In Search SEO 57: Is Google Getting Results Right?

Technical SEO expert Simon Cox joins the show to discuss how he's handled SEO for sites during COVID-19: • SEO considerations for both local and non-local sites during COVID-19 • Addressing content needs during COVID-19 & finding new opportunities • What's the game plan for SEO once COVID-19 is over? How sites may need to adjust to a new reality Plus, we offer tips on how to stay current on Google's strategy and trajectory! <<<< EPISODE SUMMARY>>>> In our first segment, Mordy shares his idea of the most powerful way to analyze the Google SERP which is to simply play around on the SERP. To explain what he means, Mordy shares some examples. The first being how he noticed the SERP being more visual especially on mobile and that you can see on the SERP that Google is using images to help guide users to make choices. His next example is how Google was showing a sports player position carousel for many football teams, but now it's limited to only a few teams. Mordy suggests that Google released a feature for testing but is now limiting it and releasing it in a more strategic approach. In our next segment, we have special guest, Simon Cox, who shares a couple of interesting SEO cases he's currently handling amid the COVID-19 pandemic. His first case is a florist who with the help of a simple e-commerce page that Simon helped create, was able to continue to thrive when most shops were closed. In another case that Simon worked on, a wildlife charity added a ‘things to do in lockdown' page with fun drawings, puzzles, and quizzes which garnered a lot of traffic for the site. Simon shares where he thinks there is opportunity during COVID-19 and how things may change in SEO when the crisis has abated. Timestamps: How to Know Where Google Is at & Where It's Going [00:07:39 - 00:22:44] How to Handle SEO and Websites in the Wake of COVID-19 [00:22:49 - 01:07:43] SEO News [01:08:14 - 01:11:23] Resources: Simon Cox: http://simoncox.com The Corona Pub: http://thecoronapub.com How Google's Entity Understanding Has Advanced: https://www.rankranger.com/blog/entity-understanding-advances Hosts: Mordy Oberstein twitter.com/MordyOberstein linkedin.com/in/mordy-oberstein-12551715/ Sapir Karabello linkedin.com/in/sapir-karabello-466865182/Special Guest: Simon Cox twitter.com/simoncox linkedin.com/in/simonmcox/ Follow the podcast on Twitter: twitter.com/InSearch_SEO Subscribe: ow.ly/sDkT50zjRPJ Presented by Rank Ranger: www.rankranger.com/

CRO aficionado Khalid Saleh joins the podcast to discuss the role of underlying psychology when creating the optimal UX for your site: · Speaking to user psychology to boost conversions · How to drill deep into user mindset · How to find and send the right messages with your UX Plus, how to qualify your Featured Snippet wins! <<<< EPISODE SUMMARY>>>> We start with our guest speaker, Khalid Saleh, who explains his LinkedIn profile's message that there are no growth hacks in marketing. Beginning the main topic of CRO and UX, Khalid explains there are two parts to CRO, the functional aspect and the emotional aspect and the importance of focusing on each. He goes on about the psychology of human emotions and how to get into the mind of a user. Khalid then shares a few CRO stories each with different lessons on learning the user's behavior. Khalid ends with comparing CRO and SEO and that at the end of the day the goal is to increase sales and how understanding who your competition is important in increasing your conversion rate. In the next segment, Mordy shares an article that showed the % of time certain SERP features appeared alongside Featured Snippets on the same results page. Mordy clarified that the article was not meant to say that if a certain feature was appearing with your Featured Snippet that you will automatically lose traffic, but rather that you should investigate further to see if the other feature is really competing with the user's attention. Each case is different as some features will share the same intent while others will not. Timestamps: Using Psychology to Build a UX That Drives Sales [00:08:53 - 00:38:14] How to Understand How Powerful Your Featured Snippets Really Are [00:39:00 - 00:57:08] SEO News [00:57:27 - 01:03:54] Resources: In Search SEO Podcast Episode 38: rankranger.com/blog/in-search-seo-podcast-episode38 What SERP Features Do Featured Snippets Compete With?: rankranger.com/blog/featured-snippet-feature-competition How To Qualify Google Rankings: Advanced Ranking Tips: rankranger.com/blog/understanding-google-rankings Hosts: Mordy Oberstein twitter.com/MordyOberstein linkedin.com/in/mordy-oberstein-12551715/ Sapir Karabello linkedin.com/in/sapir-karabello-466865182/ Special Guest: Khalid Saleh twitter.com/khalidh linkedin.com/in/khalidh/ Follow the podcast on Twitter: twitter.com/InSearch_SEO Subscribe: ow.ly/sDkT50zjRPJ Presented by Rank Ranger: www.rankranger.com/

SEO Jedi Colleen Harris of Sincro gets into the finer points of creating a highly-effective Google My Business listing: · How to get department listings right and why you really have to! · How to expedite the GMB verification process! · How to prove the value of local SEO! Plus, we dive deep into how Google can use the functionality on the COVID-19 SERP to push personalization to all-new levels! EPISODE SUMMARY: We start with our guest speaker Colleen Harris on how watching soap operas started Colleen's career in marketing. Then we moved on to our main topic... Google My Business. Specifically, department listings! We dived into what they are, when you need them, and how to insert them effectively. Colleen breaks it down step-by-step ending off with Google's reply back to her that they wished everyone did it this way! Lastly, we discuss the importance of adding UTM code to your Google My Business listing and the importance of showing your value to your clients. In the next segment, Mordy shares his theory on how the COVID-19 SERP is a glimpse of what might be coming to the results page in the future! In short, the left side menu functionality currently being used for COVID-19 queries can be Google's solution to answering multiple intents on the SERP. Google could offer an initial, more personalized SERP and then the tabs will show other categories for result diversity. Mordy and Sapir highlight all of the ways the functionality can help Google solve some of the problems related to personalization on the SERP... including the filter bubble! Timestamps: Getting the Finer Points of Your Google My Business Listing Right: A Conversation with Colleen Harris [00:08:20 - 00:24:26] How the COVID-19 SERP Hints at Google's Future [00:25:42 - 00:40:49] SEO News [00:40:49 - 00:45:39] Resources: In Search SEO Podcast Episode 19: rankranger.com/blog/in-search-seo-podcast-episode19 In Search SEO Podcast Episode 57: rankranger.com/blog/how-accurate-is-google Host: Mordy Oberstein twitter.com/MordyOberstein linkedin.com/in/mordy-oberstein-12551715/ Special Guest: Colleen Harris twitter.com/cdawg2610 linkedin.com/in/colleenaharris/ Follow the podcast on Twitter: twitter.com/InSearch_SEO Subscribe: ow.ly/sDkT50zjRPJ Presented by Rank Ranger: www.rankranger.com/

Crack search marketing reporter, George Nguyen, shares what covering the SEO industry looks like: · What goes into getting information out of Google? · How to find the SEO truth · How to find a happy medium between offering users both intrigue & reality Plus, we take a look at how COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on Google's algorithm! In this episode, we talk with George Nguyen, the associate editor at Search Engine Land. We go into what it's like to cover the SEO News. We begin with how George started in content marketing and worked his way to writing articles for Search Engine Land. Then we go into what it's like to ask questions to major companies like Google and Microsoft and how forthcoming with information they really are. George also walks us through ways to rectify the situation when you get something wrong (some great stories about his personal experience here). We also get into what the hardest stories to cover are and how to deal with haters (just shake them off). Lastly, we explore why Search Engine Land has adopted its unique article structure. Don't skip the first segment as we talk about the insane rank fluctuation patterns that occurred over the last 2 weeks. It seems Google's machine learning is working around the clock to figure out all of these new COVID-19 queries that it hasn't seen before. To that we'll get into some of the patterns we've seen and why we think Google has released so many updates in such a short amount of time. Timestamps: Is COVID-19 Driving Google's Algorithm Updates? [00:04:24 - 00:20:40] What Covering the SEO News Is Actually Like [00:21:05 - 01:00:40] SEO News [01:01:00 - 01:04:52] Resources: Rank Risk Index: rankranger.com/rank-risk-index TF-IDF Tool: rankranger.com/blog/tf-idf-seo-tool In Search SEO Podcast Episode 62: rankranger.com/blog/seo-work-life-balance In Search SEO Podcast Episode 65: https://www.rankranger.com/blog/confirmation-bias-seo Host: Mordy Oberstein twitter.com/MordyOberstein linkedin.com/in/mordy-oberstein-12551715/ Special Guest: George Nguyen twitter.com/geochingu linkedin.com/in/george-c-nguyen/ Presented by Rank Ranger: www.rankranger.com/

Today we welcome the podcast's first-ever repeat guest, the one the only, the magnificent and always pleasant Carolyn Lyden joins us to chat it up about the pros and cons of confirmation bias in digital marketing! · When confirmation bias works for and against your marketing efforts · The line between right and wrong when leveraging confirmation bias · How confirmation bias plays itself out in the Googleverse Plus, how Google's machine learning is assimilating COVID-19 topics into the search results. Resources: Signup Form for 3-Months free access to our reporting dashboards: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1C34OvLwEjWOMP4ORkJnb5l_DRkttDCsMDN1xo_ltpfQ/ #SEOChat: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Seochat&src=typed_query Marie Haynes Informal Survey: https://twitter.com/marie_haynes/status/1221791870952595457 Marketing Psychology: Avoiding Confirmation Bias in Digital Marketing: https://www.rankranger.com/blog/confirmation-bias-in-digital-marketing Host: Mordy Oberstein twitter.com/MordyOberstein linkedin.com/in/mordy-oberstein-12551715/ Special Guest: Carolyn Lyden twitter.com/CarolynLyden linkedin.com/in/carolynlyden/ Presented by Rank Ranger: www.rankranger.com/

Rachel Slovin of Kahena Digital chats with us all about how to push your SEO agency and/or SEO team forward and in difficult times. · Running an SEO team & agency during the good times as well as the bad times · How to be efficient with your team and resources · When growth makes sense, how to do scale-up Plus, we offer some tips on how to set yourself up for success when working at home as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. Resources: https://www.rankranger.com/blog/seo-work-life-balance https://www.rankranger.com/blog/onboarding-seo-clients https://twitter.com/aleyda/status/1239470143232753669 https://thecoronapub.com/ https://www.uberconference.com/room/mobilemoxie Host: Mordy Oberstein twitter.com/MordyOberstein linkedin.com/in/mordy-oberstein-12551715/ Special Guest: Rachel Slovin twitter.com/rachslov linkedin.com/in/rachelslovin/ Presented by Rank Ranger: www.rankranger.com/

Amy Toman joins the show to discuss how on-demand apps might be a bigger threat to your site's local traffic than you think: · Are on-demand apps stealing local traffic from small businesses? · Which local verticals are more susceptible to losing site traffic to apps? · How a bit of creativity can head off losing local site traffic Plus, our thoughts on what good rank tracking practices look like. Resources: https://moz.com/blog/how-low-can-number-one-go-2020 https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-challenges-moz-article/352078/ Host: Mordy Oberstein twitter.com/MordyOberstein linkedin.com/in/mordy-oberstein-12551715/ Special Guest: Amy Toman twitter.com/BubblesUp linkedin.com/in/amy-toman-25945047/ Presented by Rank Ranger: www.rankranger.com/

Kelly Stanze joins the show to discuss SEO, mental health, and maintaining a proper work-life balance. · Creating a healthy work-life balance while keeping a rigorous career in SEO · Dealing with the demands of SEO while struggling internally · What the SEO industry needs to do to advance mental health within the industry Resources: searchenginejournal.com/2020-seo-trends/338697/ searchenginejournal.com/mental-illness/324147/ Host: Mordy Oberstein twitter.com/MordyOberstein linkedin.com/in/mordy-oberstein-12551715/ Special Guest: Kelly Stanze twitter.com/KellyStanze linkedin.com/in/kellystanze/ Presented by Rank Ranger: www.rankranger.com/

Link superstar Cass Downton joins the show to share her wisdom on dealing with a less than optimal backlink profile: · At what point is your backlink profile unhealthy? · How effective is disavowing links & when is it applicable? · What's the connection between links, authority, and E-A-? Plus, we look at some tips to create content that Google's core updates will love! Host: Mordy Oberstein twitter.com/MordyOberstein linkedin.com/in/mordy-oberstein-12551715/ Special Guest: Cass Downton twitter.com/cassdownton https://www.mariehaynes.com/ Presented by Rank Ranger: www.rankranger.com/

Enterprise SEO rockstar Heather Physioc joins the show to share her strategy on creating SEO client buy-in: · How to systematically onboard new SEO clients · What to say and how to say it: Creating effective lines of communication · How to maintain and grow your relationships with your SEO clients Plus, we analyze what Google is doing when segmenting the News Box into multiple carousels! Host: Mordy Oberstein twitter.com/MordyOberstein linkedin.com/in/mordy-oberstein-12551715/ Special Guest: Heather Physioc twitter.com/HeatherPhysioc linkedin.com/in/heatherphysioc/ Presented by Rank Ranger: www.rankranger.com/