Google Search Engine Talk: SEO Explained

Feature Speaker

Links and Resources

• 6 Biggest Limitations of Google Search Console
• The 6 Biggest Limitations of Google Looker Studio and How to Overcome Them
• Adding the AI Advantage to Your B2B Lead and Account Scoring Maturity Framework

Transcript

0:15
Hello, everyone.

0:16
Thank you for tuning in to another session with us where we spend a lot of time talking about marketing data and anything that honestly gets more insights for you guys.

0:28
My name is Hershey and I am a lead product manager at the growth.

0:33
When I’m not busy doing a lot of the PM work.

0:36
Something that really excites me is just learning more and updating my knowledge and of course, marketing and technology goes so hand in hand in today’s world.

0:45
So today, I have two very, very experienced guest speakers with me.

0:51
We have Matthew who is an sco veteran with over 20 plus years of experience.

0:59
His experience is currently as a technical CEO consultant and partner at Element I, a consulting firm that specializes in technical Sco.

1:10
Matthew is also the author of Tech Sco Guide, which was published by a press in 2023.

1:18
And of course, you can connect with Matthew anytime on linkedin or on his website also.

1:24
So thank you so much for joining us today.

1:26
Matthew.

1:28
Thank you.

1:28
It’s great to be here.

1:30
Awesome.

1:31
And we also have our in-house specialist today that is our P VVA who is our product head and co-founder for D growth.

1:41
He’s had over 16 years of experience across data analytics, marketing and digital business transformation.

1:49
Ar P’s approach to marketing analytics is grounded in his belief that data should be used to make informed decisions.

1:56
And a lot of his focus goes into data quality and A I use cases for marketing.

2:02
So he also gets to work very closely with cross functional teams, including marketing, product analytics.

2:08
And all of this work is just to make sure that he drives growth and he can improve customer experiences.

2:14
So thank you again for joining us today, Arpit, thanks for hanging.

2:19
How you go?

2:21
It’s such a pleasure to always have you.

2:23
And today we have our special guest Matthew also.

2:26
So I am super excited to write like dive right in, I think because given both of your experience in like, you know, the sco field, I think a lot of us are like understanding it as a keyword.

2:43
Now, Seo comes up anytime you talk about marketing seo is like something that started to pop up more and more over the years.

2:51
But a good idea is always sort of to backtrack and learn about the history.

2:56
So I guess Matthew in your experience, how has the evolution of SUO been and what have you seen in your experience so far?

3:07
Yeah, I, I think what’s interesting to me is I think back on the history of SEO is, there’s a lot of ways that it’s changed, but there’s also some ways that it just hasn’t evolved.

3:17
You know, it’s certainly at a high level.

3:20
The premise of Seo has always been the same thing.

3:24
The premise of Seo is you want to build a really good site with really good content that people who are interested in that particular subject matter want to find.

3:33
And a search engine is just a way to connect a really good website to people who are interested in what that website has to offer.

3:40
So that statement about Seo is just as applicable 20 years ago as it is today.

3:47
But what I think is interesting though is that how sco has evolved is that it’s really a better job paying off on that premise now than it has in the past.

3:57
And so you look at the things Google has done over the last couple of decades as they’ve started to do the search world as they’ve started to dominate the Seo space.

4:09
Google has done a better job actually figuring out how you figure out what sites are high quality, how you figure out what sites are actually worth ranking or not because you go back early days.

4:20
Yes, Google did a lot of things to try and surface, you know, good high quality websites and they tried to do things to filter out bad websites, but it was hard to do because the technology was really limited.

4:31
It was easier to game.

4:32
The system search results weren’t that good and it didn’t really live up to the full potential of what search is.

4:39
And what’s really interesting is to see how it’s evolved, especially over the last decade here since Google roll about the panda update in 2011 and the penguin update in 2012 where they really started cracking down on people who were charting, trying to cheat the system, trying to say, you know, hey, you know, we’re not going to let you get away with trying to game things.

5:00
We’re not going to let you get away with low quality stuff.

5:03
And really since then, since 2011, 2012, it has gotten better at really cracking down on that and actually delivering, you know, better search results and rewarding better quality websites and making sure that better quality websites are able to rank better in search trial.

5:20
It’s not perfect.

5:21
There’s still plenty of work to do, but I think that’s really good to see that search has actually gotten better.

5:29
Google has gotten better over the last 20 years and it’s made search and just a better experience.

5:35
It’s made search, you know, a better thing for businesses to actually engage with.

5:39
It means that you actually have customers that you can get from engaging in seo work and you’re not having to contend with, you know, people who are, are just kind of spamming the system as much Google has really transitioned into.

5:54
No, this is a tool for actual businesses to use to find customers.

5:58
And that’s why, like you said, I mean, search now is everywhere people are talking about.

6:03
Seo.

6:05
and that’s probably the other thing that I’ve seen from an evolution standpoint that’s resulted from this is that businesses actually want to invest in Seo now, they see a need for it where you go back 10 years, they still were kind of questioning why, you know, why would I invest in this?

6:22
But there’s so many more companies now that have in House Se Os, they have whole SEO departments, they have VPs of Se Os directors of Se Os.

6:31
And it’s because, you know, Google has gotten better at actually delivering better websites.

6:37
So to me, that’s a problem.

6:38
One of the more interesting evolutions is that Google has gotten better at really rewarding good quality sites and finally doing what search has always tried to do.

6:49
Mhm.

6:50
That’s awesome.

6:51
Yeah, I kind of agree.

6:52
To Matthew, one thing has not really changed is content is still the king.

6:58
And it’s always even Google says that clearly that don’t work for Google bot work for your end users, what they care.

7:06
What, what are their pain points and really map out those intents and create experience that can really solve their challenges so that hasn’t really changed.

7:17
And what has really changed is Google’s ability to interpret what is right and what is wrong and what is Black hat?

7:25
What is Gray Hat?

7:27
And then that’s why there is no shortcuts.

7:30
You’ve got to be in depth, you got to be an expert in your area so that you get the attention of people or audience that you’re after.

7:41
Yeah.

7:43
And I, I think you’re right to say like content is king now.

7:46
And what’s interesting is I, I remember early early on, you know, I, I remember people, you know, way back in the day early two thousands when they would talk about seo they wouldn’t say content escape.

7:59
They said links are K and content.

8:01
Oh yeah.

8:01
Yeah, you, you need content too, but really it’s down to links.

8:04
That conversation has changed.

8:05
Like people have forgotten about links.

8:07
I think most people have who are actually doing sco right?

8:11
But that might have been a little too cynical.

8:13
I don’t know.

8:14
But you know that there has been that shift away from links and there is now that focus on, on content.

8:20
So, you know, and that, that’s really, you know, great to see that that truly now content is, is king as you said, I mean, i it’s really great that we’re finally at that point where like, yes, we can have good, good content actually being rewarded.

8:36
Yeah.

8:37
Yeah.

8:37
And that’s awesome to hear.

8:39
I mean, I’m sure a lot of the early adopters of sco have definitely made a lot of like, you know, utilization and seen good results out of this.

8:50
I’m sure also and then just to be able to see that we’re at a point officially now where like, you know, contents rewarded again and it’s not just a focus on like, hey, let me just, you know, do the linking, right?

9:03
And that’s just the focus, I think bringing it back to the content is really important.

9:09
And I guess just to sort of continue this.

9:12
So we went over the past but like are, but is there any like, you know, particular example that you’ve seen maybe working with your recent clients just a pattern or like observation about the current situation now?

9:27
Yeah, I’m like, there has been some some pattern that we could see.

9:32
So somewhere around March this year itself, we have seen drop in organic traffic across multiple clients.

9:41
And when we tried to get into details what we really found that there was a major update that happened.

9:49
And generally these like broad code updates happen every few months.

9:54
I mean, like Matthew brought in some of the examples like penguin, panda, maybe bird and hummingbird.

10:02
So all those interesting changes.

10:04
And there was one that happened this month and what we really realized is that now Google has, is playing a, a very significant importance to what they call as Eeat, which essentially stands for expertise, experience, authority and trustworthiness.

10:28
And then xe that expertise, I think it is going to matter a lot, which means gone are those days where you sort of outsource certain content and you are just doing a random post.

10:45
You got to have people in your panel who actually know the stuff and they write about it, they talk about it.

10:52
The content could be in various shape and form.

10:55
It could be like a podcast that we are doing right now.

10:57
It could be a blog post, it could be something that we can create info infographic out of it.

11:04
But so that, that is, that’s the emphasis that we we are actually recommending to clients as well and that should be quite visible in your website.

11:15
So if you have like a blog or resources or article sections, we are ensuring that all the important people who have the real background are there and they are also contributing proactively on that.

11:30
This could be even a task that you should have with, with your senior management as well.

11:37
Probably th those are the people who have understanding about the industry.

11:43
And then when they write about something, it, it will, it will really resonate.

11:47
So we need to build that profile in the eyes of Google as well because now they, they really care about it.

11:57
And another thing that we’ve noticed is how you organize the whole content in te in terms of information architecture, I mean, that was there.

12:08
But then now what we’re really suggesting is what we call as more like a pillar cluster approach.

12:14
which means that you got to have like a broad topic or, and to topic that covers the overarching theme and then you really come up with some pillar pages or clusters of content pieces that sort of support each other and it no more, you can have a flat structure of the website where you have something on the top and then you keep on adding more content so that structure is going to be playing a vital role.

12:45
And so I think those are like good one tactically to, to be considered off late Matthew.

12:52
Do you have any anything to add?

12:55
I think you’re right.

12:56
I mean, those are the big things that, you know, Google is focusing on in particular eeat.

13:01
And, and even just here in the end of 2023 with the never ending series of algorithm updates, Google is throwing at us with the ones in August and then helpful content in September and then the core updates in October and now again in November, Google is focusing more on eea, I think they’ve gotten better at really programmatically understanding what expertise looks like, what experience looks like what authoritativeness looks like, what trustworthiness looks like and how figure those things that you mentioned.

13:34
Like Bet mom was the other one that they rolled out a couple of years ago to just understand language in a, in a better way and, and be able to process language in a way that’s more similar to how humans are able to process language and they’re able to interpret things and the sites who gained in these algorithm updates here are the sites that are doing that that are demonstrating eeat factors more successfully and really demonstrating their expertise.

14:03
And it, you know, it’s not hard stuff to figure out.

14:08
Like how do you demonstrate expertise, experience authoritativeness, trustfulness.

14:11
Like these are things that people have been trying to figure out how you demonstrate since long before anybody ever heard about Google, long before anybody knew what a website was.

14:21
You know, long before I made a computer was right.

14:22
Businesses have always had to figure out how you demonstrate that you’re you’re trustworthy.

14:28
But Google’s gotten better at that.

14:30
I, I think you’re right too about like the pillar cluster approach because that, that lends itself to being able to demonstrate authority by having clusters of information, having those, you know, strong pillar pages.

14:41
You demonstrate, hey, I know this subject really well, I know that this stuff matters and I know how to talk about this subject and I know how to demonstrate this.

14:53
and, and you have a completeness to that, that, that comes from that kind of information architecture and in structuring your site in that way.

15:01
So you are able to say, you know, hey, I’m an expert and I have the content about these things and, and you can really, you know, prove that out.

15:09
And so using the information architecture in that way on the website to, to be able to prove that out is really important.

15:16
And the sites that have done that have tended to be the sites that I’ve seen.

15:19
At least I’m curious what you’ve seen, but the, I’ve seen those sites tend to benefit more from these recent algorithm updates.

15:28
Where, where Google is kind of saying, yeah, we, we get it.

15:31
You, you are actually, you know, doing a really good job with this and the sites that don’t do it or don’t communicate that correctly.

15:38
They, they’ve lost a little bit from the algorithm updates.

15:40
What, what have you seen in these algorithm updates and how Google’s treating eeat factors?

15:46
Yeah, I think like there has been sort of a mixed results.

15:50
So one pattern that I’ve seen is certain pages and posts across our clients that were driving a lot of traffic, organic traffic, specifically, it completely tanked.

16:04
So, somewhere in March, April, and what it really means that what whatever was working earlier, there has been some change.

16:14
But one thing is specifically we picked up was those articles that post that were maybe written a couple of years back and that they were consistently garnering you traffic.

16:29
They, they need some refresh and that’s the signal we got.

16:33
And what we did was we really recommended our clients and make that happen in terms of refreshing that content, ensuring that you also sort of mention that when it was last updated.

16:45
So that also gives a signal that the information is still up to date.

16:50
You can still rely on it.

16:52
and things like that, it might sound tactical but it does work for sure, you know, content.

17:01
Yeah.

17:02
Sorry, go ahead.

17:04
No, go on, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.

17:08
Yeah, especially with helpful content is where you see the, the out of date, you know, you know, content really getting hurt and when you look at that, I, I, what’s kind of surprising to me is that it’s not even that old necessarily in some cases, you know, in some cases I, I’ve seen sites that have lost traffic because it’s outdated.

17:32
They last updated it six months ago or within a year, but particularly in, you know, certain topics like finance or health or anything that falls under the, the mo categories, your money, your life.

17:45
Yeah.

17:45
Who wants that updated really often?

17:48
And, and so I, I’ve seen some companies say, you know, what, we just have a cadence of, we have this topic that we’re talking about.

17:55
You know, it’s about health, it’s about finance, whatever you have to update it every month or every quarter and, and you just have to keep it updated even outside of the animal.

18:04
I’ve seen that.

18:05
I too,, theory personally on my website, on my blog.

18:10
Right.

18:10
I talked about seo subjects.

18:11
I talked about, you know, tech subjects, programming stuff that I’ve seen start to lose a little bit of traffic is stuff that is quote unquote older content that, you know, was updated several months ago.

18:24
But by refreshing it, you know, even though it was, it’s refreshed, you know, earlier this year, able to bring traffic back.

18:31
And, and so I think that’s a very good point to, to bring up about eight day content.

18:36
And I always just like to underscore that content doesn’t mean it’s very old.

18:41
Like we’re not talking about content from years ago.

18:43
We’re maybe talking about content from months ago.

18:46
You know, which is just a very different perspective to have.

18:49
Yeah.

18:51
Yeah.

18:51
And I think overall, like both of you have mentioned now that like Google has evolved a lot and you’ve seen a lot of improvements.

19:01
But I just wanna ask, like, do you still see any limitations, like are there any limitations in the data provided by the Google search console?

19:11
And is like, you know, but maybe you can help answer this, like where do you see these limitations if any?

19:19
Yeah, I mean, like when it comes to specifically the search data, I think we don’t have a lot of choices, at least for our own website.

19:28
We have to rely on Google search console.

19:31
It is definitely your goal source to really get some insights.

19:38
The challenge with, with the data is it’s pretty siloed, which means that it only just talks about Google, it just only talks about the organic traffic.

19:49
And that’s it, it doesn’t talk about conversions, it doesn’t really touch us to what really business cares, which is a data that generally sits in your CRM system.

20:00
So that is like a biggest challenge in my view.

20:05
And that said, like almost 10 years back, I would say, Google even stopped sending this data to other web analytics to like Google analytics or even Adobe Analytics, even if you bought like a million dollar Adobe Antics, that keyword data, you will still have to rely to search console.

20:24
So that is kind of creating a lot of limitations.

20:27
So you got to have some, some kind of work around that can really stitch data across your what’s really happening in search?

20:38
And is it really leading us to get some inbound leads?

20:43
And are those inbound leads really converting and giving you revenue if you can do a close loop there?

20:50
that would be great in my view.

20:53
But yeah, Matthew would like to hear from you like what sort of limitations you are seeing?

21:00
Yeah, I mean, you talked about the performance side.

21:02
, and I totally agree.

21:03
I mean, there are a lot of limits there and what Google offers.

21:06
So you have to find those other tools.

21:08
The other place that Google search console is really limited is what they tell you about.

21:13
The, the technical structure of the website, the page indexing report, the crawl stats report and Google search console.

21:18
They’re limited to a sample of pages.

21:20
It, it can be insightful to look at that and say, oh, ok, you know, II I see that, you know, these issues exist or I see this is why Google isn’t, you know, maybe indexing, you know, certain pages on my side or I can see and cross thats what Google is, you know, looking at on my site, but you’re limited to a sample of pages.

21:39
, and, and Google doesn’t show everything in there.

21:41
And so here again, you have to rely on other tools to get a real complete sense of what’s going on.

21:48
Yeah, you take something like page index or reports.

21:50
Yes, that’s insightful.

21:52
And you can get some ideas in there.

21:53
But you have to go look at the website in a crawl tool.

21:57
You have to go really dig into the website, diagnose the website in other ways using other tools, you can’t solely rely on Google search console.

22:05
It’s a good starting point, but it’s not a tool that in and of itself is going to be enough to understand what’s going on with the website.

22:13
And, and particularly when I’m doing a tech seo audit or, or digging into something, you know, it’s just not enough to, to stop there.

22:21
Same thing with crawl stats, you know, it’s a good high level.

22:25
Look at what’s Google may be crawling on the website, but you have to open up the log files on the website and actually dig into the logs and say, ok, what’s going on here?

22:35
The log file gives you a detailed record of every single file Google requested.

22:39
There’s no sampling in there.

22:41
So you download the log files from your hosting company.

22:43
You open those up, you start going through those really interesting data in there that tells you what Google is doing at the very fundamental level of crawling the website.

22:52
You’re gonna get so much more information than you can within Google search console’s crawl stats report.

22:58
So, yes, Google search console is good.

23:01
Yes, there are good things you can get out of there but don’t stop there, you know, don’t, don’t let that be the only thing you’re looking at.

23:08
You have to go beyond that both on the performance side.

23:11
But then also on the the technical side to understand really what’s happening on the website and what you need to do, what are the problems?

23:18
What are the opportunities that exist?

23:19
You’re, you’re just not gonna get enough of that out of search console.

23:24
Definitely.

23:25
And I think like, of course, these limitations really impact like, you know, the decision makers and the ones that are really working on the strategy.

23:34
So I think you got, you met, you mentioned a great point for them to like not just stop at like, you know, GSC like the there’s more that they should and they should dig out more in just to get that clarity because it is out there, it’s not everybody that goes in that depth to like sort of analyze and get the results.

23:53
So I guess here, I’d love to ask maybe Arpit like, you know, if there are any strategies that you might have that would help like in complementing GSC data with maybe other analytics tools.

24:07
Yeah, definitely like Matthew mentioned, there are a variety of tools I come from a performance marketing background.

24:13
So I always stress on c business guys, people who are studying the C suite, they don’t care about CTR legs and impressions.

24:24
And if ranking is improving or not, what they really care is, is it impacting my pipeline?

24:29
Is it impacting my revenue numbers?

24:33
So I think what we really need is an ability to really connect all that great data in search console with the end outcome.

24:44
And there are platforms like the growth out there that can even give you an ability to connect revenue cluster, keyword clusters with the actual revenue.

24:54
So you know, like which are my broader theme of or topics or content that are actually resonating and not only just engagement wise, but also impacting the bottom line so that you you can further augment your content strategy likewise and really double down on areas where where you see there is attraction and not just of vanity metrics.

25:18
Yeah.

25:19
And I think when we look at the hierarchy chart, like of course, somebody who is within marketing, within sco they know so much information, have so much knowledge in depth about it.

25:29
But if you trickle down to like the other decision makers, like your CEO would probably just wanna care about the revenue aspect, right?

25:37
They’re probably not the ones wanting to dig through all of this data to understand they wanna see tangible results and see like, you know, what, where is the revenue attribution that’s coming from this.

25:48
So for who’s like within the CEO CFO sort of board of directors even I think having a tool like that would be beneficial because it helps you like making these conversations a lot easier than just like giving like very nitty gritty or technical aspect of the data that only maybe the subject matter specialists are aware about.

26:12
Yeah.

26:13
And then that goes for anyone who’s actually part of a team that person should have some of the analytics skills and maybe start off by working with your data team.

26:24
And there could be a variety of use cases that you can basically activate.

26:29
So for example, one thing we, we did a lot of our clients is that and it’s, it goes back almost 10 years.

26:37
The you have a lot of authors and each of those authors are publishing content, how you are evaluating their performance.

26:45
So can we do kind of an author tracking and really see against authors?

26:49
What’s the traffic, their blog posts holistically are driving?

26:54
And is it really impacting like in terms of inbound leads and revenue?

27:00
So that could be one area and the other area?

27:03
I would say that we should not really restrict into that su silo area but really expand because here in growth native, specifically what we call is one search strategy, which means that some of the learnings that you’ve got from su in terms of the keywords that can be applied to the P PC as well, lengthy paid search advertising, right?

27:27
And vice versa, your paid search guide will have a lot of data that could tell which keywords are driving real value.

27:36
And that could be your pri prioritization input in your SEO strategy.

27:41
And then once you have that, once you get all that traffic, I think one area that people really fall flat is that they just celebrate the traffic as is coming and we are seeing 30% increase in organic traffic.

27:53
That’s it.

27:54
I think from there, the things actually you start, you got to see that which experience they are landing in.

28:00
And then what are the next best actions that you are populating in terms of CTAs, in terms of forms and offers?

28:07
So there’s a whole lot of cro activity that is very much required if you really want to be a full, full full blow performance marketer, which means you not only care about traffic, you not only care about ranking, you are actually going full circle in the sense that how is my traffic converting into leads?

28:29
Are these leads good or bad and then getting even a feedback from your sales reps, right?

28:35
That OK, last month we brought in 50 leads from Seo, what is the feedback?

28:42
And then that feedback loop can really help you understand business better and craft better seo strategy.

28:49
Yeah, I think definitely like the holistic approach is very important because these are not like, you know, separate aspects of a business.

28:57
If you want to see results, the integration of all of these pipelines starting from the sco to even the sales, it’s very important.

29:05
And then of course data and not having the silo data plays such a huge role in this.

29:11
Yeah, with all of this talk about data right now.

29:14
I would honestly love to get your thoughts Matthew on.

29:18
Where do you see?

29:19
Like, you know, we’ve talked about the history, we’ve talked about the present like case scenario of Seo.

29:27
But where do you see the future of Seo as well as analytics and like, you know, what role does it play there?

29:35
I think the biggest thing I I see coming for the future is that we’re quickly approaching a future where data will be more restricted with, with this, obviously, we talked about the limits from Google search console.

29:49
The things Google has taken away and how you have to come on them with other tools, the sampling in Google search console, but then there’s also limits, they’re going to be coming in to analytics tools because of privacy laws, because of people wanting to turn off analytics tools, people wanting to turn off tracking, they want to opt out of these things.

30:10
And so we’re quickly approaching a future where we won’t have as much data to rely on and that’s going to make it harder to make decisions about what do we need to do?

30:20
Obviously use as many tools as you can get as much data as you can.

30:24
But I, I think the future is going to be a world where we are trying to make decisions without as much data as we have been used to in the past.

30:35
And I went to when we will take away keywords you know, 10 years or so years ago, as a good example of this, they took away keywords data, they didn’t start sending that to us.

30:45
And we were forced to say, OK, how do we think about this differently?

30:49
How do we, you know, get other data?

30:52
How do we learn something else?

30:53
There’s obviously other tools that can give you some of those insights, but it did start to shift your mindset to you had to think about, well, what pages are people going to?

31:01
And you had to start looking at how are people engaging in the page or converting on a page?

31:06
And so to me, I look at this loss of data.

31:08
Yeah, it’s a problem but it’s also an opportunity to say, OK, what are the other things that I, I can start to understand?

31:13
What are the other things that I can be?

31:15
One of the things I’ve seen people start to shift into doing is doing more user interviews, more usability testing, more talking to your actual customer and saying, what do you want on the website and using that as a way to understand?

31:31
How do I construct, how do I design my website?

31:34
How do I build things on the website?

31:36
And by really going and, and having to talk to your customers, you know, you’re not gonna have as much data.

31:42
It’s more qualitative data set.

31:44
You can only talk to, you know, 510 or so customers in, you know, a reasonable amount of time or you can only send a survey to so many people collect that kind of information from so many people.

31:57
But the of that information gives you a lot of new insights into what you can do on your website.

32:04
So I think as we approach this world with potentially less data, there are other ways we can get that information, not the same information we’ve been used to, but enough information to make pretty informed decisions about what we need to do on the website.

32:18
, same as true.

32:19
On the technical side, we maybe don’t have all the details that we used to or that we want, about how Google is doing certain things on the site.

32:27
But we can dig into log files, we can dig into, you know, the site structure, we can use crawl tools, we have other opportunities to go and, and get this information even if Google isn’t providing all the details that, that we want for giving us all the information that we want.

32:43
And so I think that’s actually yes, it’s frustrating in some respects because on my word, just give us all the data.

32:49
But there’s also plenty of opportunity that comes from that to say, wait, how do I go somewhere else and potentially somewhere better?

32:56
I I actually think doing usability testing or user interviews or just talking to your customer is way more insightful sometimes than what you could get out of, you know, opening up an analytics world because you can hear actual things people are saying and you, you can, you know, build really interesting things based on, you know, that kind of feedback that you’re getting, of course.

33:15
And I think like often times like it is limitations like this, that sort of lead to more innovation and more innovative solutions that are like, you know, really like making a huge difference.

33:26
So as we do talk about the future, maybe you can shed some light on this.

33:31
What do you think are like another emerging trends?

33:34
And are there any technologies particular that you see like, you know, growing more in 2024 and maybe near future with within the sco field?

33:45
Yeah, I definitely think that there would be a lot more automation possibilities and with all that A I capabilities that are coming into picture, it is it is not a choice, you have to definitely adopt some of those.

34:01
So I mean, like the search results that we see on Google, they are driven by some machine learning algorithms, right?

34:11
And then we, we tend to like analyze those results manually, but I’m sure that in future and there are tools right now as well that can really help you understand why the top 10 results are like that and what you can do in your website and where are the gaps I mean, like that can be like a project for 5 to 10 days, but that kind of analysis can be done in matters of hours.

34:39
So that’s that, that sort of automation is definitely coming and people who don’t really talk will be left behind.

34:47
the other area which I am closer to, which is more around data.

34:52
I think the the the conversational A I aspect that is going to be in rise in the sense that people really are frustrated with so many reporting options and then data being here and there like you have to go to 10 different systems to really make a report that executive can really understand.

35:15
So you need a consolidation there and especially on the conversational A I, we, we can really expect that somehow if you raise a business question today, a chat bot can answer that then and there.

35:31
So give me a top 20% of keywords that are driving my 80% of revenue from or organ traffic.

35:38
I mean, that can probably take 23 hours for you to really bring in all that data, blend it with a certain revenue system that maybe it it CRM data but can a chatbot answer it in two minutes?

35:50
It can there’s fair possibility and we are actually working on similar projects and it is it, it won’t be impractical use case to really crack.

36:01
That’s awesome.

36:02
Yeah.

36:03
I think a lot of us, like, our focus is to, like, be as effective but also efficient with our time to get that effectiveness and like technology and especially now A I has been playing such a huge role in, like, just automating certain things and making sure like, you know, it’s taking a lot less time to get the results that we want, otherwise we would have had to do a lot of these things manually.

36:30
But Matthew, what are your thoughts?

36:31
Do you agree with this?

36:33
Do you sort of see these like, you know, technology or is there like, you know, something else that you foresee?

36:40
Yeah, I will definitely be the big changer in this space.

36:46
And I think, you know, along with the, the way it’s gonna change things on the operational side, how you analyze data, how you understand things, how you diagnose problems.

36:56
you know, you have a lot of those opportunities starting to grow.

37:00
There’s also the way that A I is going to change search results directly.

37:04
You see bing experimenting with a conversational approach to search, you see Google experimenting with the search generative experience or sge where they’re putting that in actual search results and they’re actually showing A I generated content as a response to somebody’s query and that’s really gonna change, you know, what search is and what’s not yet clear with that is how that’s going to affect graphics from search, there’s a future in which that may not, you know, hurt traffic very much at all.

37:40
So if Google or Bing are able to say, OK, here’s a generated response, here’s content summarizing this thing.

37:47
But then here’s websites, you should go and look out for more information that could still help drive traffic.

37:53
But there’s also a possible future here where it hurts traffic.

37:56
And this is something you need to be really mindful of.

37:58
Because if Google is gonna provide that response in the search result and they’re going to say, hey, here’s the answer to your question.

38:07
Here’s this recipe that you’re looking for.

38:09
Here’s the steps to do this thing that you’re looking for.

38:12
Here’s the, the pros and cons to analyze this product that you’re reviewing or whatever it is.

38:17
Why go to a website?

38:18
Why do I need to go anywhere else?

38:19
Google is giving me a complete answer there.

38:22
So it’s not clear yet to me what future we’re, we’re going to to be.

38:29
And if, if we’re in a future where this starts to really hurt search performance or this is a future where it may actually help search performance, chances are it’s gonna be a little bit of both.

38:39
But it’s something that we have to really be mindful of and, and watch.

38:43
And so what I’ve been telling clients to do is, you know, look at your, your search results.

38:47
Where is, you know, Google starting to really surface the, the SS G experience.

38:53
And what does that look like for your site?

38:55
Is that something that’s potentially going to help traffic or not some of the, the clients I work with?

39:00
I mean, they’re already starting to see traffic, take a little bit of the dip on terms that you have, you know, more of those transgender of experiences.

39:09
And so that’s something to just kind of be mindful of here too is how this is going to change.

39:15
What that, that really looks like and, and how we’ll need to work with that.

39:21
My guess is good will be mindful of that.

39:23
They don’t want to take away traffic because they know as soon as they start taking away traffic, people are gonna say, hey, no, you, you can’t use my content and not give me traffic for this.

39:33
But at the same time there, there’s gonna be a transition point to get there and it’s, I, I don’t know what that transition point is exactly going to look like or how that’s going to play out for organic performance at this point.

39:46
So it’ll be really interesting to see how that really plays out what this, you know, where this really ends up going, you know, in the future or not, but, you know, regardless and A I is going to be a, a very big thing to keep an eye on over the next year and, and beyond.

40:04
Yeah.

40:04
And what I have been like, sort of taking from this conversation.

40:08
Like, I guess both of you agree that A I is here to stay and just a question that I happen to have is like we mentioned, we talked about how content is king.

40:19
Would that still be the case with all of the involvement of A?

40:23
I?

40:24
Now I know it’s become like chat GP D is something like everybody from someone going to school to someone in the workforce, everybody’s using, everybody’s talking about.

40:35
I personally think like when they only have a paid version, I’ll be prompted to even pay for it because that’s how much like, you know, reliance I have built on it just in a very short amount of time.

40:47
So do you guys happen to think like, you know, content will still be King?

40:52
Like how would like, you know, do you think Google will have developed the smartness to sort of be able to like distinguish that this is actual creative content that someone’s taken the time to write or this is something Chad GP D just wrote in like, you know, three seconds.

41:10
So just one of your guys’ thoughts on that.

41:13
Yeah.

41:13
Well, like just to Ch in here, I think we talked about the extra e that Google art which is experience, right?

41:22
So that hands on knowledge is going to be far more important to gain that top tropical authority that we all strive for.

41:32
but that said, I think we should still leverage some of these tools in the sense that they can help you be more efficient.

41:41
For example, internally when we hand over certain topics and content, we can get more in depth in terms of what all we should cover as an initial input, whosoever is writing it.

41:56
So there are, there are ways to be more efficient.

41:59
But I think at the same time, Google is also getting more intelligent and understanding.

42:05
Am I really crawling or indexing the content which is written by somebody who has got the hands on experience?

42:13
Yeah.

42:13
Mhm Yeah.

42:17
II, I would just echo that but I think it is eeat that comes in here very much.

42:24
So as as Google is evaluating content and if you’re gonna use Chan G BT or Anthropic or any of these other tools to help you write the content on your website, you can’t just, you know, copy and paste the result from that.

42:38
You have to layer in your expertise, you have to layer in your experience, you have to layer in your knowledge for this to, to enhance that.

42:48
And, and well, I don’t think Google is necessarily going to be able to always perfectly decide, oh, this was written by Chat GP T or not.

42:57
What Google will figure out is, oh, this was written by an expert or not.

43:01
And So that’s where as you look at the content.

43:04
Yeah, by all means, use these tools gain efficiency.

43:07
Is there that, that’s fantastic.

43:08
You should do that.

43:09
But don’t let that be the only thing you’re you’re doing to generate the content.

43:14
Google’s gonna be able to figure that out.

43:17
And the other piece to that too is that wall chat GP T is an amazing piece of technology and it is, you know, so incredible what it’s able to do.

43:26
It makes things up.

43:27
It is not accurate.

43:29
You know, I if you go through and you read something, it says it is going to tell you things that are just not true.

43:35
And if you copy and paste that information over, you just rely on that as the only source that is, you know, going to result in a lot of untrustworthy content on your website.

43:46
It’s going to result in a lot of misinformation.

43:50
and, and it’s going to, you know, be something that nobody’s really gonna want to read.

43:54
It’s not going to be anything that, you know, Google is going to want to rank.

43:57
So that’s where if you are going to generate from that, you have an expert review that please have somebody who knows the subject go through and, and look at that fact, check that information.

44:08
I know for things that I’ve played into it about seo things that’s come back on maybe were correct 10 years ago, but it’s inaccurate where it’s missing a lot of the nuances that, you know, an expert would be able to look at and say, well, you know, let, let you know, maybe, you know, adjust this a little bit or do something here.

44:27
So it all really, to me comes back to those eeat factors of yes, use these tools.

44:33
Sure.

44:34
But, you know, absolutely make sure that you’re, you’re factoring in the, the experience, the expertise, the authoritativeness, the trustworthiness pieces of this to make sure that the content is actually, you know, worth reading.

44:47
Equally too, if you are using these tools to just help you, you know, as an alternative to searching things.

44:54
I’ve seen a lot of people start to do that.

44:56
Instead of going to Google, they go to Chat GPT to start understanding questions.

45:00
Google’s actually done a lot of work to figure out what information is accurate and they do a good job surfacing that in search results not perfectly, but they do a pretty good job.

45:09
Chat GPT hasn’t done that work yet.

45:12
I don’t know if they actually are capable of of doing that work just given the nature of how machine learning works, how these language models work.

45:20
Maybe eventually they will figure things out to get rid of hallucinations to get rid of these inaccuracies.

45:26
But that’s something just more generally, I think we all need to be aware of that.

45:31
Like we can’t just trust what chat GP T is doing and that’s true whether it’s content being generated code being generated.

45:37
Math problems being solved in chat GP T whatever it is, you know, you can’t just, you know, assume that this is, this is 100% accurate.

45:45
Definitely.

45:46
Now, thank you so much.

45:48
I think this in general has been such an insightful session.

45:52
I know I have gotten to learn a lot just hearing you guys talk.

45:56
So the having an expert and the trustworthiness, I already see the impact of that.

46:03
So thank you so much.

46:04
Both Matthew and Arpit for joining me today and just, you know, having this wonderful discussion.

46:11
I know we started off with like, you know, the history, we went to the present, we sort of, you know, covered limitations, but I also went to the future and like some limitations that might still happen in the future.

46:23
So I think for, you know, anyone that is in this industry, this talk would have been really insightful.

46:31
So really appreciate you guys, you know, taking the time to do this any last like, you know, remarks, any closing, like thoughts that you guys might have today jump in and say that I, I think as you think about Seo and the where it’s been, where it’s at, where it’s going, the, the thing that I come back to with Seo is that it’s not about specific tactics, it’s not about specific things, you need to do.

47:00
What SEO is really all about is making good high quality websites that people want to visit and Google for their part has gotten better about figuring out what’s a good high quality website.

47:12
So when you are approaching Seo, when you’re approaching things, yes, you can think about the tactics.

47:18
Yes, you can think about the details.

47:20
That’s good.

47:20
You should get there but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture that what you ultimately want to do as an seo is just make the website a better thing for people to come to, you know, have a better user experience, have better content, have better structures on the website, have better information architecture, have better underlying technology that loads faster and all the things just focus on making the website better if you focus there and you don’t even think about all the independent seo tactics and the individual things that you could be doing.

47:52
I if you just make the website better, you’re probably gonna do pretty good from a search standpoint.

47:58
Yeah, I completely equal whatever Matthew said there’s no magic pill.

48:04
You’ve got to work hard, you’ve got to be hands on and you’ve got to be consistent and then that will be relevant from what I’ve been understanding these updates and you know, making sure you’re refreshing things is so much more important than like, you know, I’ve done it.

48:19
I’ve written my piece, it was a good piece.

48:21
It will generate the traffic.

48:23
I think that’s also so important.

48:25
Right?

48:27
For sure.

48:29
Yeah.

48:29
And if you’re not generating relevant content, you’re not generating something that people want to read.

48:35
It’s not gonna show up there even if you’re not writing it in the way that people want to, to read that It’s not gonna show up, it’s not gonna rank in search results.

48:43
You have to have that relevancy first and foremost.

48:46
So when you know, they say, oh, content is King.

48:49
Really?

48:50
That the cave out there is relevant content is King.

48:54
Yeah.

48:55
Yeah.

48:56
Thank you so, so much guys for taking the time to do this.

49:00
Again.

49:00
I think again, it was a very insightful session and I’m hoping like, you know, the people that tune in to listen to this also feel the same.

49:10
So just wanna like, you know, honestly open the stage also, like, since we are doing a lot of these webcasts and podcasts recently, we just also want to say that we’re open to feedback as we continue to grow.

49:23
This is another platform that we’re using just to serve and provide more information too.

49:28
So if people have feedback, we’d be happy to, you know, hear about that.

49:32
Also, I know you both will also be happy to be connected on linkedin.

49:38
So when this will be posted, I’m sure if anybody have more questions or want to gain more insights, I guess both of you would be happy to, you know, have at them on linkedin and have those conversations.

49:52
Sure.

49:54
Yeah.

49:54
Awesome.

49:56
So thank you again for taking the time to do this and thank you for everyone that tuned in to let you know, listen to this conversation and I hope you guys gained something insightful because I sure did.

50:07
So.

50:07
Thank you so much.

50:09
Great.

50:09
Thanks a lot.

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