talking about what you just said before about branding. And with that, thanks guys for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it very much.

Crystal Carter:

Thank you so much.

Matt Davies:

Thanks for having us.

Mordy Oberstein:

So again, thank you Matt and Steven for joining us. Make sure you give them a follow on LinkedIn. Links again, in the show. You know who's a sub-brand? Barry's a sub-brand. No, he is. Because he's got Search Engine Land and then he's got Search Engine Round Table. It's a brand within a brand of SEO news coverage.

Crystal Carter:

It's because he's part-time Barry, part-time Rusty Brick.

Mordy Oberstein:

That should be his tagline, part-time Barry, full-time Rusty Brick. Or full-time Barry.

Crystal Carter:

I feel like it's his superhero persona. I feel like he needs an action hero outfit that's-

Mordy Oberstein:

Full on cape, underwear on the outside.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. And then when he sees the bad guys who are causing volatility in the algorithm or something-

Mordy Oberstein:

Like Danny Sullivan?

Crystal Carter:

No, no. Danny's not a bad guy. He throws bricks at them. That's his thing. So Spider-Man has webs, Batman has batarangs, Barry throws internet bricks at them. You see?

Mordy Oberstein:

It's like the mafia, like throwing bricks through your window.

Crystal Carter:

No, those are just ex-girlfriends. That is a tried and tested ex-girlfriend move.

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, we're throwing the news through a window now, as we pivot into the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, 2:40 from Barry Shortz. And both from Suroundtable.com. First up, report, 22% of sites hit by Google's helpful content update are up 20% plus. This was from originally Glenn Gabe. Glenn Gabe is, call it an index of 400 sites that he's tracking around these official updates. And he said that 88 out of these 400, or 22% of them, saw a 20% increase, at least 20% increase, since the August 2024 core update. Barry says that some had full recoveries, but most did not. And most saw no lifts at all. It's 22%, right? It's just an interesting, I call it a status check on where we are with these updates. Rather these sites getting recoveries from some of these updates. Really interesting to see a link to them within the show notes. You can check out all the great charts that Barry has from Glenn there.

Also, from Barry again, Google AI overview displayed within People Also Ask. So there was a test where you opened up the People Also Ask expandable cards. And normally what you see is a featured snippet sort of thing, where you get a little summary answering the question that reflects the card, and then a URL to the website. Again, feature snippet basically. But in this instance, there was a test where when you opened up the expandable card, you were getting the AI overview instead. Same kind of format as you would normally see with the AI overview in general, with just more cards at the bottom it looks like.

Anyway, I'll link to the article in the show and you can take a look at what it looks like there. But it is interesting to take note of just Google really doubling down and trying to expand out the AI overview. I don't know, I don't think it'll stick here necessarily. But just again, keeping tabs on where Google is not shying away from pushing AI overviews out there to other places on the SERP, so it clearly seems. And that is this week's Snappy News. Crash. That's the sound of this pivot.

Crystal Carter:

Bang. Boom. Kapow.

Mordy Oberstein:

Coming back.

Crystal Carter:

Is Robin a sub-brand of Batman?

Mordy Oberstein:

Coming out of the news, is Robin a sub-brand of... Does Robin exist outside of Batman?

Crystal Carter:

Okay, okay, better. Better. The villains, right? You have Joker, right? Joker is definitely-

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, they made that into its own brand, until they killed it with the second movie I heard. I didn't even watch it. And I won't watch it now that I heard it's terrible.

Crystal Carter:

Then there's also Catwoman. Catwoman had a movie, which also didn't... That was kind of okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah. All right. I don't know. Kind of.

Mordy Oberstein:

Great. Yeah. Perfect. Which brings us to our follow of the week, which is Sarah Press over at Dragon Metrics, and she does a great job marketing her brand, Dragon Metrics. Why we thought she'd be a great follow of the week. She speaks at Brighton SEO. So I met her at Brighton SEO, a few years back. That's how I got introduced to her. So follow her on LinkedIn.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, she's super great. We saw the Dragon Metrics team again at Brighton SEO this year, and they're super lovely. And they've got some great tools, and a great way to track your brand, your sub brand, everything you need.

Mordy Oberstein:

Amazing. So big old follow to Sarah, and shout out the Dragon Metrics. And link in the show notes where you can follow her. I don't know. Sub me out. Done with the episode. Trying to put the subs in.

Crystal Carter:

Right. I could go for a Subway sandwich.

Mordy Oberstein:

Subs, not scrubs.

Crystal Carter:

We don't want no scrubs.

Mordy Oberstein:

Scrub is a... Not going to even go there. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Don't worry, we're back next week with a new episode, as we dive into, is it time to stop relying on algorithms? Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix Studio SEO learning over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content on webinars on the Wix Studio Learning hub, 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 and love, and SEO.