Search with Candour: Recent Episodes
Mark Williams-Cook
Working in search marketing? Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers bring you the important bits of news and information you need to know about SEO and PPC every week. Plus interviews with some of the world's leading SEO & PPC experts!
In this week's episode of Search with Candour, Jack Chambers-Ward sits down with Manuel Madeddu to discuss the importance of a holistic approach to web performance.
They delve into the significance of connecting various elements such as SEO, user experience, and sustainability for optimal web performance.
Manuel shares his insights on adapting to the evolving search landscape, the critical metrics to monitor, and the significance of bridging the gap between different departments.
Follow Manuel
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuel-madeddu/
- Carpet Joe: www.carpetjoe.com
00:00 Introduction to AI and SEO
00:57 Welcome to Search With Candour
02:30 Guest Introduction: Manuel Madeddu
04:54 The Importance of a Holistic Approach
07:23 Web Performance and Sustainability
14:03 The Evolution of Search and SEO
35:58 Balancing UX, Design, and SEO
41:58 The Importance of Accessibility in Web Development
44:15 Real-World Examples of Accessibility Challenges
47:50 The Role of Legislation in Accessibility
48:25 Colorblindness and User Experience
51:06 Recommendations and Final Thoughts
54:48 Tools and Software for Web Performance
55:59 Entertainment Recommendations: Movies, Games, and Anime
01:08:15 Upcoming Events and Personal Updates
Join hosts Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook in this week's episode of Search with Candour as they discuss recent Google SERP changes and the impact of AI on keyword research.
Discover why the SEO community is buzzing about Google changing the num100 parameter and how these modifications affect impressions and rank tracking.
Additionally, the dynamic duo share conference experiences, and tease upcoming speaking engagements.
Links:
- Search ‘n’ Stuff conference: https://searchnstuff.co.uk/conferences/search-n-stuff-antalya-conference-2025/
- International Search Summit: https://events.transperfectdigital.com/international-search-summit/
- Personas for AI search: https://searchengineland.com/seo-personas-ai-search-461343
- Google search drops num100 parameter: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-drops-100-results-parameter-40097.html
- Jack’s brightonSEO talk: https://brightonseo.com/events/october-2025/talks/the-future-of-content-with-zero-clicks
- Sponsor Jack’s charity MMA fight: https://justgiving.com/page/jack-chambers-ward
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:44 Conference Highlights and AI Keyword Research
01:58 Personalisation in AI Search
07:30 Upcoming Conferences and Events
12:56 Google's Search Parameter Changes
21:55 Impact of Bot Traffic on Google Search Console Data
24:13 Rise of New Crawlers and Tools
25:34 Google's JavaScript Requirement Update
27:33 AI Mode and the Future of Search
35:10 Transparency and Data Limitations
40:20 Upcoming Events and Conferences
In this episode of Search With Candour, Jack Chambers-Ward interviews Jojo Furnival, Marketing Manager at Sitebulb about the unique challenges of enterprise SEO.
Jack & Jojo discuss issues such as the complexity and scale of large websites, resource allocation, and the importance of interdepartmental communication.
Jojo shares insights on the value of automation and proactive management, as well as the essential human skills necessary for effective SEO at an enterprise level.
They also chat about Sitebulb's new cloud services and the importance of aligning SEO strategies with broader business goals.
Jojo’s recommendations:
- New free enterprise SEO course
- Rendering Difference Engine Chrome extension
- My Victorian Nightmare podcast
Follow Jojo:
- Check out Sitebulb
- Follow Jojo on LinkedIn
- Follow Jojo on Bluesky
Resources:
- Previous episode with Patrick about JavaScript SEO
- Previous episode about enterprise SEO strategies from January 2024
- Sitebulb webinar about enterprise SEO
Time stamps
00:00 Introduction to Enterprise SEO Challenges
01:14 Welcome to Search With Candour
04:45 Welcome Jojo Furnival
06:10 Understanding Enterprise SEO Challenges
10:08 Navigating Technical and Human Challenges
14:24 Prioritisation and Communication in SEO
22:38 Aligning SEO with Other Departments
26:10 Adapting to Outdated Technology
30:12 Log File Analysis and Future Plans
31:40 Automation in SEO: Balancing Technology and Human Touch
33:19 Enterprise SEO: Tool Stack and Automation Strategies
35:28 Effective Communication and Soft Skills in SEO
39:44 Understanding Roles and Skills in SEO Teams
45:38 Challenges and Metrics in Enterprise SEO
51:03 Adapting to AI and LLMs in SEO
55:46 Recommendations and Final Thoughts
62:05 Outro
In this episode of Search with Candour, host Jack Chambers-Ward sits down with freelance SEO consultant Ian Ferguson to discuss the delicate balance between user experience (UX) and search engine optimisation (SEO).
They delve into the importance of integrating SEO at the start of web design processes, the impact of AI on SEO, and how to create valuable content that serves both users and search engines.
The episode also touches on practical tips for improving UX, managing client expectations, and the future of SEO in an AI-driven landscape.
Follow Ian:
⭐Website: https://ferguseo.com/
⭐Ian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianjferguson/
⭐Ian on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ferguseo.com
⭐SEO TLDR Newsletter: https://seotldr.substack.com/
Ian's recommendations:
🛒How do grocery store layouts influence shopping? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skKu1CSrKsQ
👓Microsoft Clarity - https://clarity.microsoft.com/
🫙Hotjar - https://www.hotjar.com/
🍻The User is Drunk - https://theuserisdrunk.com/
📖Ali Abdaal’s Feel Good Productivity - https://aliabdaal.com/feel-good-productivity/
Links:
🎙️The live podcast in Brighton: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/social-health-is-the-key-to-career-success-free-food-and-drinks-tickets-1556336527449?aff=oddtdtcreator
🥊Jack's MMA fight for charity: https://justgiving.com/page/jack-chambers-ward
Time stamps:
00:00 Introduction
05:00 Welcome Ian Ferguson
05:12 Ian Ferguson's Background and Expertise
06:19 The Intersection of UX and SEO
10:01 Challenges and Strategies in SEO and UX
18:00 The Future of SEO in the Age of AI
39:16 The Importance of Keyword Research in Web Design
39:43 Time Constraints and Departmental Silos in Marketing
40:05 Leveraging AI for Product Data Management
40:56 Enhancing User Experience with Interactive Guides
42:34 The Challenges of Modern SEO and UX Integration
43:43 The Shift from Content Quantity to Quality
46:18 Adapting to AI and Changing Client Needs
52:55 Optimizing Internal Search and User Navigation
55:06 The Role of Data in E-commerce Strategy
59:00 The Benefits of Content Curation and Site Clean up
01:00:33 Psychological Insights from Supermarkets to E-commerce
01:03:37 The Future of SEO and User Experience
01:05:39 Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Welcome to another episode of Search With Candour!This week, Jack Chambers-Ward sits down with Matt Cayless to discuss brand authority and digital PR.Whether you’re an SEO pro, a digital marketer, or a brand builder, this episode is packed with actionable insights, real-world examples, and expert advice on how to build lasting brand authority in 2025 and beyond.🔑 Key Talking Points:
- What is brand authority and why does it matter?
- The evolving role of digital PR in SEO
- Measuring brand authority: what really moves the needle?
- The impact of AI, LLMs, and changing search behaviors
- Building trust, credibility, and visibility in your niche
- The future of link building and branded mentions
- Attribution challenges in the age of GA4 and zero-click searches
- Actionable tips for getting started with digital PR and audience research
- Recommended tools, resources, and where to find Matt online
⏰ Timestamps:00:00 – Introduction: Why brand authority matters01:14 – What is brand authority?05:45 – The evolution of SEO and digital PR13:15 – How to measure brand authority18:45 – The power of branded mentions and quality signals25:00 – Digital PR vs. traditional link building32:00 – The impact of AI, LLMs, and changing search habits40:00 – Attribution, analytics, and the “zero-click” world48:00 – Building authority in your niche: practical steps55:00 – Audience research and the importance of showing up58:00 – Recommendations1:03:00 – Where to find Matt Hali and Bubblegum Search👇 Enjoyed the episode?Follow us/subscribe on for more expert interviews and actionable SEO insights!Drop your questions and thoughts in the comments – we love hearing from you.
In this week's episode of Search with Candour, Jack Chambers-Ward discusses the dynamic relationship between branding and SEO with Krešimir Ćorluka, co-founder of Canonical Agency and one of the organisers of Zagreb SEO Summit.
Discover the potential pitfalls of bad branding, learn how to ensure your brand strategy supports your SEO efforts, and understand why knowing your customer base is crucial. Plus, get insights into the future challenges and opportunities brought by AI and LLMs in the digital marketing landscape
Follow Krešimir:
- Zagreb SEO Summit: https://zagrebseosummit.com/
- Canonical Agency: https://canonical.hr/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kresimir-corluka/
00:00 Highlight reel
01:08 Introduction
03:34 Zagreb SEO Summit Recap
12:21 Challenges in Branding and Rebranding
35:38 The Importance of Team Collaboration
36:22 Challenges with Brand Managers
36:52 Misguided Corporate Decisions
41:10 The AI Hype and Its Pitfalls
45:51 The Future of Google and AI
52:52 Monetisation and Content Quality Concerns
59:15 Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Join Jack Chambers-Ward in this week's episode of Search With Candour as he welcomes back SEO consultant Seb Atkinson for an in-depth discussion on masterful SEO strategies.
Seb shares his journey, starting his own business, Atkinson Smith Digital, and key content strategies he uses with his clients.
The conversation delves into practical insights on keyword clustering, creating revenue-driven models, and effectively communicating the value of SEO with clients.
Learn how to bridge the gap between technical SEO and business goals, and discover innovative methodologies for forecasting and analysing market opportunities.
Follow Seb:
- Website: https://atkinsonsmithdigital.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebatkinson/
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sebatkinson.bsky.social
Resources:
- https://atkinsonsmithdigital.com/keyword-clustering/
- First appearance in 2020: https://withcandour.co.uk/podcast/episode-51-the-seo-process-with-seb-atkinson
- Last appearance in 2023: https://withcandour.co.uk/podcast/why-you-should-care-about-inp-with-seb-atkinson
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:54 Guest's Journey and Career Highlights
01:10 Starting a New Business
01:49 SEO Strategies and Client Engagement
03:16 Keyword Clustering and Research
05:33 Client Communication and Buy-In
06:55 Tools and Techniques for SEO
26:43 International SEO Challenges
30:28 Setting Click-Through Rate Targets
31:18 Understanding Market Size and Competitor Analysis
31:44 Monthly vs. Yearly Metrics
32:35 Competitor Strategies and Market Positioning
36:30 Connecting Data to Revenue
38:27 Forecasting and Predictive Models
43:10 Challenges in Data Accuracy and Client Communication
49:45 Final Presentation and Client Buy-In
54:05 Resource Allocation and Implementation
01:00:46 Conclusion
In this episode of Search with Candour, host Jack Chambers-Ward interviews SEO expert Alex Galinos.
Alex shares insights on how to shift from focusing solely on traffic and SEO metrics to a revenue-driven approach that aligns with business objectives.
They discuss the integration of business intelligence with SEO, conversion rate optimisation, and the implications of AI and LLMs on SEO strategies.
Alex also provides actionable tips, tool recommendations, and real-life examples from his work at Hoppa to illustrate how SEO can directly contribute to business growth.
Tune in to learn how to maximise the monetary value of your SEO efforts and drive real business results.
Sponsored by Serpzilla: https://serpzilla.com/
Follow Alex:
- Parents Hub: https://parentshub.gr
- Hoppa: https://www.hoppa.com/en
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgalinos/
Previous episodes:
- https://youtu.be/yxCHqP3Hf24?si=K_WznncX2zacVCS8
- https://youtu.be/7dajPzLDEts?si=Arut3MDkBa8vLg8e
00:00 Introduction
03:40 Sponsor: Serpzilla
05:54 Upcoming Live Podcast
08:12 Interview with Alex Galinos
38:46 Data-Driven Decisions and Attribution Models
40:46 The Great Decoupling and Impressions Debate
43:10 Seasonality and Diversification in Business Strategies
49:49 Maximising Revenue Through Targeted Traffic
58:17 Actionable SEO Tips and Tools
01:02:50 Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Are you getting the most out of your organic shopping feed?
Join host Jack Chambers Ward as he sits down with returning guest Alex Wright, a managing partner for SEO at Dentsu, to uncover the untapped potential of organic shopping feeds in the ecommerce landscape.
Learn about the importance of optimising your feeds, the pitfalls to avoid, and the bright future of agentic search in 2025.
Follow Alex:
- Website: https://alex-wright.co.uk/
- Dentsu: https://www.dentsu.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-wright-marketing/
Resources:
- https://blog.google/products/shopping/google-shopping-ai-mode-virtual-try-on-update/
- https://blog.google/products/shopping/shopping-graph-explained/
- https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/15182106
- https://github.com/google-marketing-solutions/feedx
- https://business.google.com/uk/merchant-center/manufacturer-center/
- https://ipullrank.com/how-ai-mode-works
- https://withcandour.co.uk/blog/stoicism-and-seo-for-headless-cms-with-alex-wright
00:00 Introduction
02:07 Upcoming Guests and Events
05:47 Sponsored by Fatjoe
07:34 Interview with Alex Wright Begins
09:27 Importance of Organic Shopping Feeds
17:48 Setting Up and Optimising Shopping Feeds
33:10 Common Mistakes and Best Practices
37:05 Importance of Team Communication in Digital Marketing
37:34 Utilising Supplemental Feeds for Enhanced Control
39:45 Introduction to Manufacturer Center
42:00 Exploring New Shopping Features and AI Integration
43:54 Challenges and Considerations with Agentic Search
50:09 Impact of Dynamic Pricing and Data Quality
52:34 Future of Search and E-commerce Strategies
58:10 Real-World Accessibility and Multimodal Search
01:04:58 Recommendations and Final Thoughts
In this episode of Search With Candour, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Jarno van Driel to discuss the nuances of structured data, its significance in SEO, and its broader applications beyond search.
The conversation ranges from how schema works with AI and large language models to how structured data aids in internal communication, impacts e-commerce, and the evolving landscape of digital marketing tools.
Follow Jarno:
- Jarno’s website: https://invisiblegraph.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarno-van-driel-36a47075/
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jarnovandriel.bsky.social
Resources:
- https://withcandour.co.uk/blog/the-state-of-schema-in-2023-with-dave-ojeda
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiT2bzTq91Y
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/sd-policies
00:00 Introduction
01:20 Welcome to Search with Candour
02:57 Sponsor Message: Fat Joe
04:39 Welcome Jarno van Driel
06:22 The Evolution of Structured Data
07:26 The Role of Schema.org and Community Contributions
12:35 The Future of E-commerce and AI Integration
13:20 The Importance of Structured Data in AI Mode
15:32 Challenges and Misconceptions in Structured Data
25:02 The Role of Structured Data in Knowledge Graphs
28:04 The Competitive Landscape of E-commerce
30:34 The Rise of TikTok as a Shopping Platform
32:46 Different Types of Structured Data
34:45 The Future of Structured Data and AI
39:29 AI and Search: Bridging the Gaps
43:01 Multimodal Search and Google Lens
43:42 E-commerce and Structured Data
46:43 TikTok E-commerce
52:00 Structured Data's Internal Benefits
01:02:02 Speakable Schema and Voice Search
01:05:44 The Future of AI and Job Impact
01:14:28 Conclusion and Future Guests
In this week's episode of Search with Candour, Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook discuss the evolving landscape of search in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs), the challenges they bring, including A LOT of spam and how they are being manipulated in search.
They talk about the potential future of AI search, and the implications for brands and consumers as well as the responsibilities of monitoring and mitigating misinformation, the need for in-depth product data, and the feasibility of AI taking over transactional tasks.
Sponsored by fatjoe:
Are you ready to get started? Sign up for your free fatjoe account: https://fatjoe.com/
References:
- Use The Brand Control Quadrant To Reclaim Your Brand Narrative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMx3u6fgg5w
- Why OpenAI & Perplexity want clickstream data: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/myriamjessier_ai-search-marketing-activity-7348972981231988738-jDHI
- Hacked sites and expired domains are being cited by ChatGPT: https://digitaloft.co.uk/hacked-sites-and-expired-domains-are-being-used-as-chatgpt-sources/
00:00 Introduction and banter
01:28 Discussing LLM Spam and Manipulation
02:16 Sponsor Message: Fatjoe
03:59 The Uses of LLMs in Search
06:03 Challenges and Future of AI Search
16:38 Phishing and Security Concerns with LLMs
19:54 Responsibility and Brand Protection
24:47 The Future of AI and Search
31:10 Damage Control in the Age of Generative AI
31:41 LLMs are Leaky Buckets
32:48 Firefighting Tools for AI Errors
34:22 The Importance of Brand Reputation
35:15 High-Value Leads and Conversion Rates
36:46 Misleading AI Conversations
37:27 SEO Strategies for E-commerce
40:14 The Future of AI in E-commerce
44:33 The Impact of AI on Consumer Behaviour
47:23 Concluding Thoughts and Upcoming Events
Jack Chambers Ward dives into the critical nuances of internal communication with renowned communications coach Salvatore Manzi.
Salvatore shares valuable insights on the 'rule of 10 seconds' in business meetings, the importance of structure in creating genuine connections, and the method of speaking to the shared interests of your audience.
They also discuss practical tips for reducing cognitive load, including scheduling white space and using mind mapping tools like X Mind.
This conversation is essential for anyone in SEO, digital marketing, or any fast-paced tech environment looking to enhance their communication skills.
Sponsored by fatjoe:
Are you ready to get started? Sign up for your free fatjoe account: https://fatjoe.com/
Follow Salvatore
- Website: https://www.salvatoremanzi.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salvatorejmanzi/
- Book: https://www.clearandcompellingplaybook.com
Salvatore’s recommendations
- Mind mapping tool - X-Mind: https://xmind.app
- The Impactful Engineer Podcast: https://impactfulengineer.buzzsprout.com/
00:00 The Rule of 10 Seconds
01:28 Introduction
03:02 Sponsor: Fatjoe
04:49 Welcome Salvatore Manzi
05:21 The Importance of Communication in Tech Teams
08:59 Adapting Communication Styles
11:03 Managing Cognitive Load
18:56 Creating Inclusive Spaces for Neurodivergent Individuals
36:19 Understanding the Importance of SEO Jargon
38:14 Introducing the HIP Framework
40:20 The Power of Structure in Communication
46:07 Managing Overwhelm and Meeting Efficiency
52:00 The Art of Saying No
57:43 Metaphors and Mind Mapping
01:00:25 Recommendations
01:02:21 Conclusion and Upcoming Guests
In this episode, host Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Harry Evans from Twelve Twenty Five to discuss the significance of incorporating video content into SEO and social media strategies for 2025.
Together, they explore why video content is a game-changer, share practical tips to get started, and provide insights on engaging your audience effectively.
The conversation covers real-world examples, actionable advice, and touches on evolving technologies in digital marketing.
00:00 Introduction
03:46 Welcome Harry Evans
05:16 The Importance of Video in SEO and Social Media
07:36 Real People, Real Impact
11:19 The Future of Video and Marketing Strategies
18:05 Client Success Stories and Practical Tips
41:17 The Two-Slice Toaster Dilemma
41:25 Marketing to Different Demographics
42:03 The Evolution of Brand Representation
44:05 Creating Engaging Video Content
45:17 Finding Your Voice on Camera
46:11 Overcoming the Fear of Recording
47:54 Practical Tips for Video Content Creation
54:17 The Importance of Consistency
01:01:13 Recommendations and Tools
01:12:58 Upcoming Episodes and Conclusion
Links to follow Harry:
- Twelve Twenty Five: https://www.twelvetwentyfive.io/
- Care Launch: https://www.carelaunch.uk/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/h-evans/
Harry's recommendations:
- Handbrake - Open source video encoding: https://handbrake.fr/
- How to Win Friends & Influence People: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4865.How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People
- The One Thing: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16256798-the-one-thing
Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Ramon Eijkemanns to discuss how to calculate the value of SEO traffic and if SEO needs rebranding.
They explore the value of SEO traffic, the potential need for rebranding within the industry, and how metrics like market share and opportunity cost are redefining the field.
Ramon shares fascinating insights from his 20+ years in search marketing, including how to better calculate and communicate the true value of organic traffic. They also discuss the impact of AI and LLM on search behaviour and consumer visibility. Plus, Ramon shares his unique Blade Runner story!
Don't forget to like, subscribe, and engage with the podcast!
Follow Ramon
- Website: https://eikhart.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramoneijkemans/
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/eikhart.com
Ramon’s Recommendations
- Mistral: https://mistral.ai/
- Self help Singh: https://www.youtube.com/@selfhelpsingh
Links
- Jack’s MMA fight for charity: https://justgiving.com/page/jack-chambers-ward
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4AILSpWLI74daOhECb8Hm0?si=3e16881117234da5
- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/search-with-candour-seo-podcast/id1456880812
00:00 Introduction
04:57 Ramon Eijkemanns' Background
07:03 SEO Opportunity Cost
09:02 Market Share and SEO
11:05 Challenges in Calculating SEO Value
17:33 The Future of SEO and AI
39:18 Technical SEO Campaign Success
40:19 Rebranding SEO
41:35 The Evolution of SEO Practices
44:01 The Importance of Results Over Methods
44:45 Rebranding the SEO Profession
47:58 SEO Job Titles and Industry Perceptions
51:40 Client Expectations and Industry Trends
56:45 Blade Runner and the Journey into SEO
01:03:53 Ramon’s Recommendations
01:10:49 Upcoming Guests and Final Thoughts
Jack Chambers-Ward sits down with Chris Ridley from Evoluted to discuss an innovative solution for managing SEO and PPC campaigns simultaneously.They explore how this tool can help businesses save money by avoiding search term cannibalisation. Chris shares insights on balancing organic and paid strategies, the importance of understanding SERP competition, and the evolving role of AI in search marketing.
Links to follow Chris:
- Website: https://www.evoluted.net/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-ridley/
- Linktree: https://linktr.ee/PPC_Chris
- Digital E-A-Ts: https://www.digital-eat.com/chris-ridley/
- Related article: https://www.evoluted.net/resources/seomonitor-adsync-script
00:00 Introduction
01:01 Welcome to Search With Candour
02:40 Welcome Chris Ridley
04:31 The Concept of Search Cannibalisation
15:03 Implementing the Tool: Technical Details
17:40 Challenges and Future Adaptations
31:33 Understanding User Journeys and Brand Awareness
32:25 Google Ads Reporting and Data Transparency
34:55 The Importance of Business Objectives in Marketing
37:58 Multi-Channel Marketing Strategies
46:11 Effective Use of Remarketing
50:51 Recommendations and Tools for Marketers
56:56 Upcoming Guests and Future Topics
Jack Chambers-Ward sits down with Nick LerRoy to explore the landscape of SEO jobs in 2025.
They discuss how job roles in the SEO industry have changed, the impact of AI, and key skills that will keep professionals relevant.
Tune in for valuable insights on effective communication, personal branding, and navigating the job market in the ever-changing world of SEO.
Links to follow Nick
Nick’s site: https://nickleroy.com/
SEO jobs: https://www.seojobs.com/
SEO for lunch newsletter: https://www.seoforlunch.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickleroyseo/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/nickleroy.com
Links to resources:
https://www.seojobs.com/community/seo-job-report/
https://www.seojobs.com/interview-questions/
Nick’s recommendations
https://fireflies.ai/
https://www.amazon.com/Collection-Books-Go-Givers-Go-Giver-Leader/dp/912406288X/
https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Money-Timeless-Lessons-Happiness/dp/B08D9WJ9G8/
00:00 Introduction: The Future of SEO Jobs
01:30 Welcome to Search With Candour
01:55 Welcome Nick LeRoy
02:14 The Evolution of SEO Job Market
02:56 Nick LeRoy's Journey and Insights
04:15 The Shift Towards Personality-Driven Content
07:52 Challenges in the Current Job Market
16:28 The Expanding Role of SEOs
38:03 The Importance of Personal Branding
45:20 Job Search Journey and Building Rapport
46:46 Freelancing and the Importance of Reliability
50:15 The Small SEO Industry and Personal Branding
01:01:07 The Role of AI in SEO and Business
01:11:00 Effective Communication and Client Relationships
01:11:16 Final Thoughts and Recommendations
01:26:24 Outro
Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Dana DiTomaso from Kick Point Playbook to discuss common mistakes seen in GA4 setups in 2025.
Jack and Dana get into topics like the importance of proper tag manager setups, dealing with duplicate traffic, and strategies for better data filtering.
Dana also shares horror stories from hundreds of GA4 audits and tips on improving GA4 configurations. Don't miss the practical insights and tips to enhance your digital marketing efforts!
Follow Dana
- Website: https://kpplaybook.com/
- New GA4 audit course: https://kpplaybook.com/google-analytics-audit-course/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dditomaso/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kp_playbook/videos
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/danaditomaso.com
Resources
- https://kpplaybook.com/resources/how-to-track-traffic-from-aio-featured-snippets-paa-results-ga4/
- https://kpplaybook.com/resources/how-to-verify-consent-signals-are-being-received-correctly-in-ga4-for-modeling/
- https://gettingthingsdone.com/
00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:10 Common GA4 Setup Mistakes
00:57 Podcast Introduction and Host Updates
02:44 Upcoming Events and Announcements
04:49 Conversation with Dana DiTomaso Begins
05:45 GA4 Horror Stories and Common Issues
09:45 Advanced GA4 Tag Manager Tips
15:14 Importance of Proper Traffic Filtering
22:32 Tracking AI Traffic and Brand Building
34:59 Challenges in Digital Marketing and Analytics
41:35 Mike's Report and Learning Habits
44:31 The Importance of Annotations in GA4
56:01 Challenges with GA4 Implementations
01:01:30 Using BigQuery with GA4
01:03:01 Content Marketing Strategies with SparkToro
01:05:29 Personal Interests and Recommendations
01:13:00 Wrapping Up and Future Plans
Join Jack Chambers-Ward and guest Owain Lloyd-Williams on this week's episode of Search With Candour as they delve into transforming often dry and boring B2B content into fun and engaging material. They discuss the competitive nature of B2B industries, strategies for creating unique content, and the importance of thinking outside the box for impactful SEO. Jack and Owain also share their experiences, ideas, and strategies for working with B2B clients. Links to follow Owain:Website: https://www.owainlloydwilliams.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/owain-lloyd-williams-a8967852/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/owainlloydwilliams.comChapters00:00 Introduction: Making B2B Content Fun and Engaging00:47 Meet the Guest: Owen Lloyd Williams01:35 The Challenge of Dry B2B Content02:33 SEO Strategies for B2B Content03:40 The Importance of Focus and Music05:47 Navigating Regulations and Compliance08:07 Creating Engaging B2B Content20:30 The Role of Case Studies and White Papers34:50 Collaborating Across Teams41:20 Challenges with Small vs. Enterprise Clients41:44 Strategies for Startups Competing with Giants42:37 Leveraging AI and Conversational Content44:53 The Agility Advantage of Small Brands46:04 Building Effective B2B Relationships47:42 Integrating SEO into Content Production49:43 Impact of AI on B2B vs. B2C52:35 Actionable SEO Tips for B2B Brands55:30 Recommended Tools and Software57:38 Personal Recommendations and Podcast Wrap-Up01:13:45 Conclusion and Upcoming Guests
Jack Chambers-Ward gathers an esteemed panel of SEO all-stars: Dawn Anderson, Jono Alderson, Myriam Jessier, and, the birthday boy himself, Chris Green.
Together, they discuss the future of search, focusing on key topics such as the impact of AI mode, the evolution of search behaviour, and the transparency of data.
Tune in for an insightful discussion from these industry experts about how they are navigating the ever-shifting SEO landscape and what it means for the future of search marketing.
Follow Chris:
🎂Website: https://www.torquepartnership.com/
🎂LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgreenseo/
🎂Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/chris-green.net
Follow Dawn:
🏃♀️Website: https://bertey.com
🏃♀️LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/msdawnanderson/
🏃♀️Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/dawnieando.bsky.social
Follow Jono:
🎮Website: https://www.jonoalderson.com/
🎮LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonoalderson/
🎮Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jono.id
Follow Myriam:
🐙Neurospicy: https://www.neurospicy.agency/
🐙 Pragm: https://www.pragm.co/
🐙LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/myriamjessier/
🐙Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/myriam.dopamine.builders
00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview
02:32 Introducing the SEO all-stars
04:37 The Future of Search and AI
05:23 Social Contract with Google
11:39 Challenges and Opportunities in SEO
22:29 Legal and Ethical Considerations
27:55 Google's Role and Responsibilities
36:00 Impact of AI on Gen Z and Millennials
36:11 Google's Rethinking Search with AI
36:55 Organisational Commitment to AI
38:47 Challenges for Tool Providers
40:26 The Impact of Multimodal Search
47:13 What is “High Quality Content”?
57:09 Brand Trust and AI Narratives
01:08:12 Google's Market Share and Future
01:11:53 Closing Thoughts
Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook explore all the latest updates from Google I/O 2025. There were some HUGE announcements, including AI mode, personalisation in search, and agentic search.
The discussion also covers the challenges of tracking traffic from AI Mode, ads in AI Overviews and AI Mode on ad revenue, and the future of content creation for informational websites. Plus, we answer listener questions and discuss reactions from across the SEO industry.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:16 Google IO Highlights and Initial Reactions
01:03 AI Mode launches in the US
03:34 Challenges and Opportunities with AI Mode
06:13 The Future of Rank Tracking and Personalisation
09:19 AI Agents coming to Google Search
14:54 Ads in AI Mode and AI Overviews
19:44 Deep Search and Content Visualisation
25:40 Q&A: How are you tracking AI traffic? How are you communicating with clients?
31:48 Q&A: Do you think that PAA questions will mirror prompts in the future will alsoasked.com pick these up?
33:54 Q&A: How do you think websites whose business model depends on informational content will survive?
42:24 Q&A: How can we navigate this time where execs must focus less on falling traffic & conversions?
43:46 Q&A: What is happening to our understanding of the user? Will we only need to understand how AI reasons, not humans?
50:13 Ashley Segura’s reaction to Google I/O
51:03 Tamara Novitović’s reaction to Google I/O
52:36 Sam Torres’s reaction to Google I/O
54:21 Final Thoughts and Future Discussions
Links
- https://youtu.be/bDVpI23q8Zg?si=hWf-BqZOyB46Av_M
- https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-ai-mode-is-here-but-you-cant-track-it-properly/
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ashley-segura_googleio-googleio-contentstrategy-activity-7330977072435077120-C5xr
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tamara-novitovic_seo-bazoom-linkbuilding-activity-7330938839110258688-xbRc
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/samantha-torres-seo_googles-announcement-for-ai-mode-as-a-user-activity-7331052950104018944-qhJr
Kobi Omenaka joins Jack Chambers-Ward to explore ways to find keywords for free.
They discuss the benefits of using customer conversations, news trends, and various free tools like Google Keyword Planner and Search Console.
The episode also delves into the importance of understanding search intent and maximising the impact of small, engaged communities.
Tune in for actionable tips and strategies to enhance your keyword research without breaking the bank.
Follow Kobi
- Kobi’s digital marketing: https://kobestarr.io/
- Kobi’s podcasts: https://stripped.media/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kobiomenaka/
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kobestarr.bsky.social
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kobestarr/
00:00 Introduction to Free Keyword Research
01:19 Meet the Guest: Kobe Omenaka
04:13 Kobe's Digital Marketing and Podcasting Journey
07:21 Exploring Free Keyword Research Tools and Strategies
20:47 The Importance of Understanding Customer Language
33:03 Understanding Your Audience
34:16 The Power of Branding
36:25 The Importance of Touchpoints
40:10 Keyword Research and Content Creation
49:53 Community Engagement and SEO
54:16 Kobi’s recommendations
01:03:28 Conclusion and Upcoming Episodes
Join Jack Chambers-Ward for a conversation with Greg Finn, co-founder of Cypress North and co-host of the fantastic Marketing O-Clock and It's New podcasts.
The lads discuss what the next five years will look like for PPC Google Ads, SEO, and digital marketing. Greg shares insights on the evolving landscape of AI in search, the growing integration of ads, and the importance of adapting to new trends and technologies.
Jack and Greg also discuss how digital marketers should break out of niche silos and pay attention to the broader changes in the industry.
We also learn how much Greg loves revenge.
Spoiler: It's a lot.
Links to follow Greg:
📈Cypress North: https://cypressnorth.com/
🎧Marketing O’Clock: https://marketingoclock.com/
👉LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfinn
▶️It’s New: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxGhOTUAj8SzDiusE8ThupSmCw9Hds8Mp
Recommendations
🛠️Recommended tool = https://www.scrapebox.com/
📖Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss https://bookspaperscissors.co.uk/collections/business/products/never-split-the-difference-by-chris-voss
📖Radical Candor by Kim Scott - https://www.radicalcandor.com/
💪Reacher on Amazon Prime
📖The Terminal List - https://www.officialjackcarr.com/books/the-terminal-list/
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:12 Introducing Greg Finn
02:46 The Importance of Staying Informed in Digital Marketing
04:18 The Evolution of PPC and SEO
05:48 Challenges and Changes in the Digital Marketing Landscape
07:47 The Role of AI in Digital Marketing
11:50 The Future of Search and Digital Marketing
14:21 Adapting to New Trends and Technologies
16:11 The Impact of AI on PPC and SEO
19:17 The Shift Towards Community and Creator-Based Content
36:26 Following Writers and Artists: A Game-Changing Experience
37:01 The Rise of Authenticity in Content Creation
37:54 The Shift in Publishing and Content Creation
38:51 The Future of AI in Search and Advertising
39:34 Challenges and Opportunities in AI-Powered Search
40:12 The Evolution of Ads in AI Search
41:57 The Impact of AI on SEO and PPC
44:41 The Future of Keyword Targeting and Search Behaviour
46:40 The Role of Personas and Broad Match in Advertising
48:16 The Challenges of Data and Reporting in AI Search
54:30 The Future of Subscription Models in Search Engines
57:34 Tools and Recommendations for Marketers
01:03:59 Concluding Thoughts and Future Episodes
Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Irina Papuc, co-founder of Galactic Fed, to discuss the intricacies of creating content that ranks well in LLMs and AI search engines.
Irina has an extensive background in digital marketing (and even worked at CERN on the Large Hadron Collider!), offers valuable insights into optimising content for AI search and the future landscape of SEO.
They discuss topics like the importance of authentic content, brand mentions, and the potential decline of traditional link-building in the evolving digital marketing space.
Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation packed with expert advice and practical tips for staying ahead in the rapidly changing world of SEO.
Links to follow Irina Papuc
- 🚀Galactic Fed: https://www.galacticfed.com/
- 🚀Follow Irina on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irinapapuc/
Irina's Recommendation
* https://icon.me/
* https://phantombuster.com/
-
- https://www.apollo.io/home
- https://yestheory.com/
- https://bernardjhuang.com/
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:57 Meet Irina Papuc: Co-Founder of Galactic Fed
02:08 The Future of AI Search and LLMs
02:58 The Rise of Chat GPT and AI Search Engines
06:24 Optimising Content for AI Overviews
22:35 The Importance of Brand Mentions in AI
32:21 The Focus on Ad Revenue
32:44 Exploring Alternative Search Engines
34:01 The User Experience in Search
35:13 Google's Response to AI Competition
37:06 The Future of Search and Brand Loyalty
41:52 The Importance of Authenticity in Content Creation
52:13 Irina’s Recommendations
57:53 Outro
Join Jack Chambers-Ward in this episode of Search with Candour as he sits down with Tom Winter from SEO Wind to discuss the future of SEO and AI agents.
Discover how AI agents can optimise your workflow and solve problems using multiple tools.
Tom breaks down the technical aspects and practical applications of AI in SEO, touching on keyword clustering, internal linking, and content creation.
Plus, get insights into the latest trends and the future evolution of search and technology.
Follow Tom Winter
⭐SEO Wind: https://seowind.io/
⭐Tom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-winter/
Recommendations
⭐Make.com: https://www.make.com/
⭐Hunch Tools: https://hunch.tools/
⭐Crystal Carter - LLM visibility: https://www.wix.com/seo/learn/resource/llm-visibility-vs-seo-kpis
Resources
⭐https://deepmind.google/technologies/project-mariner/
⭐https://ai.google.dev/competition/projects/jarvis-ai-2
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI Agents and SEO
00:59 Meet Your Host and Guest
01:38 Understanding AI Agents
04:10 Defining AI Agents and Their Uses
06:04 AI Agents vs. Workflows
09:21 Human Element in AI Processes
15:36 Automating Reporting and Workflows
23:25 Content Creation with AI Agents
29:39 Overcoming Analysis Paralysis in Content Creation
30:49 The Challenge of Internal Linking with AI
34:06 Leveraging Google Search Console for SEO
37:25 The Future of AI Agents in Search
42:44 The Evolution of Search Queries
45:54 The Role of AI Agents in Everyday Tasks
49:22 Monetisation Challenges for AI Agents
51:47 Predictions for the Future of SEO
54:19 Recommended Tools and Resources
57:10 Conclusion and Upcoming Episodes
In this week's episode of Search with Candour, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by returning guest Matt Kohli.
In his third appearance, Matt details his journey from being a freelancer to starting his own marketing agency, Fortitude Marketing.
The conversation covers the challenges of transitioning roles, the importance of building a reliable team, learning to trust others, and not overpromising to clients and focusing on delivering results.
Matt's recommendations
🛠️Tool Recommendation - Sparktoro
📖Book Recommendation - Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
Follow Matt Kohli
👉Fortitude Marketing
👉Follow Matt on LinkedIn
▶️Matt's previous episode
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:55 Introducing Matt Kohli and His Journey
04:34 Challenges and Strategies in Building an Agency
08:56 Importance of Collaboration and Client Communication
13:26 Managing Finances and Essential Tools for an Agency
16:12 The Value of Niching Down and Offering Multi-Channel Services
24:09 Balancing Strategic and Hands-On Work in an Agency
33:27 Reflecting on Experience and Continuous Learning
38:54 The Importance of Community and Networking
43:01 Challenges and Realities of Starting an Agency
45:26 Balancing Flexibility and Structure
56:21 Managing Expectations and Delivering Promises
58:05 Weekly Recommendations and Closing Thoughts
Disclaimer: Sorry for the audio quality, technical difficulties meant we had to use our backup audio! Jack tried his best to fix it - we hope you can still enjoy the episode!
Search with Candour and The SEO Mindset podcast bring you another amazing podcast event, live from Brighton!
Sarah, Tazmin and Jack will be giving actionable tips and advice on authentic personal branding as well as sharing their own experiences. Together, we’ll explore strategies to define, communicate, and amplify your unique value. Get ready to unlock your potential and leave with tools to build a brand that truly represents you and your business.
Headline sponsor - SISTRIX
SISTRIX is the all-in-one SEO toolbox for those who want to succeed on Google, Amazon and Facebook.
With SISTRIX's market-leading tools, you can optimise your website according to the latest Google guidelines, track competitors on Amazon and easily generate and perform research across Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube.
The SEO Mindset podcast
- Subscribe on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn2ul-U03T10Mmp4thdCbQ_M555xelzXh
- Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/7fHOicztfKEL3yElQLpc2w?si=b7390f9a726e4d0a
- Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-seo-mindset-podcast/id1617543592
Search with Candour
- Subscribe on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8c8k5Yy8FltVNsIsP1iUCSXDfE5cq2pM Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4AILSpWLI74daOhECb8Hm0?si=72a9f68d2c0f40bc
- Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/search-with-candour-seo-podcast/id1456880812
Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by guest Grace Frohlich, SEO Senior Manager at Brainlabs, to explore how to map user journeys and understand customer paths in search.
Grace also shares insights into using AI to create detailed user personas and map motivations behind searches and practical steps for tracking user journeys and keyword tagging to enhance search strategies.
Follow Grace
- Brainlabs: https://www.brainlabsdigital.com/
- Follow Grace on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-frohlich/
- Grace's article on Wix: https://www.wix.com/seo/learn/resource/user-journey-map-for-seo
- Grace's Whiteboard Friday: https://moz.com/blog/chatgpt-customer-journey-whiteboard-friday
- Grace's talk at BrightonSEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4_9Yj9yDUg
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to User Journeys
01:56 Sponsored by AlsoAsked
03:21 Introducing Grace Frohlich
04:31 Understanding User Journeys
07:16 The Importance of Search Intent
15:03 Creating Bespoke User Personas
20:16 Motivations and Non-Linear Journeys
25:49 Search Intent and Motivations
30:08 The Evolution of Search in 2025
30:22 Personalised and Conversational Search
32:33 Integrating Social Platforms into Customer Journeys
36:42 Milestones and Pain Points in User Journeys
46:32 Tracking and Organizing Search Data
54:34 Final Thoughts and Future Episodes
Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook discuss the excitement and preparations for April’s BrightonSEO.
Mark gives a preview of his talk, the duo pick some of the talks they’re looking forward to as well as the live podcast Jack is co-hosting with Sarah and Tazmin from the SEO Mindset podcast.
The episode also delves into Dr. Pete Myers’ article on the increasing volatility of Google updates, with the delightful pun of 'Google warming,' and how this rapid evolution only makes the SEO landscape more complex.
BrightonSEO April 2025 Talk Recommendations
Mark’s picks:
- https://brightonseo.com/talks/custom-event-tracking-in-ga4-for-saas
- https://brightonseo.com/talks/does-structured-data-markup-influence-eeat
- https://brightonseo.com/talks/fake-eeat-until-you-make-eeat
Jack’s picks:
- https://brightonseo.com/talks/data-driven-seo-a-framework-based-approach
- https://brightonseo.com/talks/query-counting-for-seo-why-you-need-to-be-paying-attention
- https://brightonseo.com/talks/how-to-fight-giants-seo-secrets-for-challenger-brands
Dr Peter Myers - Google Warming https://moz.com/blog/charting-the-google-algorithm
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:11 BrightonSEO Preparations and Excitement
01:40 Diving Adventures in Brighton
02:52 A Preview of Mark’s BrightonSEO Talk
07:37 Upcoming BrightonSEO Talks and Recommendations
08:23 Custom Event Tracking in GA4 for SaaS - Bengü Sarıca Dinçer
09:13 Data-driven SEO: A Framewor Based Approach - Kazushi Nagayama
11:25 Does Structured Data Markup Influence EEAT? - Jarno van Driel
12:58 Query Counting for SEO - Daniel Foley Carter
14:16 Fake EEAT until you make EEAT - Emma-Elizabeth Byrne
18:22 Moderating and Live Podcast Plans
19:48 Upcoming Show Floor Interviews and Live Podcast
20:21 Google's Frequent and Volatile Updates
21:34 Impact of AI on Search and Content
25:27 Challenges with AI Accuracy and Reliability
28:47 The Future of Personalized Search
38:38 Concluding Thoughts and Future Plans
Kaspar Szymanski, a former senior member of the Google Search Quality Team, joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss what’s important in SEO in 2025.
They discuss cutting through the noise to focus on impactful strategies for businesses and cover topics ranging from the hidden value of server logs to a holistic approach to SEO.
Links to follow Kaspar:
- Website: https://www.searchbrothers.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kasparszymanski/
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/seozen.com
Links/resources:
- https://searchengineland.com/seo-noise-vs-signals-449671
- https://searchengineland.com/forget-pagerank-focus-on-ranking-437676
- https://searchengineland.com/why-server-logs-matter-for-seo-378199
- https://searchengineland.com/10-reasons-seo-just-like-fitness-260070
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:45 Sponsor: AlsoAsked
04:10 Welcome Kaspar Szymanski
05:38 Navigating Google Updates
12:11 The Role of Server Logs in SEO
20:28 Branding and SEO: A Crucial Connection
35:52 Leveraging Bing and Other Search Engines
38:43 Exploring Webmaster Tools and Alternatives
40:23 SEO Strategies for Small Businesses
42:45 The Risks and Rewards of Backlink Marketplaces
49:40 The Importance of a Holistic SEO Approach
59:21 Interdisciplinary Nature of SEO
01:15:04 Outro and Upcoming Episodes
In this episode of Search With Candour, host Jack Chambers-Ward discusses the impact of AI on content creation with guest Erika Varangouli.
They discuss how to stand out in an oversaturated market, the importance of brand consistency across channels, and the role of humour and distinct voice in marketing.
The episode also touches on the challenges and opportunities LLMs pose, ethical considerations, and potential future trends.
Plus, enjoy some banter about heavy metal gigs and what Erika thinks is the greatest movie sequel ever.
🎟️Get your free tickets for the live podcast:https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1225103580789?aff=oddtdtcreator
Links to follow Erika:
👉Check out Riverside.fm: https://riverside.fm/
👉Follow Erika on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/varangouli/
👉Follow Erika on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/finderika.bsky.social
Links to resources/references:
▶️ https://youtu.be/WrNWRHNfi1k?si=SLVlz68B5zDov9LM 📄 https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/how-ai-overviews-are-impacting-ctr-5-initial-takeaways
🎧 https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/sequelisers-524261/episodes/season-2-episode-8-godfather-p-24275030
00:00 Introduction
02:38 Live Podcast Announcement
04:29 Introducing Erika Varangouli
06:00 A Fun Chat: Metal Music and Personal Stories
15:09 The State of Content Strategies in 2025
33:45 The Changing Landscape of SEO and Content Creation
34:59 Google's Evolution and the Impact of AI
36:26 The Challenge of Creating Diverse Content
37:43 The Decline of Organic Click-Through Rates
38:42 The Future of SEO and Content Marketing
41:01 Balancing Brand Voice Across Channels
44:53 The Role of AI in Content Summarisation
47:03 The Importance of Brand Consistency
53:28 The Risks and Rewards of Brand Management
01:04:29 Conclusion
Join host Jack Chambers Ward as he sits down with Sam Torres and Tory Gray of Gray Dot Company.
They delve into the intricacies of JavaScript and its impact on website migrations, discussing common issues, best practices, and how to navigate the technical landscape.
This episode also touches on the existential dread that comes with the future of AI in search engines, learning JavaScript for SEO, and the importance of brand alignment across digital channels.
🎟️Get your free tickets for the live podcast:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1225103580789?aff=oddtdtcreator
Follow Sam & Tory
🔗Website: https://thegray.company/
➡️Gray Dot LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/graydotco/
➡️Sam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-torres-seo/
➡️Tory’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/torygray/
🦋Tory’s Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tory.thegray.co
🦋Sam’s BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/sam.thegray.co
▶️YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GrayDotCo
Brilliant SEO Communities
🤝https://www.womenintechseo.com/
🤝https://theseocommunity.com/
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:11 Podcast Announcements and Updates
02:42 Live podcast - 9 April 2025 in Brighton
04:36 Welcome Sam Torres and Tory Gray
06:59 Common Issues in JavaScript Migrations
08:42 JavaScript Rendering and SEO Challenges
15:03 JavaScript Site Audits and Migration Tips
17:43 Benefits of JavaScript Front Ends
28:26 Choosing the Right JavaScript Framework
31:08 Navigating Developer Communication
31:56 Challenges with External Agencies
32:17 Respect and Understanding in Tech
34:45 The Evolution of the SEO Industry
37:12 JavaScript and the Future of Search
39:06 AI's Impact on Jobs and the Environment
40:03 The Cost of JavaScript for Google
51:51 Learning JavaScript for SEOs
56:10 Community and Resources for SEOs
57:17 Outro and Upcoming Guests
In this week's episode of Search With Candour, Jack Chambers Ward & Mordy Oberstein from Unify Brand Marketing cover how brands can set themselves apart in an increasingly noisy digital landscape.
They discuss how brands can effectively manage their SERPs and audience perceptions. The episode explores the significance of brand mentions, scepticism in digital content, and why solid brand identity is crucial moving forward.
It’s quite a wide-ranging conversation that touches on everything from performance marketing to pro wrestling and baseball, rounding off with Mordy’s expert predictions on the future of branding and SEO.
Follow Mordy
👉Website - https://www.unifybrandmarketing.com/
👉Mordy on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mordyoberstein/
👉Unify Brand Marketing on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/unify-brand-marketing/
Bluesky
👉Mordy on Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/mordyoberstein.bsky.social
👉Unify Brand Marketing - https://bsky.app/profile/unifybranding.bsky.social
Podcasts
👉SERP’s Up - https://www.wix.com/seo/learn/podcast
👉It’s New - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxGhOTUAj8SzDiusE8ThupSmCw9Hds8Mp&si=s9jA6dtjEC2I8mFL
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:59 Sponsor: AlsoAsked
04:24 Morty Oberstein's Return and Inside Jokes
06:55 Defining Branded Search and Its Challenges
15:59 The Complexity of Measuring Brand Search
27:28 Nike's B2C Strategy and the Impact of COVID
34:45 Balancing Trust and Skepticism in Branding
35:54 Addressing Skepticism in Marketing
38:01 The NFL and Brand Manipulation
45:07 Skepticism in the Digital Age
46:17 The Broken State of the Web and TV
56:41 The Importance of Brand Alignment
01:03:39 The Future of Brands in the Age of AI
01:08:55 Conclusion and Upcoming Episodes
In this episode of Search with Candour, Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook discuss best practices for SEO pagination, a Google patent that targets spam tactics and a theory by Tabby Farrar about gaining links via citations in LLMs.
Links
👉Follow Jack
👉Follow Mark
👉Check out AlsoAsked
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:08 AlsoAsked Merchandise and BrightonSEO Sponsorship
04:40 Can You Gain Accidental Backlinks from AI Content?
10:56 Debate on Pagination Best Practices
22:03 SEO Misconceptions and Canonicalization Issues
24:44 Pagination Challenges in E-commerce
26:16 User Experience vs. SEO Solutions
28:26 SEO Patent Podcast and Rank Transition Function
32:56 Google's Anti-Spam Tactics
38:17 A/B Testing and SEO Strategies
43:22 Wrapping Up and Future Plans
Join host Jack Chambers-Ward as he sits down with SEO consultant and trainer Dani Leitner to discuss the complex world of building topical authority in the eyes of Google.
Dani & Jack explore how Google might measure topical authority in the future, discuss the importance of recognising and addressing your audience's education level, and break down strategic ways to demonstrate your authority in the eyes of users and search engines.
Dani highlights key parts of her strategy for building topical authority through guest posts, podcast appearances, speaking at conferences and more.
Sponsored by Serpzilla
🔗Get a free demo & consultation to help you develop effective link-building strategies -https://serpzilla.com/?utm=swcpodcast
Follow Dani Leitner
👉Website:https://danileitner.ch/en/
📧English Newsletter:https://danileitner.ch/en/google-hates-you-newsletter/
✍️Dani's hub on Topical Authority:https://danileitner.ch/en/blog/seo-strategy-topical-authority/
👉LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/dani-leitner/
👉Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/danileitner.bsky.social
▶️YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@danileitner
👉Twitter/Xhttps://x.com/DanielaLeitner2
👉Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/danileitner.ch/
00:00 Introduction
02:09 Sponsored by Serpzilla
03:49 Welcome Dani Leitner
04:50 Discussion on Topical Authority in SEO
07:12 Challenges and the Future of Topical Authority
16:36 Strategies for Building Topical Authority
25:14 Localisation and Language Nuances in SEO
31:50 The Role of Expertise in Content Creation
40:02 The Rise of Conversational Search
40:38 Future of Keywords in SEO
41:26 Challenges with AI and Search Intent
42:37 Entity vs. Keyword Discussion
45:30 Importance of Client Feedback
47:15 Aligning Marketing and Sales Strategies
53:22 Building Topical Authority
01:08:45 Measuring Topical Authority
01:18:31 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
In this episode of the Search with Candour podcast, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by special guest, @ItamarBlauer , Host of SEO Unplugged and Senior SEO Director at StudioHawk.
They delve into the evolving landscape of search, focusing on Google’s recent challenges and the rise of AI-driven search platforms.
Amidst the rapid advancements and shifting user behaviours, they explore the critical role of personalisation and the potential paths Google must take to regain trust and market share.
The conversation also touches on the practical uses of AI as a productivity tool, the implications of LLMs in our daily lives, and how SEO professionals should adapt to these changes.
Follow Itamar
👉Website: https://www.itamarblauer.com/
👉LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamarblauer/
👉SEO Unplugged: https://www.itamarblauer.com/seo-unplugged-podcast/
00:00 Introduction
02:06 Sponsor: AlsoAsked
03:31 Guest Background and Welcome
04:38 Discussion on Google's AI Challenges
12:11 User Behaviour and Search Trends
29:56 Legal and Geographical Challenges for Google
34:27 The Rapid Evolution of Technology
35:04 Legal and Ethical Concerns
35:45 The Acceleration of AI and Quantum Computing
39:11 Google's Struggle to Maintain Trust
49:34 The Importance of Personalization
57:17 Adapting to AI in Marketing
59:35 Concluding Thoughts and Future Episodes
In this episode of the Search With Candour podcast, host Jack Chambers-Ward and guest Stephen Schneider cover the importance of strong site structure, internal links, and conversion rate optimisation (CRO). They also discuss the role of user experience (UX) and how to leverage tools like Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and AI to enhance your content marketing efforts.
Additionally, Jack and Stephen explore the integration of SEO with other marketing channels and the power of authentic branding and personal connections in today's digital landscape.
Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just getting started, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you drive high-intent organic traffic and boost conversions.
Follow Steven
👉 TrioSEO Website - https://trioseo.com/👉 Steven’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/schneis/👉 TrioSEO company LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/company/trioseo
Sponsor
👉PPC Chat Round Up - https://linktr.ee/ppcchat_roundup
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:17 Sponsored by PPC Chat Roundup
07:00 Introducing Stephen Schneider and Trio SEO
08:05 Strategies for Creating High-Converting Content
10:02 The Importance of Internal Linking
18:40 Client Collaboration and Content Strategy
24:10 Handling Bad Content and Client Relationships
29:04 Leveraging AI for Data Consolidation
31:09 The Role of CTAs in SEO Content
36:14 Balancing User Experience with Ad Revenue
41:37 The Power of Influencer Marketing
51:52 Integrating CRO and SEO for Better Conversions
55:16 The Importance of Networking in Business
55:47 Conclusion
In this week's episode of Search with Candour, hosts Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook share insights and initiate debates surrounding critical SEO topics.
The dynamic duo discusses the role of consensus in SEO, particularly scrutinising how its interpretation affects how much users trust search engines.
They delve into the value of technical SEO, especially for small businesses, and question the efficacy of a one-size-fits-all approach.
Jack and Mark further explore the concept of traffic depreciation when SEO efforts stop.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome to Search with Candour
01:23 Sponsor: PPC Chat Roundup
06:05 Consensus in SEO: Clearing Misunderstandings
19:00 The Value of Tech SEO for Small Businesses
25:33 SEO Strategy: The Importance of Early Publishing
25:58 The Flaws of One-Size-Fits-All SEO Packages
26:32 Tailoring SEO to Client Needs
28:33 Technical SEO and Crawling Issues
31:49 The Impact of SEO on Long-Term Traffic
37:57 Maintaining SEO Success and Competitor Analysis
40:35 The Importance of Continuous SEO Efforts
43:50 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Jack Chambers-Ward and Anu Adegbola, an international PPC consultant and paid media editor at Search Engine Land discuss the significance of SEO and PPC team communication and collaboration.
They explore strategies for sharing insights, tools, and data, as well as aligning goals to navigate Google updates and improve overall digital marketing results.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction02:37 Sponsored by AlsoAsked04:02 Anu Adegbola's Background04:41 SEO and PPC Collaboration07:17 The Importance of Fresh Perspectives16:50 Leveraging Customer Insights20:23 SEO and PPC Best Practices31:12 Testing and Adapting Strategies35:08 The Importance of Flexibility in PPC35:48 The Power of Brand Consistency37:19 Navigating Attribution Challenges38:43 Aligning Marketing Channels41:28 Building Trust and Communication43:38 Understanding Marketing Goals51:41 The Role of PPC in SEO54:09 The Future of PPC and SEO Collaboration59:18 Where to Follow Anu01:04:39 Upcoming Guests and Future Topics
Links to follow Anu:
Website: https://www.themarketinganu.com/
PPC Live: https://ppc.live/ / https://www.youtube.com/@ppclive
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themarketinganu/
Bluesky: themarketinganu.bsky.social
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/themarketinganu
Listen to the PPCChat Roundup
Your grandma ever look confused when you tried to explain to her what you do. Just send her one of the PPCChat Roundup episodes instead.
https://linktr.ee/ppcchat_roundup
In this episode of Search With Candour, host Jack Chambers-Ward discusses the evolving value of backlinks in 2025 with guest Tamara Novitovic from Bazoom Group.
They explore how link building strategies need to adapt, the impact of AI on SEO, and why backlinks remain crucial.
The conversation covers which metrics matter for link-building and future trends that will shape the SEO landscape.
Whether you're reconsidering your link-building strategy or curious about the future of SEO, this episode offers invaluable insights for you!
Follow Tamara
- Website: https://bazoom.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamara-novitovic/
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:52 Sponsor: AlsoAsked
03:17 The Value of Links in 2025
04:55 Holistic Approach to Link Building
09:30 Metrics and Relevancy in Link Building
18:48 Content Strategy and Link Building
22:57 Interactive Content and Future Trends
33:08 Balancing Freshness and Relevancy
37:45 The Power of Data in Client Convincing
38:14 Learning from Industry Peers
38:56 The Reality of Working with Clients
39:27 Becoming a Trendsetter in SEO
40:53 The Role of AI in SEO
43:56 Using AI for Data Analysis
48:05 Combining Data Sources for Better Insights
53:46 The Future of AI in SEO
01:05:34 Predictions for Link Building
01:09:11 Conclusion and Future Plans
In the first episode of 2025, host Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Jamie Indigo, an expert in technical SEO and an overall delightful human being.
Jamie guides Jack through the findings from the 2024 Web Almanac's SEO chapter including technical data changes over recent years, offering insights and predictions for the future.
Jamie also highlights AI's rising influence, the importance of robots.txt, Core Web Vitals updates, and structured data advancements.
Follow Jamie:
- Website: https://not-a-robot.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-indigo/
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/not-a-robot.com
- Rich Snippets: https://trafficthinktank.com/rich-snippets/
Resources
- Web Almanac 2024 - SEO Chapter: https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2024/seo
- Performance chapter: https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2024/performance
- Maggie Appleton Dark Forest: https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest
- https://youtu.be/1OvasjokuaA?si=UBNiK07uyWHjd2HX by Jess Sankhavaram-Peck
Chapters
- 00:00 Welcome to 2025: Kicking Off the New Year
- 01:11 Sponsored by SE Ranking https://seranking.com/?sou1=influencers&gr1=podcast&tg1=search_with_candour&kw1=com_first_ad&utm_source=influencers&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=com_first_ad_search_with_candour
- 02:45 Introducing Jamie Indigo: Technical SEO Expert
- 03:56 What is the Web Almanac?
- 04:43 Exploring the Methodology: Data and Analysis
- 13:47 Dynamic Rendering and Robots.txt: Trends and Changes
- 20:44 Meta Robots Directives: New Data Insights
- 29:03 Canonical Tags Explained
- 29:37 Consistency in SEO
- 33:53 JavaScript and SEO Misconceptions
- 34:51 Structured Data Insights
- 39:34 The Role of Knowledge Graphs
- 46:10 Core Web Vitals Update
- 50:05 Wrapping Up and Future Plans
In this special episode of Search With Candour, hosts Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook sit down with guests Arnout Hellemans, Yagmur Simsek, and Begum Kaya.
Recorded in a brand new studio to celebrate the finale of Season 3, the panel discusses SEO industry highlights from 2024, and makes some SEO predictions for 2025.
Topics include the rise of AI, shifts in search engine market shares, and the ever-evolving landscape of SEO. The conversation extends to personal branding, the importance of community in SEO, and how the integration of AI could reshape the search experience in the coming years.
Follow our guests
- Follow Arnout Hellemans on LinkedIn and Bluesky
- Follow Yagmur Simsek on LinkedIn and Search 'n' Stuff
- Follow Begum Kaya on LinkedIn
Chapters
00:00 Welcome
00:17 Introducing Our Special Guests
02:38 Highlights of 2024 in SEO
11:53 The Impact of AI on SEO
27:06 Building Trust and Brand in SEO
43:09 The Long-Term Impact of SEO Tips
43:31 The Challenge of Measuring Long-Term SEO Success
44:08 The Human Element in SEO
44:51 The Evolution of SEO Communities
45:51 Conversational Search and AI
47:00 The Future of Search Engines
49:19 The Role of AI in Everyday Tasks
01:03:41 The Impact of AI on Jobs and Society
01:13:01 Predictions for the Future of Search
01:25:58 Closing Thoughts
Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook follow up on Mark's popular Search Norwich talk about conceptual models for SEO and his recent Google exploit discovery.
Mark & Jack explore the details of the fascinating Google exploit, dissect the talk's key points, and answer questions from the community.
The duo also preview next week’s big episode featuring three special guests and discuss the revamped format for Search With Candour in their cosier setting.
Stay tuned for exclusive insights into Google's data, how Google classifies queries, and what this all means for SEO in 2025.
Sponsors
- Experience the evolution of SE Ranking
- Try Optmyzr - Made by PPC people, for PPC people
Chapters
00:00 Welcome to Search with Candour
00:15 Studio Updates and Upcoming Guests
01:13 Exploring the Google Exploit
01:29 Sponsor: SE Ranking
02:50 Sponsor: Optmyzr
05:53 Advanced SEO and Conceptual Models
10:13 Understanding SEO Through Video Games
11:25 The Importance of Conceptual Models in SEO
14:53 Google Exploit Data and Its Implications
21:18 Site Quality Score and SERP Features
30:27 Optimising Click-Through Rates
33:25 The Twiddler Framework Explained
35:25 Google's Predicted Click-Through Model
37:53 The Role of Expertise in SEO
43:38 What Protobuf Is and How It Works
48:07 Wrapping Up and Future Plans
Jack Chambers Ward celebrates the near end of the year with a Spotify Wrapped-style recap of the podcast's top episodes from 2024.
Jack highlights the top 10 most watched and listened to episodes, along with honourable mentions from throughout season 3.
Sponsors
- Experience the evolution of SE Ranking
- Try Optmyzr - Made by PPC people, for PPC people
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:42 Upcoming Episodes
01:19 Sponsors
05:55 Spotify Wrapped Insights
12:36 Top 10 Episodes of 2024
13:02 Number 10
13:57 Number 9
14:55 Number 8
16:59 Number 7
18:27 Number 6
19:53 Number 5
20:56 Number 4
23:43 Number 3
25:27 Number 2
27:49 Honourable Mentions
38:47 Number 1
42:09 Conclusion and thanks
Join Jack Chambers-Ward as he discusses storytelling, copywriting, and content strategy with Will Slater, the creative content specialist at 43 Clicks North.
Will uses his experience as a writer and photographer to explain how even bad ideas lead to great ones, the importance of curiosity, and the intricacies of creating content that resonates emotionally with your audience.
Jack & Will explore how storytelling principles from novels, comics, and even music can enhance your marketing efforts. Plus, learn valuable tips for structuring your content, engaging specific audiences, and mastering the art of concise and impactful writing. This episode is packed with insights to help you create better content in 2024 and beyond.
Sponsors
- Experience the evolution of SE Ranking
- Try Optmyzr - Made by PPC people, for PPC people
Follow Will
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cleanslatewill
- Website: https://43clicksnorth.co.uk/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cleanslatewill/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carparkshull/
Chapters
00:00 Intro trailer
00:57 Introduction to Search with Candour
02:01 Sponsorship Acknowledgements
06:34 Welcome Will Slater
08:40 The Power of Storytelling in Copywriting
09:50 Creating Emotional Connections
11:25 The Role of Flaws in Storytelling
14:51 The Art of Concise Copywriting
17:42 The Process of Generating Ideas
22:53 Understanding Your Audience
32:11 The Influence of Music on Storytelling
40:33 The Power of Brand Recognition
40:58 Engaging the Senses in Writing
41:32 Show, Don't Tell: Writing Techniques
44:40 The Art of Comic Book Storytelling
48:44 Structuring Content for Impact
57:27 The Hero's Journey in Modern Writing
01:00:46 Concise Storytelling: Less is More
01:04:29 Understanding Your Audience
01:13:12 The Importance of Curiosity in Marketing
01:18:49 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
In this week's episode of Search with Candour, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Tomek Rudzki from ZipTie.dev to discuss AI overviews and their impact on SEO.Tomek shares insights on how AI overviews have risen in recent months, how AI overviews incorporate sources as well as the differences between traditional search results and AI overviews.Jack and Tomek also discuss Google’s approach to user-generated content and ensuring high-quality search outcomes, especially for YMYL queries.Tomek also shares strategies for optimising content for AI overviews.00:00 Trailer00:55 Introduction02:25 Sponsors06:49 Welcome Tomek Rudzki08:18 The Evolution of Ziptie.dev10:15 The Rise of AI Overviews16:36 Tracking AI Overviews25:41 Comparing AI Overviews and Featured Snippets33:55 Addressing Low-Quality Search Results34:28 Trust and Authority in Online Content36:23 Google's Approach to User-Generated Content37:02 Manipulation and Spam in Search Results38:56 Google's AI and Ranking Systems43:16 Challenges with AI Overviews58:48 Optimising for AI Overviews01:07:13 ConclusionResources1. https://dashboard.ziptie.dev/aio-monitor2. https://ziptie.dev/blog/how-ai-overviews-will-affect-ymyl-queries/3. https://thecollegeinvestor.com/47758/google-ai-misleads-in-43-of-finance-related-searches/4. https://ziptie.dev/blog/ziptie-vs-semrush-17x-more-ai-overviews/Sponsors:1. Experience the evolution of SE Ranking: https://seranking.com/?sou1=influencers&gr1=podcast&tg1=search_with_candour&kw1=com_first_ad&utm_source=influencers&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=com_first_ad_search_with_candour2. Try Optmyzr - Made by PPC people, for PPC people https://www.optmyzr.com/?utm_source=sponsorship&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=candourLinks to follow Tomek:1. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomekrudzki/ 2. Ziptie: https://ziptie.dev/ 3. Tomek’s website: https://tomekseo.com/ 4. Onely: https://www.onely.com/ 5. Google Search Console Mastery Course: https://gscmastery.com/
Join host Jack Chambers Ward and special guest Amanda King as they delve into the intricacies of content hierarchy and content consolidation in this insightful episode of Search With Candour.Amanda and Jack finally meet to discuss the importance of getting content structure right, common mistakes to avoid, and the nuances of SEO best practices in 2024 and beyond.
This episode is packed with expert advice, real-life examples, and tips for performing effective content audits.Sponsors
- Experience the evolution of SE Ranking
- Try Optmyzr - Made by PPC people, for PPC people
Follow Amanda:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandaecking/
- Website: https://floq.co/
- Engage: On Enterprise SEO: https://floq.co/resources/podcast/
- Amanda on The SEO Mindset Podcast: https://theseomindset.co.uk/episode/picking-battles-in-the-workplace-amanda-king
- Amanda's articles for SEL: https://searchengineland.com/author/amanda-king
- Profanity-based stationery and apparel: https://fourletterfancies.com
Chapters
00:00 Introduction01:28 Sponsors05:52 Amanda King's Background and SEO Experience08:22 Content Hierarchy11:32 SEO Strategies and Best Practices17:46 Content Authenticity and User Experience26:49 Content Consolidation35:34 The Importance of Content Consumption35:54 Balancing Content Creation and Consolidation36:23 Fragmentation in Media Spaces37:07 Google's Role in Content Structuring38:02 Evolving Best Practices in Content Creation39:37 Building Knowledge Hubs and Linking Strategies40:18 The Necessity of Content Audits40:53 Challenges in Content Consolidation41:38 The Impact of AI on Content Management45:15 Client Communication and Content Strategy46:32 International Content Management48:45 Annual Reviews and Technical Audits50:26 Addressing Cannibalisation Issues56:00 The Future of Content Structures59:04 Business and Market-Led Content01:02:48 Conclusion
In this bonus episode Search With Candour, Jack is joined by Steve Paine, the English-language marketing manager at SISTRIX to discuss breaking news on site reputation abuse and recent data insights.
Steve & Jack explore the November core update from Google and its impact on website rankings with examples of affected websites such as Reddit, Forbes, The Guardian and more.
Steve and Jack also explore manual versus algorithmic enforcement of Google's policies and share their findings on recent shifts in SERPs and site visibility.
Follow Steve Paine: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevechippy/
Follow SISTRIX: https://www.sistrix.com/blog/google-core-update-november-2024/
Follow Lily Ray: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lily-ray-44755615/
Follow Glenn Gabe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glenngabe/
Follow Barry Schwartz: https://www.seroundtable.com/
Chapters
- 00:00 Introduction and Welcome
- 00:44 Site Reputation Abuse
- 01:42 November Core Update Insights
- 04:01 Impact on Major Websites
- 08:32 Manual Actions and Algorithmic Changes
- 11:47 Future of Content Creation
- 13:34 Conclusion and Sign Off
Jack Chambers Ward sits down with web data analyst Marco Giordano to discuss how to get the most out of your web data.
Together, they delve into the intricacies of web analytics, covering topics such as incorporating crawl data, understanding GA4, leveraging BigQuery, and effectively communicating data insights to clients.
Jack and Marco also discuss the importance of combining technical SEO expertise with business acumen and provide valuable tips for anyone looking to maximise the impact of their web data.
Sponsors
- AlsoAsked - Track search intent shift over time using the Timeline feature
- SE Ranking - Track AI Overviews for your clients using SE Ranking
Links to follow Marco:
- Follow Marco on LinkedIn
- Check out SEOTistics
- Subscribe to Marco's newsletter
Links to resources/articles:
- Free Google Cloud BigQuery training Analytics for SEO course
- Analytics for SEO ebook
- The Gray Dot keyword matrix template
Chapters
00:00 Highlight reel
00:36 Welcome to Search with Candour
00:56 Introducing Marco Giordano
01:55 Sponsors
04:49 Marco Giordano's Insights on Web Data
06:12 Common Mistakes in Web Data Management
10:22 Balancing Hard and Soft Skills in SEO
19:00 Importance of Storing and Analysing Web Data
29:46 Combining Data Sources for Better Insights
37:17 Global Marketing Differences
39:26 The Role of Crawl Data and Log Files
42:05 Integrating Technical and Content Strategies
49:16 The Importance of Hybrid Skills in SEO
52:49 Evolving Job Titles and Industry Roles
54:27 Combining SEO with Other Channels
01:03:15 The Future of SEO and Analytics
01:09:17 Conclusion and Future Episodes
Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by SEO veteran Noah Lerner for an in-depth discussion on the importance of critical thinking in SEO.Noah and Jack champion the structured, evidence-based approach to decision-making as well as discussing the challenges and pitfalls of problem-solving, and the essential skills needed to excel in SEO.Noah also brings real examples from over 20 years of experience, such as the transition from UA to GA4 at Sterling Sky, building data pipelines and even how to communicate important data to clients.
Sponsors
Experience the evolution of SE Ranking
Try Optmyzr - Made by PPC people, for PPC people
Follow Noah
- Follow Noah on LinkedIn
- Sterling Sky
- Join the SEO community
Chapters
- 00:00 Trailer introduction
- 00:58 Introduction
- 02:18 Sponsors: SE Ranking & Optmyzr
- 06:42 Welcome Noah Learner
- 09:44 Defining Critical Thinking Skills
- 11:42 Challenges in Problem Solving
- 15:32 Importance of Structured Problem Definition
- 23:31 Data-Driven Decision Making
- 40:52 Aligning SEO Metrics with Business Goals
- 45:29 The Importance of Call Tracking
- 46:50 Understanding Attribution and Data Constraints
- 50:01 Prioritizing Tasks for Maximum Impact
- 51:47 Efficiency Through Automation
- 54:52 The Role of AI in Problem Solving
- 01:05:09 Critical Thinking in SEO
- 01:11:38 Building a Supportive SEO Community
- 01:15:17 Conclusion and Future Episodes
Join hosts Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook as they tackle the latest SEO news and industry trends.
In this episode, we'll cover the growing influence of AI in search, Google introducing AI-organised search results, personalised Google Shopping feeds, and the pitfalls of AI Overviews for finance queries and restaurant reviews.
We also explore how Redditors are manipulating search results and whether we can trust online reviews anymore.
Don't miss it!
Resources
- Google’s AI-Organised search results
- Google Shopping’s personalised feed
- The Verge’s article on personalised Google Shopping feed
- Redditors disrupt AI Overviews with fake restaurant reviews
Sponsors
Experience the evolution of SE Ranking
Try Optmyzr - Made by PPC people, for PPC people
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:10 Conference Season and Travel
01:40 Sponsor: SE Ranking
03:12 Sponsor: Optmyzr
06:01 AI in Search 2024
06:21 AI Organized Search Results
14:03 Personalized Shopping Feeds
26:55 Financial Advice Inaccuracies
28:52 Financial Advice Regulations in the UK
29:08 US State Laws vs Federal Laws
30:12 AI Overviews and Legal Nuances
31:00 Disclaimers and User Trust
33:39 Accuracy of AI-Generated Content
39:56 Reddit's Influence on Search Results
46:12 User-Generated Content: Pros and Cons
49:25 Conclusion and Upcoming Content
Join hosts Jack Chambers-Ward and Search With Candour Scream Queens, Myriam Jessier, and Stéphanie Walter, in this Halloween-themed episode packed with spooky surprises and valuable marketing insights.
From e-commerce strategies and UX design to SEO tips and digital PR trends, you'll discover the scariest messages from your boss and the history of Halloween itself.
Sponsors
- Experience the evolution of SE Ranking
- Try Optmyzr - Made by PPC people, for PPC people
Chapters
- 00:00 Spooky Introduction and Halloween Special 🎃
- 01:28 Sponsor - SE Ranking Overview
- 03:00 Sponsor - Optmyzr: The Ultimate PPC Management Tool
- 05:51 👻 Halloween Tips and Spooky Conversations 👻
- 08:54 🎃 The History and Evolution of Halloween 🎃
- 15:59 🧛♂️ Halloween Costumes and Cognitive Biases 🧛♂️
- 38:23 Halloween Trends Analysis
- 39:00 Comparing Halloween Popularity Over the Years
- 40:58 Marketing Strategies and Cognitive Biases
- 44:53 Corporate Messages That Will Chill Your Spine
- 56:53 SEO and UX: The Future of E-commerce
- 01:03:36 Closing Thoughts
Follow Myriam
- Follow Myriam on LinkedIn
- Neurospicy Agency
- Pragm
Follow Stéphanie
- Follow Stef on LinkedIn
- Stéphanie's website
- Stéphanie's UX templates
Join host Jack Chambers-Ward and special guest Darren Shaw, founder of Whitespark, as they dive into the latest in local SEO and Google Business Profile optimisation.
Discover key updates expected in 2025, innovative methods to enhance rankings, the impact of custom service entries, strategic use of Google Posts, and the importance of robust Q&A sections.
From optimising menu items for restaurants to leveraging photos and videos effectively, this episode is packed with expert insights and practical tips essential for SEO professionals and business owners.
Links to follow Darren
- Darren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenshawwhitespark/
- Whitespark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/whitespark/
- Threads: https://www.threads.net/@darrenshawseo
- Website: https://whitespark.ca/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhitesparkCa
- Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@darrenshawseo
Resources
- Local SEO ranking factors 2023 edition - https://whitespark.ca/local-search-ranking-factors
- Do Services in Google Business Profiles Impact Ranking? - Sterling Sky Inc
- Are Opening Hours a Local Ranking Factor? - BrightLocal
- Report: Menu items, busier businesses may be Google local ranking signals
- Google Vision AI: https://cloud.google.com/vision
- Website Title Tags and GMB Snippets
- Enter…the stuff zone: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/darrenshawwhitespark_perfect-title-tags-for-local-seo-activity-7065345429235781632-xGo1/
Chapters
- 00:00 Introduction
- 02:20 Sponsorship Shoutout: SE Ranking
- 03:54 Sponsorship Shoutout: Also Asked
- 05:19 Darren Shaw's Journey in SEO
- 06:31 Local Search Ranking Factors Update
- 09:43 Optimising Google Business Profile Services
- 18:23 Impact of Business Hours on Rankings
- 23:47 Menu Items and Local SEO
- 29:03 Multilingual Business Names for Local SEO
- 31:34 Mastering Google Posts: Common Mistakes and Best Practices
- 37:19 The Power of Videos and Photos in Google Business Profiles
- 44:53 Optimising Your Google Business Profile Q&A
- 50:18 The Controversy of Keyword Stuffing in Title Tags
- 57:07 Outro
Join Jack Chambers-Ward from Search With Candour and Sarah and Tazmin from The SEO Mindset podcast in this special live episode from Brighton as they tackle career planning without the overwhelm.
Recorded in front of a packed audience at in The Globe Room at Projects The Lanes, this episode discusses personal experiences in career development, strategies like ikigai and ISA, and the importance of setting achievable goals.
Sponsors
- SE Ranking
- AlsoAsked
- SISTRIX
- Majestic
Chapters
- 00:00:00 Introduction
- 00:01:34 Sponsors: SE Ranking & AlsoAsked
- 00:04:28 Live Podcast Begins
- 00:05:08 Career Planning Discussion
- 00:05:27 Introducing the SEO Mindset Podcast
- 00:06:18 Introducing Search With Candour
- 00:07:21 Why This Live Podcast is Important
- 00:08:13 Finding Your Ikigai
- 00:09:59 Live Podcast Sponsors: SISTRIX & Majestic
- 00:13:40 Career Planning Experiences
- 00:20:05 Overcoming Career Planning Challenges
- 00:27:36 Strategies for Effective Career Planning
- 00:49:59 The Simple Joy of Cleaning Kitchens
- 00:50:44 Exploring the Nine Lives Exercise
- 00:51:34 Taking Action Towards Your Dreams
- 00:53:44 The ISA Strategy: Intention, Strategy, Action
- 00:58:00 Collecting Data for Career Success
- 01:04:38 Building a Personal Brand and Networking
- 01:09:15 Audience Q&A
- 01:11:34 Dealing with Comparisons and Self-Perception
- 01:20:29 The Importance of Certifications and Continuous Learning
- 01:33:40 Outro
Giulia Panozzo joins Search With Candour to discuss the neuroscience behind negativity bias. Giulia combines her knowledge of neuroscience and marketing to bring some fascinating neuromarketing insights to the podcast!
Why do negative headlines get more clicks than positive ones?
How does negativity bias affect the way we search?
Why does one piece of negative feedback standout against positive feedback?
Resources and studies:
- Neuroscience of Search: What does brain science tell us about the user? 🧠
- Negativity drives online news consumption | Nature Human Behaviour
- Consuming Negative News Can Make You Less Effective at Work
- How to leverage anthropomorphism for chatbot service interfaces: The interplay of communication style and personification - ScienceDirect
- Martin E.P. Seligman | Positive Psychology Center
- Using Neuroplasticity for Personal Growth with Giulia Panozzo - The SEO Mindset Podcast
Follow Giulia
- Follow Giulia on LinkedIn
- Check out Neuroscientive
Chapters
- 00:00 Users are more aware of marketing tactics
- 00:31 Welcome to Search with Candour
- 00:42 Introducing Giulia Panozzo and Neuromarketing
- 01:50 Sponsors
- 04:53 Giulia Panozzo's Background and Achievements
- 05:53 What is Negativity Bias?
- 10:55 The Neuroscience Behind Negativity Bias
- 17:06 Marketing's Impact on User Behaviour
- 25:27 User Scepticism and Authenticity in Reviews
- 36:08 Confirmation Bias and Negativity Bias
- 37:26 Questioning Beliefs and Seeking Honest Reviews
- 38:43 Critical Thinking and Bias in Academia
- 41:26 Negativity Bias in Career and Workplace
- 45:25 Impact of Negative Feedback and Learned Helplessness
- 48:58 Two-Way Feedback and Work Culture
- 57:15 Good Daily Habits for Fighting Negativity Bias
- 59:29 Reframing Failures and Neuroplasticity
- 01:03:33 Future of Search and Marketing
- 01:05:00 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Maria Scheibengraf joins Jack Chambers-Ward to explain why localization is so important for your international SEO strategy.
Direct translation just doesn’t work for SEO. You need to take culture and nuance into account when it comes to your international SEO strategies.
Maria explains the common problems that many agencies and SEOs face with multilingual SEO and how to get SEO localization right.Follow Maria Scheibengraf
- Follow Maria on LinkedIn
- Follow Crisol Translations
Resources
- Maria's companion blog post
- Book recommendation: The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
- The Nike 'Am I a Bad Person? ad
Sponsors
- Experience the evolution of SE Ranking
- Start your 14-day free trial of Optmyzr
- Book your personalised Optmyzr demo
Chapters
- 00:00 Start
- 00:00:34 Intro
- 00:01:37 Sponsor: SE Ranking
- 00:03:45 Sponsor: Optmyzr
- 00:06:39 Welcome to the show Maria Scheibengraf
- 00:08:06 Why is SEO localisation so important?
- 00:11:00 The flawed workflow of SEO translation
- 00:15:10 Direct translation doesn’t work
- 00:16:21 Localisation is so much more than language
- 00:20:33 Book recommendation: The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
- 00:20:53 High context vs low context communication
- 00:22:06 British humour vs American humor
- 00:24:00 The importance of technical SEO in localisation
- 00:27:25 Understand what devices your audience are using
- 00:30:00 Common problems with SEO localisation
- 00:36:35 Linguists should learn SEO skills
- 00:40:30 When should SEO localisation be involved in the process?
- 00:41:09 The ideal international SEO workflow
- 00:44:35 How NOT to convince Germans to buy your products
- 00:47:45 How to budget for SEO localisation
- 00:49:20 Reuse resources to save time and money
- 00:51:45 Reframe your unique selling points to different cultures
- 00:54:05 Understanding cultural-coding
- 00:55:32 Be mindful of your messaging in different cultures
- 00:57:10 Marketing is still about evoking emotions in your audience
- 00:58:00 Even emotions are culturally coded
- 00:58:37 ‘Am I a bad person?’ Nike ad
- 01:00:34 Individualistic vs collectivist cultures
- 01:02:58 Search behaviour is becoming more conversational in English
- 01:05:05 AI is not trained on minority languages
- 01:06:58 Adapt your language to cultural standards
- 01:08:12 Even small changes in language can make a big difference
- 01:09:12 Don’t say ‘please’ in your Spanish content!
- 01:10:51 How language changes through generations
- 01:11:35 “De nada” means “it’s nothing” not “you’re welcome”
- 01:13:49 Tiny errors can really change your messaging
- 01:14:08 How to build trust with your audience
- 01:15:40 Where to follow Maria Scheibengraf
- 01:16:36 Outro
Eric Hoover joins the Search With Candour podcast this week to discuss how to use AI for SEO. Yes, we’re finally talking about AI tools in detail and how to integrate AI into your SEO workflow.
Eric has recommendations for using AI and LLMs for keyword research, competitor analysis, content creation, ecommerce optimisation and if SearchGPT can ever dethrone Google as the primary search engine.
Sponsors
- Experience the evolution of SE Ranking
- Get your tickets for the live Brighton podcast
Links to follow Eric:
- Follow Eric on LinkedIn
- Eric's Website
Links to resources/articles
- Unmasking AI by Dr Joy Buolamwini
- AI in SEO, Treat it like a New Team Member
- Human-AI Collaboration
- FeedGen AI
- Ranch style SEO vs skyscraper style content
- Most people can’t identify AI-generated content
Chapters
- 00:00:00 How to do SEO in an AI world
- 00:00:28 Intro
- 00:01:37 Sponsor: SE Ranking
- 00:03:45 Live brightonSEO podcast 2 Oct 2024
- 00:05:44 Welcome to the show Eric Hoover
- 00:06:01 Let’s talk about cats (briefly)
- 00:08:16 SEO in an AI world
- 00:10:49 Book recommendation: Unmasking AI by Dr Joy Buolawmini
- 00:12:25 Working with AI as an assistant
- 00:14:37 You should learn to use AI in your workflow
- 00:15:20 How to use AI in keyword research
- 00:18:10 How to use AI in competitor analysis
- 00:19:35 Use AI to automate tasks and save your brain bandwidth
- 00:23:10 How to use AI for ecommerce optimisation
- 00:29:34 How to use AI to create content briefs
- 00:32:06 How to use AI to brainstorm new ideas
- 00:36:30 The common pitfalls of AI content
- 00:39:00 Can readers recognise AI-generated content?
- 00:41:36 How AI is integrated into the rest of our lives
- 00:44:50 Ranch-style SEO strategy works for AI-powered search
- 00:52:20 Content strategy for AI Overviews
- 00:54:20 Waiting for SearchGPT
- 00:56:50 Will there be a Google killer?
- 00:59:25 How search behaviour is shifting away from Google
- 01:02:50 Where to follow Eric Hoover
- 01:03:50 Outro and thanks
Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook reunite in the Candour studio to discuss the early reactions to SearchGPT, the helpful content update might not be what you think and how robots.txt can interact with redirects to cause indexing confusion.
Links and resources
- SE Ranking SearchGPT research
- Combined SearchGPT analysis on SEJ
- The helpful content update isn't what you think it is
- When robots.txt gets stuck in the middle of your redirects
Sponsors
- Start your 14-day free trial of Optmyzr
- Book your personalised Optmyzr demo
- Get your free ticket for the live podcast in Brighton
Chapters
- 00:00:00 - Intro
- 00:01:12 - Sponsor: Optmyzr
- 00:04:02 - Live podcast in Brighton on 2 Oct 2024
- 00:06:01 - Early reactions to SearchGPT
- 00:26:26 - The helpful content update was not what you think
- 00:37:03 - What happens when redirect URLs are blocked by robots.txt?
- 00:43:00 - SEO is heading towards a big change
- 00:45:17 - Outro
Ashley Liddell joins Jack on this week's Search With Candour to discuss how social media is infiltrating SEO and Google.
With the recent increase in UGC on the SERPs, aligning your social media and search strategies has never been more important.
Sponsors
- SE Ranking is the intuitive SEO platform trusted by over a million SEO professionals - start your free trial today.
- Free live podcast in Brighton on 2 October 2024.
Links to follow Ashley
- Follow Ashley on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-liddell-seo/
- Deviation - https://www.wearedeviation.co.uk/
Links to resources/articles:
- Deviation article about social SEO: https://www.wearedeviation.co.uk/insights/an-introduction-to-social-seo
- Relevant previous episode with Ray Saddiq - https://youtu.be/nD97J0on2cI?si=o5SNytZqAYYeS2Cu
- TikTok as a search engine with Annie-Mai Hodge: https://withcandour.co.uk/blog/tiktok-as-a-search-engine-with-annie-mai-hodge
Chapters
- 00:00:00 Intro
- 00:01:32 Sponsored by SE Ranking
- 00:03:11 Live podcast on 2nd October 2024
- 00:05:10 Welcome Ashley Liddell
- 00:06:07 The crossover of social media and search
- 00:09:01 How the relationship between SEO and social media has changed in the last year
- 00:12:34 The democratisation of content creation
- 00:14:55 People want authenticity in content
- 00:17:10 Google Perspectives replaced by Google Forums
- 00:21:30 How search behaviour has changed for Gen Z
- 00:23:55 Create content
- 00:27:03 The growth of long-form and short-form content
- 00:31:45 How Tiktok leads the short-form video industry
- 00:33:11 How old marketing tactics become relevant again on new platforms
- 00:33:50 Tiktok Shop tips
- 00:34:40 The customer journey for Tiktok content
- 00:36:08 Is Tiktok shop the future of ecommerce?
- 00:38:02 Selling products on Tiktok Live is the QVC of 2024
- 00:41:12 Brands need to embrace long-term commitment to authentic content
- 00:42:30 What will happen when Boohoo, Primark and Shein start using Tiktok shop?
- 00:46:35 Will big brands help to “legitimatise” Tiktok shop?
- 00:51:03 The two way relationship between organic search and social media
- 00:54:20 Integrating social media into keyword research (h/t tp Ray Saddiq)
- 00:55:24 Improving user experience by stealing ideas from social media
- 00:56:42 Search everywhere strategies
- 01:02:10 How social media can help with link building
- 01:06:43 Get your digital teams to work together or get left behind
- 01:08:30 Where to follow Ashley Lidell and Deviation
- 01:09:43 Thanks and outro
Jack Chambers-Ward discusses the latest SEO news you need to know about. This includes Google's controversial overhaul of their SEO video documentation, how to create your own AI expert with Gemini and is Android changing its default search engine?
Chapters
- 00:00:00 Intro
- 00:02:06 Win one year’s subscription to AlsoAsked Pro
- 00:04:22 Live podcast - 2 October 2024 in Brighton
- 00:06:20 SEO news you need to know
- 00:07:40 Google overhauls video SEO documentation
- 00:17:26 Google may now use your OG title
- 00:22:35 Gemini’s Gems
- 00:29:15 Android default search engine selector via Natalia Witczyk
- 00:34:35 You can include/exclude dimensions in line charts in GA4 via Kyle Rushton McGregor
- 00:36:34 Links won't save you from the HCU via Glenn Gabe
- 00:39:44 Outro and thanks
Get your tickets for the live podcast in Brighton: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/career-planning-without-overwhelming-yourself-live-podcast-free-pizza-tickets-989270774517
Get a free one year subscription to AlsoAsked Pro: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/markseo_you-can-win-a-free-year-of-alsoasked-pro-activity-7235244350148890624-XC1c
Links and resources:
- Google overhauls SEO video documentation: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-overhauls-video-seo-documentation-37966.html
- Google may now us your OG title: https://searchengineland.com/google-search-may-now-use-og-title-for-title-links-446023
- Gemini's new Gems https://blog.google/products/gemini/google-gemini-update-august-2024/
- Android default search engine selector: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7234503443929829376/
- You can include/exclude dimensions in line charts in GA4: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7234851311261814784-UHFo
- Links won't save you from the HCU: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/glenngabe_google-seo-activity-7235271222450614272-w6LI
Sarah McDowell and Tazmin Suleman, host of The SEO Mindset podcast, return to Search With Candour to discuss career planning and the announcement of our upcoming live podcast event on 2nd October 2024.
Get your tickets for the live podcast
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/989270774517?aff=oddtdtcreator
Sponsors:
- SE Ranking is the intuitive SEO platform trusted by over a million SEO professionals - start your free trial today.
- Keep up to date with the important SEO news with Core Updates
Chapters
- 00:00:00 - Intro
- 00:01:32 - Sponsor: SE Ranking
- 00:03:16 - How is the weather in Worcester, Milton Keynes and Norwich?
- 00:04:52 - Live podcast announcement
- 00:08:40 - What is the live podcast event?
- 00:12:29 - What’s special about the live podcast?
- 00:15:35 - Providing solutions to topics
- 00:19:36 - Sponsor: Core Updates
- 00:20:47 - Career planning without overwhelming yourself
- 00:22:20 - Sarah McDowell: Butterfly Lady
- 00:23:40 - Saying yes to things
- 00:26:13 - Learning to set goals and plan your career
- 00:28:50 - Give yourself the same advice you would give others
- 00:30:21 - How to deal with overwhelm
- 00:32:18 - Planning ahead helps can help reduce stress in the future
- 00:34:12 - You can get overwhelmed if you don’t plan
- 00:37:47 - Join us on Wednesday 2nd October 2024
- 00:40:09 - The event will be live streamed and available on Youtube
- 00:42:52 - Outro
Follow The SEO Mindset Podcast:
- The SEO Mindset podcast
- Follow Sarah McDowell
- Follow Tazmin Suleman
Mark & Jack are back in the studio to discuss the latest SEO news including Google's recent legal loss, recommendations coming to Google Search Console and the recent SERP volatility.
Sponsors:
- Find the questions people also ask about your content with AlsoAsked - https://alsoasked.com/?utm=swcpodcast
- Get your free tickets for HIVE MCR on 29 August 2024 - https://hive-mcr.co.uk/?utm=swcpodcast
Links & resources:
- Google is declared a monopoly by a federal judge https://www.likemind.media/judges-anti-trust-ruling-impact-googles-monopoly/
- Marie Haynes breakdown of the Google documents https://x.com/Marie_Haynes/status/1820557751145074977
- All 286 pages of the Google trial document https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25032745-045110819896
- The Verge's coverage of the Google antitrust trial https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/11/24216760/google-trial-monopoly-remedies-rivals
- Google Search Console recommendationshttps://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/08/search-console-recommendations
- A lot of SERP volatility suggests a Google update is coming soonhttps://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-volatility-weekend-37878.html
Chapters
- 00:00:00 - Intro
- 00:00:31 - Sponsor: AlsoAsked
- 00:02:17 - Sponsor: HIVE MCR
- 00:04:01 - Google is declared a monopoly by a federal judge
- 00:25:34 - Google Search Console recommendations
- 00:33:01 - High SERP volatility could mean a Google Core Update is coming soon
Jo Juliana Turnbull AKA SEO Jo Blogs joins Jack to discuss the importance of events and community in the SEO industry.
This episode includes advice for creating and growing your event as well as recommendations for communities and events for you to join.
Sponsors:
- SE Ranking is the intuitive SEO platform trusted by over a million SEO professionals - start your free trial today.
- Understand your users with live “People Also Asked” data and intent clustering by Google.
Links to follow Jo:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-turnbull
- X/Twitter: https://x.com/SEOJoBlogs
- Search London: https://searchldn.com/
- Search Barcelona: https://searchldn.com/barcelona/
Links to resources/articles:
- Great article by Helen Pollitt - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ask-an-seo-what-are-the-best-resources-to-learn-seo-and-who-are-the-best-people-to-follow-online-for-good-advice/520158/
- https://www.womenintechseo.com/
- https://webcertain.com/international-search-summit/barcelona/
- https://www.goodsignals.com/seo-office-hours/
- https://searchnstuff.co.uk/
Chapters
- 00:00:00 - Intro
- 00:01:18 - Sponsor: SE Ranking
- 00:02:26 - Sponsor: AlsoAsked
- 00:04:43 - Welcome SEO Jo Blogs
- 00:05:39 - SearchLondon
- 00:06:43 - Why are events so important in the SEO industry?
- 00:09:06 - The importance of being part of the SEO community
- 00:10:20 - There are so many incredible events around the world
- 00:10:53 - How and why Jo started running SearchLondon
- 00:12:41 - How to make the most of attending an event
- 00:13:59 - Events help us feel less alone
- 00:15:10 - The benefits of smaller events
- 00:18:17 - How to grow your event
- 00:20:50 - Have a focus for your event
- 00:22:05 - Booking and visiting the venue
- 00:23:24 - Prove that your city is worth visiting
- 00:24:55 - The events happening in Barcelona
- 00:26:50 - Finding your gap in the market
- 00:28:54 - How to stand out from other events
- 00:32:33 - SEO Office Hours
- 00:35:00 - Online events are important for people who can’t attend in-person events
- 00:36:13 - Search Africon
- 00:39:24 - How to turn your events into a community
- 00:43:40 - Pay it forward to other events and creators
- 00:48:00 - How to build a returning audience for your events
- 00:55:05 - How to follow SEO Jo Blogs and Search London
- 00:56:59 - Outro
Patrick Hathaway makes his triumphant return to the show to discuss the Sitebulb JavaScript SEO Report.
This episode delves into the internet's growing reliance on Javascript, the importance of understanding Google's indexing & rendering processes and the growth of technical skills gaps in the SEO industry.
Sitebulb JavaScript SEO Report https://sitebulb.com/javascript-seo/report/
Follow Patrick & Sitebulb:
- Patrick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickhathaway/
- Sitebulb on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sitebulb/
- Patrick on Twitter: https://x.com/HathawayP
- Sitebulb on Twitter: https://x.com/sitebulb
- Website: https://sitebulb.com/
Sponsors
- This week's episode is sponsored by AlsoAsked - the best way to access People Also Ask data at scale.
- Keep up with the latest SEO news and tips by subscribing to CoreUpdates.
Chapters:
- 00:00:00 - Intro
- 00:02:40 - Sponsor: AlsoAsked
- 00:04:25 - Sponsor: Core Updates
- 00:05:43 - Welcome back, Patrick Hathaway
- 00:07:17 - What was the inspiration for this JavaScript SEO study?
- 00:10:07 - A two part study combining the survey & Sitebulb data
- 00:11:12 - The JavaScript skills gap in SEO
- 00:12:48 - The evolution of JavaScript and the internet
- 00:14:55 - Why JavaScript is popular for new developers
- 00:16:32 - Google’s JavaScript documentation
- 00:18:04 - The anti-JavaScript movement in SEO
- 00:20:03 - The opacity of fixing JavaScript problems
- 00:20:30 - Google has improved their JavaScript rendering
- 00:22:00 - How important is it to understand JavaScript for SEOs?
- 00:23:45 - Why SEOs should learn how to use DevTools
- 00:27:05 - Communicating with developers
- 00:28:32 - Don’t be afraid to ask developers questions
- 00:30:35 - Be honest if you don’t know
- 00:31:15 - A third of SEOs don’t feel comfortable investigating JavaScript issues
- 00:33:07 - How to communicate the value of technical SEO fixes
- 00:36:28 - How to reduce the JavaScript SEO skills gap
- 00:39:57 - We should communicate more interdisciplinarily
- 00:42:40 - Understand when key elements are being changed by JavaScript
- 00:46:37 - Sitebulb’s hints and resources are great
- 00:48:43 - A JavaScript horror story with Squarespace
- 00:50:00 - More people are using Sitebulb’s Chrome crawler than ever before
- 00:51:30 - The problem with plugins
- 00:53:10 - Where to follow Patrick & Sitebulb
- 00:55:16 - Outro
- 00:57:03 - Next week’s guest is SEOJoBlogs AKA Jo Juliana Turnbull!
Vince Nero (Director of Content Marketing at Buzzstream) joins Jack on this week’s episode to discuss why digital PR is the future of link building.
Sponsors:
- SEO Testing - Begin your exclusive extended free trial today
- Search 'n' Stuff - Use code CANDOUR20 for 20% off your tickets
Follow Vince & Buzzstream
- Vince on LinkedIn
- Follow Vince on Twitter
- Check out Buzzstream
Buzzstream podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWuoOU-8n6fOpQVCszF1JFWEAyTtXhUpb
Time stamps
- 00:00:04 - Intro
- 00:00:56 - Sponsor: SEO Testing
- 00:03:47 - Sponsor: Search ‘n’ Stuff
- 00:06:16 - Welcome to the show, Vince Nero
- 00:08:15 - The shift towards digital PR in link building
- 00:11:47 - The benefits of digital PR
- 00:12:50 - How digital PR relates to AI Overviews
- 00:13:33 - What we can learn from the Google API leak
- 00:16:45 - Why digital PR is called ‘earned media’
- 00:20:38 - Using Ahrefs to find your competitors’ best links
- 00:22:54 - The price of a quality links in 2024
- 00:25:22 - The links that money can’t buy (in theory)
- 00:26:20 - Journalists are underpaid and overworked
- 00:28:30 - How to stand out against AI-generated content
- 00:31:10 - Align your content to your audience
- 00:31:50 - Google is looking for fresh, new content
- 00:35:45 - Freshness can help get your content featured in AI Overviews
- 00:36:35 - Vince’s blueprint for success (patent pending)
- 00:39:35 - Make the journalists job as easy as possible
- 00:41:29 - Is your pitch enough to write an article?
- 00:44:40 - The click-through rate of big publications vs niche publications
- 00:45:35 - How to build positive relationships with publications
- 00:46:34 - The crossover of traditional PR and digital PR
- 00:48:30 - Proving yourself as an expert
- 00:50:00 - There’s a publication or forum or subreddit for every niche
- 00:51:40 - Focus on the metrics that matter
- 00:51:51 - Find your tribe (Seth Godin’s advice)
- 00:54:48 - Find the balance between thinking outside the box and find your audience
- 00:58:12 - Digital PR for SEO vs brand growth
- 01:01:02 - Are unlinked mentions still valuable?
- 01:04:30 - Your site design can affect if people link to you!
- 01:06:26 - The big sites are overtaken by bad layouts and ads
- 01:08:15 - Where to follow Vince and Buzzstream
- 01:09:25 - Outro - I’ve hosted more episodes than Mark!
- 01:10:41 - Next week guest announcement
Sponsors:
- SEO Testing - Begin your exclusive extended free trial today
- Search 'n' Stuff - Use code CANDOUR20 for 20% off your tickets
Mark and Jack reunite in the Candour studio to say goodbye to Universal Analytics and Google's continuous scroll, discuss why Bing's index is more important than you think and why AI Overviews are now showing for fewer than 7% of queries.
Time stamps:
- 00:00:11 - Intro
- 00:01:14 - Sponsor: SEO Testing
- 00:05:00 - Sponsor: Search ‘n’ Stuff
- 00:07:30 - In loving memory…
- 00:08:18 - RIP to Google’s continuous scroll
- 00:14:09 - RIP to Universal Analytics
- 00:16:06 - Prompt injection leads to demotion on Bing
- 00:22:34 - The Bing index powers a lot of LLMs
- 00:34:02 - AI Overviews only show for 7% of queries
- 00:43:30 - Outro
Links and resources
- Previous episode about GA4 key events and attribution
- Previous episode about GA4 with Krista Seiden & Simo Ahava
- RIP Universal Analytics: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11583528?hl=en
- Prompt injection with Bing: https://www.seroundtable.com/prompt-injection-bing-webmaster-guidelines-37650.html
- Bing's index is more important than you think: https://x.com/jes_scholz/status/1812693442558087653
- AI Overviews only showing for 7% of queries: https://searchengineland.com/google-ai-overviews-visibility-new-low-444048
Sponsor:
This week’s episode is sponsored by Majestic. Go to majestic.com/offers/swc to get exclusive free Lite access to Site Explorer for any one website that you control.
Nikki Pilkington joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss why SEO education is really important.
There needs to be less gatekeeping in SEO and more of us should share our knowledge with peers, clients and even web designers.
Follow Nikki
- Follow Nikki on LinkedIn
- Follow Nikki on Twitter
- The Non-wanky SEO Course
Time stamps
- 00:00:04 - Intro
- 00:01:05 - Majestic ad
- 00:06:12 - Interview with Nikki Pilkington
- 00:07:04 - Why is education important in SEO?
- 00:10:40 - Avoid using jargon, this won’t attract new clients
- 00:14:45 - Don’t be afraid to share tips and advice on social media
- 00:16:46 - Nikki’s experiences in the early days of SEO
- 00:18:35 - Don’t gatekeep information
- 00:20:15 - Testing and experimenting is a great way to learn
- 00:21:45 - Educate web designers to add Google Search Console from day one
- 00:25:45 - SEOs can learn a lot from developers and designers too
- 00:27:25 - PPC and SEO teams should work together
- 00:31:36 - Recurring clients
- 00:33:23 - Educating clients about SEO
- 00:35:55 - Explain why SEO things matter, rather than just telling
- 00:37:00 - Use plain English not jargon
- 00:41:00 - SEO isn’t a dark art!
- 00:43:53 - The Google API leak
- 00:51:27 - AI is useful but it’s not the be all and end all
- 00:52:35 - Vanity metics vs what actually matters
- 00:54:32 - The power of word of mouth
- 00:57:18 - Google’s tagline - Don’t be evil
- 00:58:45 - Who to learn SEO from and who to follow
- 01:01:05 - Even small details can lead to new discoveries
- 01:06:42 - Other SEOs to follow on Twitter
- 01:08:25 - Where to follow Nikki
- 01:09:22 - Outro
Josephine Rudolf is a Junior SEO Manager at Barfer's, will be graduating from the International University of Applied Sciences soon and is the newest member of the Women in Tech SEO team. She has been an SEO mentor and mentee, all before the age of 23.
Time stamps
- 00:00:04 - Intro
- 00:01:17 - AlsoAsked
- 00:03:03 - Wix Studio
- 00:04:48 - Interview with Josephine Rudolf
- 00:05:30 - Networking for introverts
- 00:06:57 - What networking is like early in your career
- 00:07:42 - Joining Women in Tech SEO
- 00:10:40 - What is an introvert?
- 00:13:26 - Common myths of introverts and extroverts
- 00:14:28 - What is social anxiety?
- 00:16:45 - How Josephine has dealt with social anxiety
- 00:19:34 - Tips and techniques to help reduce social anxiety
- 00:20:08 - Rituals and preparations
- 00:23:57 - Meeting up with friends before the event
- 00:26:58 - One-to-One meetings
- 00:28:01 - The Alter Ego Effect
- 00:32:43 - Having a physical item or drink is good to reduce social anxiety
- 00:34:33 - Self affirmations to reassure yourself
- 00:37:12 - Pacing yourself
- 00:39:15 - The peak-end theory
- 00:44:15 - The importance of aftercare
- 00:49:00 - Take notes - journaling, audio memos and photos
- 00:52:13 - The pressure of social media
- 00:55:10 - The positives of digital networking
- 01:00:56 - SEO Office Hours live chat
- 01:01:48 - How to start networking through social media
- 01:03:23 - The power of one-to-one networking
- 01:06:03 - Be authentic when you’re networking
- 01:09:53 - People will often remember the silly off-topic things about your conversations
- 01:11:22 - Cowboy cat hat
- 01:12:14 - Where to follow Josephine
- 01:13:43 - Outro
Follow Josephine on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephine-rudolf/
Josephine's Cowboy cat - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/josephine-rudolf_a-little-monday-motivation-for-everyone-activity-7213524119403835393-izqw
Sponsors:
This week's podcast is sponsored by Wix Studio - the web platform built for agencies and enterprises.
This week's episode is also sponsored by AlsoAsked - the best way to access People Also Ask data at scale.
Sponsors:
This week's podcast is sponsored by Wix Studio - the web platform built for agencies and enterprises.
This week's episode is also sponsored by AlsoAsked - the best way to access People Also Ask data at scale.
Show notes:
Simon Lesser, CEO and co-founder of Dragon Metrics joins the podcast this week to give us a sneak peek behind the scenes of how SEO tools work.
- What data from SEO tools actually means
- What customers want vs what customers need
- Why so many SEOs use tools
- The importance of listening to your audience
- What goes into making important decisions
Follow Simon and Dragon Metrics:
- Twitter: https://x.com/DragonMetrics
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonlesser/
- Website: https://www.dragonmetrics.com/
Brightlocal's Local SEO for Good
https://www.brightlocal.com/local-seo-for-good/
Sponsors:
This week's podcast is sponsored by Wix Studio - the web platform built for agencies and enterprises. https://www.wix.com/studio?utm_campaign=pa_podcast_studio_all_brnd_all_en_04/22_all__Candour^8&experiment_id=^efficiency^^hp
Keep up with the latest SEO news and tips by subscribing to CoreUpdates. https://coreupdates.com/?utm=swcpodcast
SEO agency red flags with Emina Demiri-Watson
Emina Demiri-Watson joins Jack Chambers-Ward for a confession session on the many sins committed by SEO agencies. If you’ve worked with or are considering hiring an SEO agency, here are some things you’ll want to avoid.
- Overpromising and underdelivering
- Lack of transparency
- How to recognise red flags
- Competition between agencies
- Spreading themselves too thin
- Lack of alignment across teams
Follow Emina:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemiriE
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emina-demiri/
- Website: https://www.vixendigital.com/
- SEOs Getting Coffee: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCZ9vc4nEbzcuLUnuJcC_c_cbcybHDhW4
Author, blogger and entrepreneur Shaunda Necole joins Jack Chambers-Ward on this week's Search With Candour to discuss how she has established her brand and topical authority in multiple niches.
- How to prove yourself as a topical authority to Google
- Why podcasts are good for proving your authenticity and authority
- Hidden gem sources of authority
- How to speak Google's "love language"
- How to build your knowledge panel
- How to build trust with your audience
Sponsors:
- This week's podcast is sponsored by Wix Studio - the web platform built for agencies and enterprises. https://www.wix.com/studio?utm_campaign=pa_podcast_studio_all_brnd_all_en_04/22_all__Candour^8&experiment_id=^efficiency^^hp
- Keep up with the latest SEO news and tips by subscribing to CoreUpdates. https://coreupdates.com/?utm=swcpodcast
Follow Shaunda:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaundanecole/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@shaundanecole
- Website: https://shaundanecole.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shaundanecole/
- The Soul Food Pot: https://thesoulfoodpot.com/
- Vegas Right Now: https://vegasrightnow.com/
Ray Saddiq joins Jack on the podcast this week to discuss aligning your organic search and organic social channels to make the best content.
Ray & Jack discuss topics such as:
- Why is channel alignment important in modern marketing strategies?
- How have search behaviours changed?
- How important is it to adapt the language and style of content for different channels?
- How should teams communicate to ensure effective multi-channel marketing?
Sponsors:
This week's podcast is sponsored by Wix Studio - the web platform built for agencies and enterprises.
This week's episode is also sponsored by AlsoAsked - the best way to access People Also Ask data at scale.
Follow Ray:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ray-saddiq/
- X: https://twitter.com/raysaddiq1
- Website: https://thesocialdiary.io/
Jonas Sickler joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss a new digital marketing strategy - owned asset optimisation.
Listen to this podcast if you want to know:
- What is owned asset optimisation?
- What are owned assets?
- Are there different types of owned assets?
- How do you optimise them?
- What is reception marketing?
- How do these strategies differ from “SEO” and “traditional digital marketing”?
- What's the difference between the PESO vs MACH-6 models?
Sponsors:
This week's podcast is sponsored by Wix Studio - the web platform built for agencies and enterprises.
This week's episode is also sponsored by AlsoAsked - the best way to access People Also Ask data at scale.
Follow Jonas:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-sickler/
- X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JonasSickler
- Website:https://terakeet.com/
- Learn about owned asset optimisation: https://terakeet.com/blog/owned-asset-optimization/
Sponsors:
- This week's podcast is sponsored by Wix Studio - the web platform built for agencies and enterprises.
- This week's episode is also sponsored by AlsoAsked - the best way to access People Also Ask data at scale.
Show notes:Jack and Mark reunite in the Candour studio to rant, rave and react to Google's newest release, AI Overviews.Time stamps:00:00:16 - Intro00:01:32 - Sponsor: AlsoAsked00:03:17 - Sponsor: Wix Studio00:05:02 - AI Overviews00:40:54 - Outro
Resources:
- Examples of AI Overview feedback: https://x.com/lilyraynyc/status/1792903992772628929
- Optimisey Search: https://x.com/Optimisey/status/1792473651087855969
- Google falls for the old blinker fluid trick: https://jalopnik.com/googles-new-ai-overview-says-you-might-need-to-change-y-1851488127
- How to use Google's Web filter: https://x.com/searchliaison/status/1790473952256786805
Sponsor:
This week's podcast is sponsored by Wix Studio - the web platform built for agencies and enterprises.
Sarah Presch, Digital Marketing Director at Dragon Metrics, returns to the podcast to discuss the social psychology behind how we search.
- What are cognitive biases?
- Social identity theory
- What is confirmation bias?
- Can misinformation online make a big impact?
- Google’s role in the spread of misinformation
- Contradicting search results depending on the search term
- Is this also true in other languages?
- What can we do to combat misinformation and confirmation bias?
Follow Sarah:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarah_presch
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-pokorna/
- Website:https://www.sarahpresch.com/
Links/resources:
- Sarah's article: https://www.dragonmetrics.com/confirmation-bias/
- An excellent companion piece by Jamie Indigo: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/digital-disinformation-fight-manipulation-seo-industry/380344/
- Sarah's previous appearance on Search With Candour: https://withcandour.co.uk/blog/the-importance-of-cultural-understanding-in-seo-with-sarah-presch
Sponsor:
This week's podcast is sponsored by Wix Studio - the web platform built for agencies and enterprises.
Munene Mumbi joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss reporting for enterprise SEO clients. Munene & Jack cover topics including:
- Communicating to different stakeholders
- How is it different from reporting for small businesses?
- What are the most common Enterprise SEO metrics?
- Tools to track and report on Enterprise SEO
- What skills are needed in enterprise SEO reporting?
Follow Munene:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MuneneKL
- LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/munene-mumbi/
- Search Africon: https://searchafricon.com/
Sponsor: This week's podcast is sponsored by Wix Studio - the web platform built for agencies and enterprises.
Dana DiTomaso joins Search With Candour to discuss:
- What are Key Events?
- So, what are Conversions in GA4 then?
- Why did Google make this change?
- How can one Key Event be attributed in three different ways?
- User Acquisition vs Traffic Acquisition
- What’s the difference between them?
- Is there a best way for SEOs to get an accurate picture of organic traffic in GA4?
- What should people actually use for reporting?
- How can SEOs ensure our hard-earned traffic gets attributed to the right channel?
- What else should SEOs be measuring?
Follow Dana:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dditomaso/
- Website: https://kpplaybook.com
- New GA4 course: https://kpplaybook.com/google-analytics-4-course/
- Attribution: conversions vs key events in GA4: https://kpplaybook.com/resources/complete-guide-to-key-events-conversions-in-ga4-new-march-2024/
- KP Playbook on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kp_playbook
Sponsors:
This week's podcast is sponsored by Wix Studio - the web platform built for agencies and enterprises.
This week's episode is also sponsored by AlsoAsked - the best way to access People Also Ask data at scale.
Show notes:
Jack and Mark reunite in the Candour studio to discuss the important search marketing news from April 2024.
Everything from Microsoft's answer to Google Discover, Brave Search's new AI-powered search experience and Google's answer to the recent site reputation abuse (AKA parasite SEO).
Time stamps:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:57 - Sponsor: Wix Studio
00:02:38 - Sponsor: AlsoAsked
00:04:24 - Microsoft Start releases its AI policy
00:16:39 - Brave Search launches Answer With AI
00:33:34 - Site reputation abuse
00:44:21 - Outro
Resources:
- Microsoft Start's AI policy: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/glenngabe_microsoft-ai-seo-activity-7181640732221288449-dnxp/
- Brave Search's Answer With AI https://brave.com/blog/answer-with-ai/
- Google documentation on site reputation abuse: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies#:~:text=Site%20reputation%20abuse%20is%20when,first%2Dparty%20site's%20ranking%20signals
- Google will use both manual actions and algorithmic updates to tackle site reputation abuse: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-site-reputation-abuse-spam-37231.html
- Forbes blocks its coupon directory: https://www.seroundtable.com/forbes-coupon-directory-google-block-37269.html
Sponsors:
This week's podcast is sponsored by Wix Studio - the web platform built for agencies and enterprises.
This week's episode is also sponsored by CoreUpdates - the best way to stay up-to-date with the latest SEO news.
Show notes:
Andy Frobisher joins Jack on the podcast this week to discuss website migrations for ecommerce businesses. Andy & Jack answer questions including:
- Why do businesses migrate?
- What types of site migrations are there?
- When’s the best time to migrate?
- When should the SEO team be involved in the migration process?
- The common pitfalls of site migrations
- Some opportunities and benefits of migrating
Follow Andy:
Website: https://andyfrobisher.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-frobisher/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/andy_frobisher
Andy's BrightonSEO talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFV0Onve6_Y
Sponsors:
This episode is sponsored by Optmyzr, go to optmyzr.com to start your two-week free trial today.
This episode is also sponsored by AlsoAsked. Go to alsoasked.com to get the best way to access People Also Ask data for your keywords.
Show notes:
Adam Di Frisco joins Jack Chambers-Ward on this week's podcast to discuss Baidu and how Google is becoming more like Baidu. Topics covered include:
- Common misconceptions about Baidu
- Baidu ranking factors (study by Jademond)
- How heavily is Baidu used in China?
- The similarities between Google and Baidu
- Why are spam penalties harsher on Baidu
Time stamps:
00:00:21 - Intro
00:01:44 - Sponsor: AlsoAsked
00:03:29 - Sponsor: Optmyzr
00:05:50 - Interview with Adam Di Frisco
00:56:40 - Outro
Sponsors:
This episode is sponsored by Optmyzr, go to optmyzr.com to start your two-week free trial today.
This episode is also sponsored by AlsoAsked. Go to alsoasked.com to get the best way to access People Also Ask data for your keywords.
Show notes:
Matt Tutt joins Search With Candour this week to discuss how to make the web more sustainable:
- The resources required for data centres
- How easy it is to use green web hosting
- Reducing image sizes
- Reducing crawl budgets
- Should we have a universal crawler?
- Putting pressure on CMSs to use renewable energy sources
Resources:
- Matt's climate change +SEO survey for Search Engine Land: https://searchengineland.com/climate-change-seo-survey-making-web-more-sustainable-438209
- The Green Web Foundation:https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/
- https://www.websitecarbon.com/
- https://lowwwcarbon.com/
- Michelle Barker - A greener web: https://youtu.be/EfPoOt7T5lg?si=o7Dn16CkBsaokIu9
Sponsors:This episode is sponsored by Optmyzr, the modern PPC management software built for PPC people. Go to optmyzr.com to start your two-week free trial today.
This episode is also sponsored by AlsoAsked. Go to alsoasked.com to get the best way to access People Also Ask data for your keywords.
Show notes:
Mark Williams-Cook and Jack Chambers-Ward are reunited in the Candour studio to discuss:
- The European Commission's AI Act
- Ethan Lazuk's breakdown of the Google anti-trust trial
Watch Search With Candour on Youtube
For previous episodes, links, shows notes and more.
Sponsors:
This episode is sponsored by Optmyzr, go to optmyzr.com to start your two-week free trial today.
This episode is also sponsored by AlsoAsked. Go to alsoasked.com to get the best way to access People Also Ask data for your keywords.
Show notes:
Beth Woodcock joins the podcast this week to discuss how to get into technical SEO if you don't have a technical background.
- Where should someone start with technical SEO?
- Are there particular tools that are essential to learn?
- What are the best resources for learning technical SEO?
- The importance of working in diverse teams
Resources:
- The Odin Project
- So Good They Can't Ignore You
- Rebel Ideas
Watch Search With Candour on Youtube
For previous episodes, links, shows notes and more.
Sponsors:
This episode is sponsored by Optmyzr, go to optmyzr.com to start your two-week free trial today.
This episode is also sponsored by AlsoAsked. Go to alsoasked.com to get the best way to access People Also Ask data for your keywords.
Show notes:
Amy Doherty joins Search With Candour this week to discuss the power of storytelling in marketing.
- How to add emotion to your marketing and advertising
- How storytelling helps you relate to your audience
- How to use both analytical and creative skills in marketing
- How to use story structures to make your reports and presentations better
Watch Search With Candour on Youtube
For previous episodes, links, shows notes and more.
Sponsors:
This episode is sponsored by Optmyzr, go to optmyzr.com to start your two week free trial today.
This episode is also sponsored by AlsoAsked. Go to alsoasked.com to get the best way to access People Also Ask data for your keywords.
Show notes:
Gus Pelogia, SEO Product Manager at Indeed, joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and what effect it will have on Google SERPs
- What is the Digital Markets Act?
- What is a gatekeeper in the Digital Markets Act?
- What will the Digital Markets Act do?
- What sectors will the DMA affect?
Follow Gus:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/pelogia
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gpelogia/
- Gus' article about the DMA: https://www.guspelogia.com/google-dma-serp-changes
Watch Search With Candour on YouTube.
Find previous episodes at search.withcandour.co.uk.
Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook reunite to recap all the important SEO news from February 2024.
Sponsored by Positional:
Join the closed beta now before launch on 26 March 2024!
Jack & Mark discuss:
- The new Google & Reddit agreement
- Google paying publishers to test new AI tools
- Helpful Content fallout and recoveries
- What is information gain?
Time stamps:
- 00:00:05 - Intro
- 00:00:52 - Sponsor: Positional
- 00:02:41 - Google and Reddit partnership
- 00:08:00 - 'Help me write' AI vs review guidelines
- 00:12:53 - Google is paying publishers to test unreleased AI tools
- 00:17:54 - Sponsor: Positional
- 00:19:20 - Google is killing independent sites
- 00:24:00 - Helpful Content Update recovery
- 00:31:30 - What is information gain and why does it matter?
Watch Search With Candour on Youtube
Hannah Butcher joins the podcast this week to discuss squiggly SEO career paths.
- Why are unusual career paths common in the SEO industry?
- What are the benefits of this kind of career path?
- What are some of the potential drawbacks?
- Common causes of job changes
- How much can mental health and neurodiversity contribute to your career path?
Watch on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/sr4bviTy65c
Sponsors:
- AlsoAsked - https://alsoasked.com/
- CoreUpdates - https://coreupdates.com/
Follow Hannah:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/hanfbutcher
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannahfb/
- Website: https://agency-angel.com/
Nate Matherson, CEO of Positional and host of the Optimize Podcast, joins Jack to discuss how to make your content helpful in 2024.
Topics discussed include:
- How to stand out against AI-generated content
- How to find unique data sources
- Why you should include quotes from subject experts
- How to demonstrate first-hand experience
- Bring some personality and tone of voice to your writing
- Targeting long-tail keywords
For full show notes and to watch on YouTube, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
Alex Harford, Technical SEO consultant, and mentor, joins Jack to discuss some of the basics that we SEOs often either forget or take for granted.
The duo discuss:
- URL structure
- Page templates
- Coding languages
- Status codes
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@candouragency
Sponsors:
AlsoAsked - https://alsoasked.com/
CoreUpdates - https://coreupdates.com/
Links & show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk/
Matt Kohli makes his return to the podcast to discuss his recent move from working in SEO agencies to going freelance.
Topics discussed include:
- The decision to go freelance
- The early days so far
- The importance of all the paperwork and boring bits
- The pros & cons of moving from agency to freelance
- Planning and road mapping
Sponsors:
- AlsoAsked - https://alsoasked.com
- Core Updates - https://coreupdates.com/
Mark Williams-Cook reunites with Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss and recap the most important SEO news from January 2024 including:
- Is Google search getting worse?
- The impact of SGE on organic results
Sponsors:
Join the Positional private beta today: https://www.positional.com/sponsored/search-with-candour?utm_source=search-with-candour&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=january2024
Core Updates: https://coreupdates.com/?utm_source=search-with-candour&utm_medium=podcast
Timestamps:
00:24 - Intro
03:48 - Topic 1 - Is Google search getting worse?
21:40 - Positional (sponsor)
25:24 - Topic 2 - What impact will SGE have?
Links and resources:
- Mashable article about search quality: https://mashable.com/article/google-search-low-quality-research
- Lily Ray’s tweets: https://twitter.com/lilyraynyc/status/1749413842285666367 https://twitter.com/lilyraynyc/status/1747588212300669205
- Weekend ranking mystery or Google bug? https://ziptie.dev/blog/google-weekend-ranking-mystery-or-a-google-bug/
- Authoritas study on SGE: https://www.authoritas.com/blog/research-study-the-impact-of-googles-search-generative-experience-on-rankings
- 60% of SEOs are worried about SGE https://seroundtable.com/seos-worried-impact-google-sge-36770.html
Riley Hope joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss SEO reporting, especially focusing on small and medium-sized businesses.
- What metrics should we be tracking?
- What tools to use for SEO reporting
- How to provide feedback to clients
- Long term strategy and KPIs
Sponsors:
AlsoAsked - https://alsoasked.com/
Core Updates - https://coreupdates.com/
Watch this podcast on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@candouragency
Chris Spann (Technical SEO Lead at Lumar) joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss how SEO and security can and, more importantly, should work together.Subscribe for new episodes every Monday morning!#seo #seopodcast #podcastSponsors:AlsoAsked - https://alsoasked.com/ Core Updates - https://coreupdates.com/Follow Chris:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisspann/Twitter - https://twitter.com/503blazeitFollow Jack:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlwchambers/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/JLWChambers
In this episode, Matt Hepburn joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss enterprise SEO.
- What is enterprise SEO?
- How is enterprise SEO different?
- Are SEOs invited to help brain storm on content topics?
- What is content syndication?
- How can multiple business lines adversely affect SEO when they are targeting the same topics?
- How can enterprise businesses stumble with their implementation
- How can organic traffic conversion help enterprise businesses?
Sponsors:
AlsoAsked - https://alsoasked.com/
Core Updates - https://coreupdates.com/
Watch this episode on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@candouragency
Follow Matt:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthepburnnj/
EMJ SEO Podcast - https://emjpodcast.com/
Offer Fuel - https://offerfuel.io/
Follow Jack:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlwchambers/
Twitter -https://twitter.com/JLWChambers
In the final episode of season 2, Jack is joined by Petra Kis-Herczegh to discuss emotional intelligence and how it can help you in your career. Topics include:
- What is emotional intelligence?
- The types of emotional intelligence
- How can emotions hold us back?
- What can we do to improve our self reflection?
- What are the biggest challenges SEOs face?
Subscribe to us on YouTube
Check out our newsletter that will launch in January: https://coreupdates.com/
Mark and Jack are back together for the final episode of 2023!
Watch this episode on YouTube
The dynamic duo discuss:
- SISTRIX's major updates and improvements during 2023
- How well did their predictions about 2023 go?
- How many Google updates were there in 2023?
- What do these updates tell us what to expect in 2024?
For more episodes and show notes, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
It's episode 100 of season so, to celebrate, we've got three amazing guests on this episode!
Crystal Carter, Arnout Hellemans and Bibi The Link Builder join Jack Chambers-Ward to form Team Stroopwafel and discuss the SEO highlights of 2023 and SEO predictions for 2024!
Topics discussed include:
- The best uses of ChatGPT and AI
- Bing AI
- Search Generative Experience
- E-E-A-T
- Is UGC on SERPs here to stay?
For the full show notes and links from this episode, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
A mythbusting duo of Jack Chambers-Ward & Morgan Petrov embark on a podcast adventure full of rants and hot takes to bust SEO myths.
These SEO myths include:
- Page speed is everything
- Disavowing backlinks
- Anchor text ratios
- Google Sandbox
- Bounce rate as a ranking factor
And much more!
Check out the links and show notes at search.withcandour.co.uk.
Don't forget to subscribe/follow the podcast to never miss an episode.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please review us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Watch this episode on YouTube
Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers-Ward reunite once again to discuss the latest SEO news including:
- SISTRIX's new newsletter by Jono Alderson
- Google's anti-trust trial so far by AJ Kohn
- Google tests Notes and Follow features on SERPs (with mixed results)
- New discussionforum and profilepage markup
Don't forget to subscribe/follow the podcast to never miss an episode.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please review us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Seb Atkinson makes his triumphant return to the podcast (originally appearing on Season 1 Episode 51 in March 2020) and joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss Interaction to Next Paint (INP).
- What is INP?
- How is it different to first input delay?
- What's a good INP score?
- How do we measure INP?
- What factors contribute to INP?
- How to get stakeholder buy-in
Google's INP announcement
For full show notes, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
Lidia Infante joins Jack Chambers-Ward for the most innuendo-filled episode of Search With Candour ever.
Lidia takes Jack through her dating life and how it helped her understand customer journeys and optimisation.
- Understanding the Sales Pipeline: From leads (MQLs, SQLs) to opportunities and closed deals.
- Choosing a North Star: The guiding metric that shapes your strategy.
- Iterative Goal-Driven Optimisation: Experimenting with your strategy to impact your north star.
- Lead Qualification: Identifying and pursuing the right opportunities, be it in love or business.
- Red/Blue Ocean Strategy: Standing out in a crowded market (or dating pool).
- How to use these concepts to grow in your career.
SearchNorwich made its triumphant return last month so we thought we would bring you the fantastic talk from Daniel Foley Carter.
Daniel takes his 20+ years of SEO experience and discusses what he believes Google's plan is with the recent helpful content updates and why the industry needs to move away from traditional SEO.
Links:
- Sponsor: SISTRIX - SectorWatch headphones
- Watch this talk on the SearchNorwich Youtube channel
- Get your free tickets for SearchNorwich Christmas Social on 6th December 2023
Watch this episode on YouTube
Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook are back once again to discuss the latest SEO news including:
- SISTRIX analysis of Google update fallout
- BERT vs ERNIE = Google vs Baidu
- Google Discover being tested on desktop devices
- Are LinkedIn's AI-generated articles actually helpful?
Full show notes and links available on search.withcandour.co.uk.
It's that time of year once again where Myriam Jessier & Stephanie Walter join Jack Chambers-Ward for the Halloween Spooktacular!
This year, the terrifying trio discuss the scariest, most nightmarish FAQs they've ever encountered.
Bad FAQs:
- https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/faq
- https://sandralmuller.com/why-faqs-provide-a-poor-user-experience/
Good FAQs and guides:
- https://mcphee.com/pages/faqs
- https://ricketyroo.com/blog/how-to-write-faqs/
Sponsored by SISTRIX - Sign up for TrendWatch - https://www.sistrix.com/trends/
For full links and show notes, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
Ashwin Balakrishnan, Head of Marketing at Optmyzr, joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss why resisting Google will end in failure for PPC teams.
Topics include:
- How to structure campaigns
- Data inputs and outputs
- Fallout from Google's anti-trust trial
- Auction manipulation
- How to use AI & machine learning in PPC
Oh and...Baldur's Gate 3! Because they love it and can't stop playing it.
The Master of Markup, Dave Ojeda joins Jack Chambers-Ward on this week's episode to discuss all things schema, structured data and markup.
Topics include:
- Is schema more or less important in 2023?
- The importance of schema outside of rich results
- What are the best tools for creating and implementing schema?
For full show notes and links, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
Adam Gent from The SEO Sprint joins Jack Chambers-Ward this week to discuss how to think like an SEO product manager.
- What is an SEO PM?
- What can other SEOs learn from PMs?
- What skills are essential for being an SEO PM?
For full show notes, please go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
The duo of Jack Chambers-Ward & Mark Williams-Cook reunite once again to bring you the latest SEO news, updates and hot takes including:
- September 2023 helpful content update
- SISTRIX's analysis of the HCU fallout
- "Links are no longer a top 3 ranking factor" - Gary Illyes from Google
For full show notes please go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
Sarah and Tazmin from The SEO Mindset podcast join Jack to recap their live podcast from BrightonSEO.
The trio gives some tips and advice about managing your energy levels at conferences and life in general.
Sign up for updates from Search With Candour and The SEO Mindset here.
For the full show notes and transcript, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
It's that time of year when Jack runs around the world's biggest SEO conference and asks questions to some of the industry's best and brightest.
This time, guests include:
- Matt Kohli
- Gemma Houghton - International Search Summit
- Alizée Baudez
- Kyle Rushton McGregor
- Sarah McDowell
Check out the Neurodivergents in SEO community here.
For the full show notes and transcript, check search.withcandour.co.uk.
On this week's episode, Jess Joyce joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss coding and CMSes.
- Do you need a CMS to build a website?
- Which CMS gives you the most flexibility when it comes to coding?
- What CMSes should you avoid?
- What are the essential coding languages you should know to build a website in 2023?
And much more!
For full show notes & transcript, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
Ebere Jonathan joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss how to identify and analyse causes of traffic drops.
This includes what data to look for, what tools to use and a lot of practical information for this common issue with many sites.
Get your tickets for the live podcast on 13th September in Brighton.
Full show notes & transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
Watch this episode on Youtube
Jack and Mark reunite to recap the month's SEO news including:
- Google introduces 'learn as you search' to SGE
- Is Google removing links from SGE?
- SISTRIX's new SERP update feature
- You can now add social media links to Google Business Profile
The dynamic duo also answered questions from LinkedIn!
For full show notes & transcripts, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
Alan Presch joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss a project where Alan helped a voice assistant understand accents more accurately.
Alan & Jack discuss everything from different Irish accents, the hard work of professionals transcribers and even their record collections.
For full show notes & transcripts, go to search.withcandour.co.uk
Alizée Baudez makes her return to the podcast to discuss working as a freelance international SEO consultant. Jack & Alizée discuss:
-
Is it more difficult to work as an international freelancer rather than a local freelancer?
-
How multi-lingual do you need to be to work with clients from around the world?
- Does cultural awareness ever get in the way of developing your client base?
- Is it best to specialise or be a generalist to develop an international client base?
For the full show notes and transcript, please go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
Jo O'Reilly, freelance digital PR specialist, joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss the state of digital PR and link-building in 2023.
- Why does everyone think link-building is hard?
- Is link building harder in 2023?
- How has digital PR changed in the last few years?
- What are the essential skills to have to do digital PR professionally?
And much more.
Sponsor:
SISTRIX - UK Supermarket visibility
Full show notes and transcripts are available search.withcandour.co.uk.
Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers-Ward reunite to discuss:
- INP replacing FID in CWV
- Programmatic SEO - Just spam or a worthwhile tactic?
- The latest TrendWatch from SISTRIX
Watch this episode on YouTube
All the show links and transcript can be found at search.withcandour.co.uk
This week, Katie McDonald, SEO Specialist at Kaweb, joins Jack Chambers-Ward to rant about SEO things that are annoying them in 2023.
- Choosing keywords over search intent
- Old-school SEO reporting vs storytelling
- Asking the wrong questions to a new client
- Keeping old, low quality pages
- “Technical SEO has to be 100% perfect"
For the full show notes and transcript, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
Live podcast in Brighton - 13th September 2023
Austine Esezobor, host of Democratising SEO, joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss Google's SGE and the future of SERPs.
- Are we heading to a new era of “zero click” SERPs?
- How different is SGE to when Featured Snippets were introduced almost 10 years ago?
- What is the long term plan for the Search Generative Experience?
- Will it replace the traditional SERP entirely?
For the full show notes and transcript, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
Get your free tickets on Eventbrite
Search With Candour is once again joining forces with The SEO Mindset to bring to you a LIVE podcast titled 'How to manage your energy levels' sponsored by SISTRIX.
Jack Chambers-Ward will be joined by Sarah McDowell and Tazmin Suleman, hosts of The SEO Mindset, to give you actionable tips and advice on how to manage your energy levels at a conference like BrightonSEO.
When?
Wednesday 13th September 2023
19:00 - 21:30
Where?
Projects The Lanes, Nile House, Nile St, Brighton, England, BN1 1HW
This podcast will be in front of a live audience meaning that our community will be able to gain a snapshot into the production of both the SEO Mindset and Search With Candour podcasts there will also be a live Q&A to really help you be part of the process!
Get your free tickets on Eventbrite now!
Ryan Jones, Marketing Manager at SEO Testing, joins Jack Chambers-Ward to discuss all things SEO testing.
- What is A/B testing?
- Should you test every change to your site?
- How do you know if testing is right for you?
- How to track results when testing
For the full show notes and transcript, please visit search.withcandour.co.uk.
This week, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Garrett Sussman, Demand Generation Manager at iPullRank and host of Rankable and The SEO Weekly.
Garrett joins Jack to discuss his first-hand experience, thoughts and predictions for Google Perspectives.
This is part two of this conversation with part one, all about biases in search, over on the Rankable podcast.
Intro: 00:00:15
SISTRIX - SectorWatch: 00:01:09
Google Perspectives with Garrett Sussman: 00:04:57
Outro: 00:46:59
This episode was live streamed on SISTRIX's YouTube channel.
Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook reunite to summarise the latest SEO news and answer questions including:
- Google Perspectives
- Google's new spam report form
- SISTRIX's SectorWatch
- What are the possible causes for a drop in CTR where there's a huge spike in impressions and clicks?
For the transcript, show notes and links, please go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Jen Penaluna, SEO Manager at The Lowdown, to discuss how to move from an agency to an in-house role.
Jack & Jen talk about:
- The biggest surprises
- Common misconceptions about working in-house
- The benefits
- The things you'll miss from agency life
And more!
Time stamps:
00:00:37 - Intro
00:01:25 - SISTRIX TrendWatch
00:05:54 - Interview with Jen Penaluna
00:50:06 - Outro
Sponsor:
Search with Candour is sponsored by SISTRIX, the SEO's toolbox.
Go to sistrix.com/trends and sign up for the TrendWatch newsletter today!
Full show notes and transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
On this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward runs down his top 10 SEO podcasts that he thinks you should be listening to in 2023.
Yes, Jack is a podcast listener as well as a creator.
Sponsor:
SISTRIX - TrendWatch
Jack's top 10 digital marketing podcasts:
- Search Off the Record
- SERPs Up
- Edge of the Web Radio
- SEO Mindset
- Azeem Digital Asks
- Marketing O'Clock
- Rankable
- Recipe for SEO Success
- WTSPodcast
- The Measure Pod
Full show notes and transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
On this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Jo Blood, Director and co-founder of Posture People. Jack & Jo discuss 10 key things to be aware of for your work setup:
- Sitting at the right height
- Types of chairs
- Working from the sofa/bed
- Sitting positions
- Laptop stands
- Screen height
- Screen angles & twisting
- Desk thickness
- Movement
- Human interaction
For the full transcript and show notes, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
The boys are back in town as Jack Chambers-Ward (SEO Specialist at Candour) is once again joined by Mark Williams-Cook (SEO Director at Candour & founder of AlsoAsked) to discuss:
SISTRIX Sponsor: 00:01:22
Google's statement on Topical Authority 00:15:28
Search Generative Experience is rolling out in the US 00:28:51
Possible errors for video thumbnails 00:48:17
For full show notes, links and transcripts, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Adriana Stein, CEO & Founder of AS Marketing, to discuss the intersection of SEO and UX:
- How do they relate do each other?
- How can bad UX affect SEO?
- How much does the format of your content matter for UX?
- What do we do when SEO best practice clashes with UX best practice?
- The importance of internal links both for topic authority and sending users to key next stage pages.
Timestamps:
Intro: 00:00:37
SISTRIX Sponsor: 00:01:20
Interview with Adriana: 00:05:00
The full show notes, transcript and links are available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is reunited with Mark Williams-Cook to discuss the latest SEO news including:
- TrendWatch for April 2023
- Google indexing speed: key factors
- Google no longer recommends canonicals for syndicated content
The video version of this episode is available on SISTRIX's Youtube channel.
Full show notes and transcription available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's particularly open and honest episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Tazmin Suleman, a coach, speaker and co-host of The SEO Mindset Podcast.
Jack & Tazmin discuss:
- What does confidence mean?
- What are the characteristics of someone you have confidence in? (Inner game)
- What are your Power Accessories? (Outer game)
- How can you be BRAVE when you have a wobble?
Time stamps:
Intro: 00:00:40
SISTRIX Visibility Leaders in Travel: 00:01:27
Neurodivergents in SEO: 00:07:45
Interview with Tazmin: 00:08:46
For the full show notes and transcript, please go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
This week, Jack Chambers-Ward welcomes fellow Candourlorian Emma-Jane Stogdon (Content Specialist at Candour) to the podcast to discuss their highlights from BrightonSEO April 2023. Their highlights include:
- Areej Abuali's keynote speech
- Azeem, Andi & Fabio's equality session
- Crawl budgets with Sally Raymer
- Y U No Reply by Bibi the Link Builder
- Jack beating Mordy Oberstein 4-0 at cornhole
And much more!
For all of the links, show notes and transcript, please go to search.withcandour.co.uk
This week's episode is a crossover with The SEO Mindset podcast and was recorded live in front of an audience at Projects The Lanes in Brighton on 19th April 2023.
Jack, Sarah & Tazmin hosted a live podcast about dealing with anxiety at conferences, including some questions from the audience in attendance.
This event was sponsored by SISTRIX and Captivate and organised by Silicon Brighton.
The video version of this episode is available on Silicon Brighton's Youtube channel.
For the full show notes and transcript, please go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
This week, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by the Witty Content Writers - Silvia & Minnie!
Silvia & Minnie are here to give us all five tips for writing better content briefs.
Show notes:00:00:30 - Intro
00:01:17 - SISTRIX TrendWatch00:06:23 - Live podcast in Brighton reminder
00:07:27 - Interview with the Witty Content Writers
00:61:07 - Outro
Full show notes, links and transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
Jack Chambers-Ward is once again joined by the inimitable Mark Williams-Cook to discuss the latest SEO news and updates:
- The latest sneak preview of SISTRIX's TrendWatch
- An update to product listings on Google Search Console
- Another way to deindex URLs c/o ohgm.co.uk
Due to technical issues, the video isn't available for this one, apologies everyone!
For full show notes and transcript, please go to search.withcandour.co.uk
It's a quick little Jack solo episode this week. Jack gives you a few updates and recommendations including:
- If you'll be in Brighton on Wednesday 19th April 2023 - get tickets for the live podcast event here.
- SISTRIX's new competitor ranking comparison feature
- SERP Snippet Preview
- Meta description generator (powered by OpenAI)
- Google Search adds 'your favourite brands' to SERPs
For all the links and transcripts, head to search.withcandour.co.uk.
Get your ticket for the free live episode of Search With Candour/The SEO Mindset on 19th April in Brighton
This week, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by John Iwuozor to discuss how to create content that satisfies Google's E-E-A-T guidelines including:
- Why E-E-A-T matters and the dangers of AI-generated content
- How E-E-A-T promotes high-quality product reviews
- How to improve E-E-A-T SEO
For the full show notes and transcript, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Kevin Gichane to discuss how to create effective niche content:
- What do we mean by niche content?
- How do you define your niche?
- How does niche keyword research differ from broader keyword research?
- And much more!
Editor's note: Apologies that the audio quality isn't great for this week - we had a lot of technical difficulties during recording and I've fixed it as much as I can! - Jack
Full show notes and transcripts are available at search.withcandour.co.uk
Buy your free tickets on Eventbrite
Search With Candour has joined forces with The SEO Mindset to bring to you a LIVE podcast titled 'How to Deal with Anxiety at Conferences' sponsored by SISTRIX and Captivate.
Jack Chambers-Ward will be joined by Sarah McDowell and Tazmin Suleman, hosts of The SEO Mindset, to give you actionable tips and advice on how to deal with feelings of anxiety, for both attendees and speakers.
When?
Wednesday 19th April 2023
19:00 - 21:30
Where?
Projects The Lanes, Nile House, Nile St, Brighton, England, BN1 1HW
This podcast will be in front of a live audience meaning that our community will be able to gain a snapshot into the production of both the SEO Mindset and Search With Candour podcasts there will also be a live Q&A to really help you be part of the process!
Buy your free tickets on Eventbrite
This episode was recorded live on SISTRIX's Youtube - click here to watch the video version.
Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Mark Williams-Cook to discuss the latest SEO news including:
- Should you be regularly disavowing links in 2023?
- TrendWatch February 2023
- Featured snippets have a new blue highlight
For the full show notes and transcript, go to search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode of Search With Candour, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined once again by Mark Williams-Cook to discuss the latest SEO news including:
- The latest updates about New Bing
- February 2023 Product Review Update
- Google Search Console's Bulk Export and why it's important
For full show notes, links and transcript, please go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by content strategist Lily Ugbaja to discuss how to create content that stands out in the soon-to-be AI-dominated SERPs. Jack and Lily discuss:
- What do we mean by 'the Specificity Strategy'?
- How to find your target audience
- The LEMA framework of content creation
For all of the links, show notes and transcript, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined once again by the one & only, Mark Williams-Cook.
This week’s topics include:
- Bing & ChatGPT vs Google & Bard
- A new trending label on People Also Ask results
- The experimental ‘content ideas’ feature is being tested in Google Search Console
All the links and show notes are available at https://search.withcandour.co.uk/
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Sodiq Ajala, Technical SEO Analyst at Second Eclipse. Sodiq gives his top five recommendations of mistakes that will rule your website out of Google's Knowledge Graph.
- An incomplete Google Business Profile
- Thin, poorly-researched content
- Getting low-quality backlinks
- Neglecting the technical 'health' of your website
- Under-utilising Google Search Console information & data
For full links, show notes and transcript visit search.withcandour.co.uk.
On this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by freelance copywriter extraordinaire Alice Rowan to talk about how to create content while not burning out. Jack & Alice discuss:
- Ways to plan your content campaigns
- How to repurpose one piece of content across multiple platforms
- Why gatekeeping in SEO needs to go away
and much more!
For the full links and episode transcript go to search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Goodness Azubuogu, Technical SEO Specialist at Trek Marketing, to discuss pagination in ecommerce including:
- What is pagination on an ecommerce site?
- Common mistakes when using pagination on an ecommerce site
- How do these issues affect the site's SEO?
- How to effectively implement pagination on an ecommerce site
The full show notes and transcript are available at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Sarah Presch, Digital Marketing Director at Argos Multilingual, to discuss how culture can be an essential factor in marketing & SEO. Jack and Sarah discuss:
- Should you get your content and keywords translated?
- How to be aware of your cultural biases
- How to approach ethnic marketing within your home country
- Understanding different elements of culture
Check out the full show notes and transcript at search.withcandour.co.uk
On this episode of Search With Candour, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Tom Marriott, Digital Marketing Director at Ina4 and also known as The SEO Punk.
Tom joins Jack to discuss something they have in common, working in SEO, and the digital marketing industry as a whole, as a generalist.
- What does it mean to be a generalist in digital marketing?
- Why does it seem like there are fewer generalists now than ever before?
- What is the most effective role for a generalist in an agency?
For all the links, transcript and show notes go to search.withcandour.co.uk
Welcome to the Search With Candour podcast, the first episode of 2023! Jack Chambers-Ward is riding solo this week to bring you the latest SEO news including:
- Microsoft launches new Bingbot
- Microsoft to add ChatGPT features to Bing search
- Top non-profit domains that grew in visibility in 2022
- Google to introduce ChatGPT-like model for healthcare
For full show notes, links and transcripts go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
In the final episode of 2022, Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook discuss the highlights and lowlights of 2022 including:
- All the Google Ranking System updates in 2022
- The arrival, and limitations, of ChatGPT
- The launch & growth of AlsoAsked
- Google Search Console URL Inspection Tool API
- E-E-A-T
- SISTRIX's December 2022 TrendWatch and Trend of the Year
Mark & Jack also make some predictions for 2023:
- The future of Spambrain
- Google will announce their equivalent of IndexNow
- Multi-modal search and MUM integration will become more & more prevalent
Thank you for listening to Search With Candour during 2022, see you in 2023!
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Sarah Taher, an SEO consultant and speaker based in Canada. Sara joins Jack to discuss all things entity SEO including:
- What is an entity?
- How can we "optimise our entities"?
- How important are entities in SEO at the moment?
- How can schema help tie into entity SEO?
You can find full show notes and transcripts at https://search.withcandour.co.uk/
In this week's episode of Search With Candour, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined once again by Mark Williams-Cook to discuss the latest SEO news, including:
- Google clarifies a few things about crawl budget optimisation
- How to conduct a site accessibility audit
- Continuous scroll is coming to desktop (in the US)
- The latest Helpful Content system update has begun rolling out
For full show notes and transcript, go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this episode, Jack Chambers-Ward and Mark Williams-Cook co-hosted a live episode of Search With Candour on LinkedIn. Jack & Mark discussed:
- Google Ads Paying Advertisers $100 To Enroll In Automatically Applied Recommendations
- Actors swapping roles in the SERPs
- SISTRIX's new Knowledge Graph analysis tool
- New free BrightLocal Academy course - “How to Create Website Content for Local SEO” (hosted by Claire Carlile)
- The SEO Metric Chain by Chris Green
- OpenAI launches DaVinci-003
You can also find:
- Jack's #SEOChat about internal links: https://twitter.com/JLWChambers/status/1598376388360163328
- The live video version of this recording on LinkedIn
In this week’s episode of the Search With Candour podcast, Jack Chambers-Ward is reunited with Mark Williams-Cook to discuss:
- Google has made it easier to get products in the shopping tab
- Google has created a guide to their Search ranking systems
- Majestic’s SEO in 2023 summary
- A discussion about URL length & structure - does it affect your rankings?
For full show notes, links and transcripts go to search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Jeff Grill, founder of Brainchild, to talk about:
- Creating scalable content strategies
- How to harness the expertise of your clients
- Why having your articles reviewed by topical experts is more important than ever
Full show notes and transcripts available at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Daniel K Cheung, prolific SEO consultant and host of the Dreading Sundays podcast.
Daniel joins Jack to discuss:
- The origin story of Dreading Sundays
- Why empathy is so important in technical SEO
- Understanding different types of empathy for different work relationships
- Learning to communicate priority tasks to non-SEOs
And much more!
Full show notes and transcripts are available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
On this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by digital marketing extraordinaire (and Jack's new best friend), Jamar Ramos.
Jamar joins Jack to discuss:
- Why you should be watching All Elite Wrestling (yes, they talk about professional wrestling for a few minutes...)
- Jamar's transition from creative writing to digital marketing
- How much does representation matter in digital marketing?
- What is it like being a BIPOC founder of a marketing agency?
- What can people in positions of management do to highlight POC?
Full show notes, transcript and links at search.withcandour.co.uk
Welcome dear listeners to this big bumper episode of Search With Candour, our Halloween Spooktacular 2022!
Joining your (g)host Jack Chambers this week is the mortifying Myriam Jessier and shocking Stéphanie Walter.
In the first half of the episode, our horrible hosts play you some of the scariest SEO stories from BrightonSEO's best and brightest SEO people, including:
- Steve Paine from SISTRIX (who sponsors this podcast)
- Lidia Infante
- Dixon Jones
- Arnout Hellemans
- Kyle Place
- Billie Geena Hyde
- Adam Gent
- Sean Fleming
- John Mueller
- Andi Jarvis
- Crystal Carter
- Malcolm Slade
- Andrew Optimisey
- Sarah McDowell
- Martin Splitt
- Azeem
- Alizée Baudez
In the second half, Jack & Myriam learn all about Stéphanie's horror stories from people trying to build links from her blog.
Full show notes, transcript and links available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Maddy Osman, the founder of The Blogsmith and best-selling author of Writing for Humans and Robots. Jack & Maddy discuss:
- Why it's important to write for humans AND robots
- Common mistakes made by SEOs that impact their writing
- How has AI writing affected writers in 2022
- Some tool recommendations for SEOs and writers
And much more!
The full show notes and transcript can be found at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by the incredible Olga Zarzeczna, the founder and CEO of SEOSLY.
Jack & Olga join forces to discuss SEO audits (Olga's favourite topic!) including:
- The first steps of auditing a new website
- How regularly should you audit a website?
- What are some of the most common things auditing tools miss?
And in case you missed it, here is Olga's in-depth article about her auditing process: https://seosly.com/blog/seo-audit/
Search With Candour is supported by SISTRIX, the SEO's toolbox. Go to sistrix.com/swc to try some of their fantastic tools for free.
For full show notes, links, and transcripts, go to search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Alex Hickson, Head of Digital PR at TrunkBBI to discuss:
- How to inspire clients to try digital PR
- Thinking outside the box for opportunities
- Breaking out of your brand bubble
Full show notes, links, and transcript are available at search.withcandour.co.uk
Welcome to the Search With Candour podcast. Jack Chambers-Ward is once again joined by the inimitable Mark Williams-Cook for a live SEO Q&A!
That's right, live and unedited! This episode was recorded live and broadcast via Mark's LinkedIn page.
Click here to watch the video version on LinkedIn.
Questions answered include:
- How do you decide when it's best to canonicalise multiple variants of a page over simply making one page with a self-referring canonical?
- Is it necessary to keep URLs short or we can keep them as per our need (to cover the focus keyword)?
- I see comments on having a "Link Building Strategy". As a small business should we worry about this, or should we concentrate on good content that builds authority and attracts links?
- Is location tagging images still effective?
- Is HARO worth the effort or do you prefer any other alternative for link building?
and more!
Full show notes and transcript are available at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by freelance SEO consultant Luce Rawlings to discuss:
- Starting your career in-house vs in an agency
- When's the right time to go freelance?
- The pros and cons of freelancing
- How can you continue to learn throughout your SEO career?
- SISTRIX's Visibility Leaders 2022 https://www.sistrix.com/visibility-leaders/retail-2022-overview
Full show notes, links, and transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Jenny Abouobaia, SEO consultant of the year 2021 in the Middle East & North Africa. Jack and Jenny discuss all things digital PR including:
- The different types of link building
- How digital PR can boost your SEO and brand awareness
- Is digital PR more or less important than it was 5 years ago?
- How digital PR can increase your digital footprint and improve your EAT
Jenny's website: https://seowithjenny.com/
Follow Jenny on Twitter: https://twitter.com/seowithjenny
Follow Jack on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JLWChambers
Full show notes & transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk
Welcome to the Search With Candour podcast. In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is flying solo to discuss all the latest SEO and PPC news including:
- TikTok adding additional regional trend insights
- Google‘s helpful content update has now finished rolling out
- Helpful content update analysis from SISTRIX as well as the latest SectorWatch all about barbecues
Show notes and transcript at search.withcandour.co.uk
Welcome to Episode 34 of Season 2 of the Search With Candour podcast. Your host, Jack Chambers-Ward is once again joined by the inimitable Mark Williams-Cook to discuss all the latest SEO and PPC news including:
- Google testing new read-time labels on SERPs
- Update on the Helpful Content Update (sort of)
- Updated top 100 domains from SISTRIX
- Google Business Profile guidelines have been updated to include products
- New better ads standards will be introduced in October 2022
Show notes and transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk
On this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by the one & only Chloe Smith, SEO Manager at Blue Array.
Jack & Chloe talk about:
- Chloe's transition from Creative Writing to SEO
- What is intersectional feminism?
- How does intersectional representation affect conferences?
- Chloe's talk about menstrual health from BrightonSEO April 2022
- How can we as marketers use intersectionality to better understand our audiences?
Full show notes, links and transcripts are available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is reunited with his co-host, Mark Williams-Cook to discuss all the latest SEO & PPC news including:
- Quick update on last week’s rollout of GSC indexing report
- V17 of Screaming Frog
- Google linking to Youtube from organic product listings
- The Youtube shorts algorithm explained
Full show notes, links and transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk
On this week's episode, our brave host Jack Chambers-Ward is riding solo and gives you a rundown of the week's SEO news including:
- Wix’s new site inspection tool
- Google steps up featured snippets with MUM;
- Google Search Console performance report bug with Discover on July 26th
- Google Search Console simplifies its reports with a new item classification
The full show notes with links and transcripts can be found at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by his co-host Mark Williams-Cook to discuss the latest SEO & PPC news. Jack & Mark discuss:
- Google updates their Search Quality Raters Guidelines
- SISTRIX's TrendWatch July 2022
- July 2022 Google Product Review Update
- Listener Q&A including how to prioritise SEO tasks and how to maintain rankings when changing CMS
Show notes and transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Annie-Mai Hodge, Head of Brand Development at Atlas SEO and founder of Girl Power Marketing. Jack & Annie-Mai discuss:
- How Tiktok is being used as a search engine (and by who!)
- What data can we get from Tiktok?
- What are the 'ranking factors' for Tiktok videos?
- Are Tiktok videos appearing on Google SERPs?
- Can you trust the information you find when you search on Tiktok?
And more!
Show notes & transcript: search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Mark Williams-Cook to discuss:
- The key factors in getting multi-image thumbnails on SERPs
- Google fights back against 1 star review scammers
- Google Search Console has a new Video Indexing Report
- Google has started automatically upgrading Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max
- Automated voice over for Youtube ads
Our 1000-mile challenge for charity: https://withcandour.co.uk/blog/1-000-mile-challenge-in-july
Donate to support Break: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/milesforbreak
Show notes & transcript: search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Alice Roussel, the Growth Marketing Manager at Pictarine.
Jack & Alice discuss:
- What SEOs can learn from PPC
- Some common misconceptions about the relationship between SEO & PPC
- Should you build landing pages specifically for PPC or SEO or both?
- What the future of PPC may hold
And much more!
Search With Candour is supported by SISTRIX, the SEO’s toolbox. Go to sistrix.com/swc if you want to check out some of their fantastic free tools.
Full show notes and transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is once again joined by his inimitable co-host, Mark Williams-Cook, to discuss all the latest SEO & PPC news. This week, Jack & Mark discuss:
- A study by ahrefs that revealed that almost half of GSC clicks go to hidden keywords
- New 'pros and cons' SERP annotations appear from unstructured data
- Reason number 5445131 why some SEOs destroy the reputation of SEO
Show notes and transcripts available at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by CEO & founder of Mobile Moxie, Cindy Krum.
Jack & Cindy discuss:
- The origins of mobile SEO
- How much has voice search changed mobile SEO?
- How has "the death of AMP" affected mobile SEO?
- Mobile Moxie's free tools - SERPerator & Page-oscope
Show notes and transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Mark Williams-Cook to discuss the latest in SEO & PPC news.
Jack and Mark discuss:
- Google's updated Product Rich Results documentation
- Bing's in-SERP voucher codes
- SISTRIX's new on-page feature
- Aira's third annual State of Link Building report
- Google's Evolution of Search
Full transcript and show notes are available at search.withcandour.co.uk
On this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Sarah McDowell, the SEO Manager at Captivate and the co-host of the SEO Mindset podcast. Jack & Sarah discuss:
- What is imposter syndrome?
- Why is it so prevalent in the SEO industry?
- Techniques to cope with it
- How to support coworkers & employees with imposter syndrome
- How you should chop your vegetables for your chili
Full show notes and transcript are available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is joined by Katherine Watier Ong of WO Strategies and the DM Victories podcast.
Katherine joins Jack to discuss her 17+ years in digital marketing including:
- SEO for voice search
- Site migrations with millions of URLs and hundreds of millions of backlinks
- The future of search technology
And much more.
This episode's full show notes and transcript can be found at search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is once again joined by his co-host, Mark Williams-Cook and they discuss:
- The rumoured new Apple search engine
- The May 2022 Google Core Update and SISTRIX’s data around it
- PAA spam sites
- New side-by-side SERPs being tested by Google
Full show notes and transcript are available at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers-Ward is once again joined by his co-host, Mark Williams-Cook and they discuss:
- How to use automation in website migrations
- Wix’s new learning hub
- SISTRIX's TrendWatch May 2022
- Performance Max updates
- Edge Images plugin
Full show notes and transcript are available at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Jack is joined by Andy Chadwick from Snippet Consulting/Digital and Keywordinsights.
Jack and Andy discuss:
- How Keywordinsights create keyword clusters
- How Keywordinsights understands keyword context & intent
- What came first: The content hub or the indented search results
- What's new with Keywordinsights V2
And more.
Full show notes and transcripts are available atsearch.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers is joined by Alex Wright, the Performance Marketing Director at Clicky Media.
Jack and Alex discuss:
- What is a headless CMS?
- What are the pros and cons of a headless CMS?
- What are the pros and cons of a hybrid CMS?
- The importance of planning the end before you start at the beginning
- Server-side rendering vs static site generation
- How stoicism can be beneficial to you and your career in digital marketing
- Resources for learning more about stoicism
Full show notes and transcripts are available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Jack Chambers is joined by the Marketing Manager of SISTRIX, Steve Paine. Jack & Steve talk about:
- SISTRIX's Visibility Index
- Steve's career before he joined SISTRIX
- Primark's new website
- SISTRIX's upcoming content creation features
- Steve's work at SISTRIX Academy
For show notes & transcripts, please go to search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this week's episode, Mark Williams-Cook and Jack Chambers will be talking about:
- AlsoAsked Deep Search
- AI-generated scammers file fake DMCA notices
- Google's John Mueller has been replaced by MuellerBot
- Google Webspam Report 2021
- Google will be rolling out desktop support for signed exchanges soon
- Google launches a new CDN
For show notes and transcripts, please visit search.withcandour.co.uk
In this week's episode, Mark Williams-Cook and Jack Chambers will be talking about:
- How to avoid manual actions on your medical site
- An update on Google’s guidelines regarding AI-generated content
- Multi-account Google Ads dashboard
- Google tests a play/listen feature in People Also Ask
- The new Woocommerce and Pinterest partnership
For show notes and transcripts, please visit search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers talk about:
- Google Know Your Data
- Hannah Rampton’s Search Console Explorer v2 is now live
- Updates on Trends & Primark’s new website from SISTRIX
- Google new multisearch feature
- Google’s stance on ai generated content
Full transcript and show notes available at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Jack interviewing Local Search Expert Claire Carlile. Jack and Claire talk about:
- Local SEO
- Brightlocal Academy
- Google Business Page tips
- Keyword research for local SEO
- Link building strategies for small businesses
- BrightonSEO
Full show notes and transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers talk about:
- The latest Google product review update
- Tabbed meta descriptions in SERPs
- SISTRIX’s new Live Data feature
- Important updates for Google Tag Manager
- RIP URL parameters tool
Full show notes, links and transcript are available at search.withcandour.co.uk.
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers talk about:
- Google is sunsetting Universal Analytics
- GA4 tutorials & alternatives
- New 'lower price' badge
- Google Unconference 2022
- Brighton SEO April 2022
Full show notes, links and transcript available at search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers talk about:
- Vehicle ads available to US advertisers
- SISTRIX’s SERPS tools - https://sistrix.com/swc
- How to debug missing pages in Screaming Frog crawls
- AlsoAsked v1 has launched - https://alsoasked.com/
For full show notes and transcript, visit search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers talk about:
- A great SERP features glossary from Paige Hobart/ROAST
- Sitebulb Server is coming soon
- A GPT3 emotional goal & ad copy generator from Danny Richman
- Bing Professional Service Ads are rolling out
- Google Analytics 4 gets a homepage update
You can get the full transcription and show notes athttps://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers talk about:
- Keyword insights launching v2
- Errors in GSC URL Inspection tool
- English to regex tool
- SISTRIX TrendWatch March 2022
- More on Google Shopping Scorecard
- Google Shopping Stories
You can get the full transcription and show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers talk about:
- BERT and how it understands language
- The rollout of the Page Experience update for desktop
- A vulnerability found in a popular WordPress plugin
- SISTRIX Academy
- New Google Shopping experience scorecard
You can get the full transcription and show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers talk about:
- A recent Google Search Console data loss
- More innovative integrations of the GSC URL Inspection API
- Google Analytics ruled illegal by an EU court
- SISTRIX's SectorWatch - Project management software
- Google Analytics 4 attribution models
You can get the full transcription and show notes athttps://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers talk about:
Google Search Console URL Inspection Tool API
IndexWatch 2021 - UK retail winners & losers - https://www.sistrix.com/trends/
Are utm and query strings paid links?
Bing's new automotive marketplace
You can get the full transcription and show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Jack Chambers talking about:
- Google Search Console launches a URL Inspection API
- Deepcrawl launching their technical SEO app on Wix
- SISTRIX TrendWatch February 2022
- And the main event: An interview with the fantastic Tom Critchlow.
Tom's website: https://tomcritchlow.com/
Follow Tom on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tomcritchlow
SEO MBA course: https://seomba.com/
SEO MBA blog/newsletter: https://seomba.substack.com/
You can get the full transcription and links to resources athttps://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers talk about:
ContentKing’s log file analysis
The problems with DMCA notices
New robots tag - indexifembedded
IndexWatch 2021 - US Winners - https://sistrix.com/swc
Real-time reporting in Google Analytics 4
Google Ads introduces a new Experiments page
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers talking about:
Yoast on Shopify: The popular WordPress plugin makes its way to Shopify
What average position on Google Search Console actually means and how it's calculated
IndexWatch 2021: The biggest losers
How to find 'hidden' organic traffic in your direct traffic on Google Analytics
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook & Jack Chambers talking about:
Page Experience update for desktop: Google has confirmed that Page Experience update will be rolling out for desktop next month.
Tracking featured snippets & redirect chains: Valentin Pletzer's cool bit of JavaScript allows tracking of text fragments (and therefore featured snippets) and redirect chains in Google Analytics.
IndexNow: A new WordPress plugin for IndexNow for Bing.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
That's a wrap for season one!
Thank you to all of the guests that have appears on season one of Search with Candour:
Will Critchlow, Nathan Lomax, Emily Brady, Alex Holiman, Gianna Brachetti-Truskawa, Sophie Brannon, Bille Geena, Joe Lenton, Daniel Foley Carter, Dixon Jones, Dom Hodgeson, Jason Barnard, Judith Lewis, Chris Green, Simo Ahava, Krista Seiden, Mordy Oberstein, Roman Sadowski, Lily Ray, Areej AbuAli, Patrick Hathaway, Dawn Anderson, Andrew Optimsey, James Brockbank, Dan Taylor, Kristina Azarenko, Luke Carthy, Kevin Indig, Natalie Mott, Seb Atkinson, Aleyda Solis, Steven van Vessum, Sean Clark, Michael Curtis, Lexi Mills, Andrew Smith, Tom Haczewski.
We'll join you for season 2 in early 2022, where Mark Williams-Cook will be joined by co-host Jack Chambers.
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Title updates: Google has made some amends to title element generation in SERPs as well as details on specific use-cases.
Cloudflare signed exchanges: Cloudflare has launched one-click SXG allowing webmasters to improve performance.
Google Ads updates: New advertiser pages and attractions ads for ticket sellers.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking to Will Critchlow about:
SEO A/B testing: How A/B testing can work for big websites
Google's algorithm shift: Is a more machine-led approach making SEO harder and testing more important than ever?
Enterprise vs SMEs: Can SMEs actually do A/B testing and is it worth it?
Are we actually bad at SEO?: Why do so many experienced SEOs disagree on fundamentals
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
AI content that ranks: Thoughts on a new breed of sites that are churning out AI generated pages taht rank
Title woes: E-commerce sites that are tanking due to the Google title update
SEO Q&A: Listener SEO Q&A
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
SEO resources, tools, guides: Some useful tools and guides to help you with Google's title rewrites, javascript indexing and local SEO.
Duplicate links: Majestic is upping its game by introducing new duplicate link analysis.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook SEO with Nathan Lomax from Quickfire Digital, an e-commerce specialist build agency about SEO for e-commerce brands talking about page speed and performance
They will cover:
- How much of a ranking factor is page speed?
- What is the difference between performance and speed?
- Why are Core Web Vitals special?
- How do you go about improving performance?
- and much more!
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Google mass title rewrites: Google has been changing the titles shown for lots of websites - how are they doing this and why do some of the results look so bad?
Passage indexing: Search tweak or breakthrough that will change how we do SEO?
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Schema tools: Google pushing for Rich Result Tool usage despite saying it uses "non-supported" schema
Author.url: Google has a new recommended property to identify authors
Core Web Vitals tech report: A quantitative look at how tech stacks are performing with Core Web Vitals
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Safe Search Page Experience: How much does Google's removal of Search Search from the Page Experience Signals mean?
Tie-breaking: Are Core Web Vitals an important ranking factor, a tie-breaker, or... Does it depend?
Canonical images: Do you get any SEO benefits from other sites uploading images you created?
Rendering and SEO tips: An admission on JS rendering and unsolicited SEO tips.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook SEO with Nathan Lomax from Quickfire Digital, an e-commerce specialist build agency about SEO for e-commerce brands talking about internal linking.
They will cover:
- Why is internal linking important?
- Can you over-optimise internal links?
- Is it possible to have too many links on a page?
- Should you link to products from your homepage?
- Can you use nofollow tags internally?
- and much more!
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
301 redirects: How specific advice from Google can help you optimise site redirect speed
Site operators: More documentation from Google highlighting the limitations of site operators
CTR tests: SearchPilot shows how logical changes sometimes result in negative results
Smart Bidding updates: Google Ads Smart Bidding rolls out changes to bid strategies.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
DirectApply schema: The new attribute for JobPosting schema and new editorial guidleines from Google.
Facebook tracking: How iOS14 tracking preventing is affecting advertisers in the real world.
GoDaddy listings: Google teams up with GoDaddy to enhance e-commerce inventory
Googling fresh queries: A look at how Google is responding to and ranking changes in news and demand.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Google Knowledge Graph authors: How Google is taking further steps in combining author and article data within its Knowledge Graph and showing rich results.
New link reclamation tactics: Good this bold new tactic work for you?
How GSC reports impressions: Interesting tests showing how you don't need your site to appear in the search results to get impressions.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook answering live e-commerce SEO Q&A with Nathan Lomax from Quickfire Digital, an e-commerce specialist build agency about SEO for e-commerce brands.
They will cover:
- How content can drive your e-commerce SEO
- Common mistakes with blogging for e-commerce
- Tools and data sources you can use
- Subdomains vs sub-folders
- Tagging and categories
- And loads more!
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook answering live e-commerce SEO Q&A with Nathan Lomax from Quickfire Digital, an e-commerce specialist build agency about SEO for e-commerce brands.
They will cover:
- Best practices for products in multiple categories
- How to handle out of stock items
- Are there optimal lengths for descriptions of products
- How should you use variants of keywords
- Is it okay to hide product details behind tabs?
- How do you handle discontinued products?
- And loads more!
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Shopping Graph: Introduction and context to Google's plans around Google Shopping Graph.
June Core Update: Quantitative analysis and thoughts from Lily Ray
FAQ schema: Google reducing visible FAQs in SERPs
Search Console Insights: New Google Search Console reports - good or bad?
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
June Core Update: Thoughts from the SEO community about changes being seen due to the first of two Google core updates coming in summer.
Google Duplex: A new rollout of Duplex features means we need to consider the long-term strategic impact of such AI in digital.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking to Nathan Lomax from Quickfire Digital, an e-commerce specialist build agency about SEO for e-commerce brands.
They will cover:
-
How important is SEO for e-commerce brands?
-
Specific SEO for e-commerce sites vs other types of sites
-
Topical authority in SEO
-
How schema can help e-commerce SEO
-
SEO as a driver for "good behaviour" within a company
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
LaMDA: Google's breakthrough in conversational technology
Also covered: A new SERP feature being tested by Google and its relation to PAAs and MUM.
AMP: Why are SEOs ditching AMP?
Redirects: Core Web Vitals, redirects, and naughty SEO
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Desktop page experience: Google IO announcement confirms page experience update will come to desktop results
Google Ads features: Google launches a set of new features for advertisers
MUM: A 'breakthrough' in AI for Google generating results for complex queries
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Critical Wordpress update: There's a huge new vulnerability in Wordpress that your need to patch
Bing video extensions: New extensions for Microsoft Ads PPC
Improving SEO audits: Brendan Bennett talks about how to improve your technical SEO audits
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Product review update: An overview of what is separating the winners from the losers
Google policy changes: PPC changes for e-book publishers
New Bing API: Discussing the new Bing API for URL updates
Google Indexing issue reports: Google testing a new button to report indexing problems
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Refinement SERPs: How this Google test can help you with your on-page SE
Google product review update: Google's new refreshed algorithm for product reviews
Page experience update: More than just Core Web Vitals
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook joined by Emily Brady talking all about local SEO in 2021, covering:
-
Ranking factors in map packs
-
Problems with spam in local SEO
-
How to make a great local SEO landing page
-
Schema and local SEO
-
How to benchmark your local SEO
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook joined by Alex Holliman from Climbing Trees, taking a live LinkedIn SEO Q&A session taking questions on:
-
Getting a career in SEO
-
Duplicate content issues
-
Internationalisation
-
Buying links
-
No-click SERPs
-
Faceted navigation
-
Pagespeed on popular platforms such as Wix and Shopify
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook joined by Gianna Brachetti-Truskawa from Startdowns.de to discuss QA in technical SEO, including:
-
What is QA in SEO and why does it matter?
-
Tools and processes for QA in SEO
-
How technical translation and technical SEO are similar
-
How to build relationships with internal teams
-
Advice for those getting into technical SEO
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook joined by Sophie Brannon from Absolute Digital Media to discuss content mapping, including:
-
What is content mapping and why is it important?
-
What are the common mistakes made with content mapping and keyword research?
-
What tools are agencies using for keyword research and content mapping?
-
Has AI changed and will it change these processes?
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook joined by Billie Geena from The SEO Works to discuss how to management expectations with SEO including:
-
What should you do when others are promising results?
-
Which metrics should be used and avoided for expectation management?
-
How can you manage expectations around zero-click results?
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook joins professional photographer Joe Lenton to talk about image SEO and photography. Together they'll cover:
-
Common image SEO mistakes
-
How certain niches in search are image-led
-
Alt tags are not just for SEO and the be-all and end-all of image SEO
-
Why stock images might be a false economy
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook joined by Daniel Foley Carter from Assertive to discuss learning SEO via social. Together they'll cover:
-
The dangers of learning SEO via social media posts
-
Common SEO myths and misconceptions that are repeated online
-
How business owners can educate themselves about SEO to make better hiring decisions
-
Can 'SEO tests' realistically be done by a single person?
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
The SEMrush IPO: Will they be changing subscription model?
DevTools Local Overrides: Improve the performance optimisation feedback loop
Rich snippets: Sitewide quality factors impacting site rich snippets
Pagespeed insights: Updated to HTTP/2
Shopify hreflang: A new solution for Shopify's hreflang issues
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook joined by Dixon Jones, CEO of Links and Majestic Brand Ambassador to discuss:
-
Google's approach to NLP and entity identification
-
The role of entity-based SEO vs keyword-based SEO
-
Creating content briefs based on entities and competitor mapping
-
Automated internal linking at scale with Javascript
-
How the InLinks platform works
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook joined by Rob Lewis who will be discussing:
-
The big "match changes" that are happening to all Google Ads accounts
-
How the Google Ads algorithm has been slowly changing
-
What you can do to effectively manage accounts with these changes
-
Future predictions for Google Ads
-
Core Web Vitals report delays in Google Search Console
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook joined by Rob Lewis who will be discussing:
-
The iOS14 update which now covers user privacy and what impact this might have
-
Deep dive into how ATT may affect website publishers and advertisers
-
Google's new passage ranking going live and what to expect
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook discussing site monitoring with Little Warden founder Dom Hodgson.
Together, they'll cover:
-
The importance and use cases of site monitoring
-
The history of Little Warden and Dom's other wild projects for charity
-
How companies like Google and Microsoft have dropped the ball with monitoring
-
Why prevention rather than cure gives the best return
-
Use cases for web developers, digital marketers, and agencies
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook reviewing an SEO audit and call he received suggesting that AlsoAsked.com needed toxic link removal and should host hidden content to link to other websites.
This episode is intended to show that these low-quality SEO scams are persistent in the industry and businesses should be careful in vetting both the companies and data agencies are providing.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook discussing brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels with SEO expert Jason Barnard, CEO and Founder of Kalicube.
Together, they'll cover:
-
Why are brand SERPs so important?
-
Does people searching for your brand help your rankings?
-
Are links less important now Google is paying attention to brand?
-
Is the Knowledge Graph the future of SEO?
-
How do you get a Knowledge Panel for yourself?
-
Why does Google think Jason's a musician and not an SEO?
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Selling in YouTube: The new experimental feature that looks to bring product sales into YouTube videos.
Crawl anomalies: Improvements in Google Search Console coverage reports, including the removal of crawl anomalies.
News performance reports: New reports inside GSC and differentiating between news filters and news performance reports.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
AlsoAsked Beta: The new version of AlsoAsked that is going live this week and new features to expect.
Google Question Hub: How to find true gaps in longtail keyword research
Search sundry: Google Ads data exclusion updates, ranking shifts and Majestic link graphs
Listener Q&A: Your questions on 404s, links on page and conspiracies, answered!
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, Mark Williams-Cook is joined by:
Judith Lewis: Founder of Decabbit Consultancy
Chris Green: Head of Marketing Innovation at Footprint Digita
Kristina Azarenko: Founder of Marketing Syrup
They'll be discussing what we've seen in SEO during 2020 and what they think will be important for 2021 onward, including Core Web Vitals, AI, and good old-fashioned fundamentals!
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
December Broad Core Update: The facts of the update so far and some interesting EU guidance that may compel search engines to be more transparent about such updates
Brands in PAAs: Insight into how some brands are being negatively impacted by PAA questions in SERPs
Listener Q&A: Your questions on titles and h1s, search intent, and migrations answered!
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
December Broad Core Update: This week Google announced a broad core update for December 2020
Crawl stats and budgets: Google give Search Console a new crawl stats report and more advice on managing crawl budget has been published
Web Core Vital FAQs: Google has offered more specifics on how Web Core Vitals will work in context to ranking
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking to Simo Ahava and Krista Seiden about GA4 and answering community questions, including:
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What are the best new features in GA4?
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How does GA4 handle cookieless users?
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How is GA4 using AI to help marketers?
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What are some alternatives to GA4?
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Why is GA4 more "user-centric"?
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How is the new event model different?
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Will we still be able to get the same segmentation insight?
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Will users be forced onto GA4 eventually?
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about the Wix platform with SEO community liaison Mordy Oberstein
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Why does Wix have a bad reputation within the SEO community?
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What problems has Wix have and does it have with SEO?
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What kind of priority is SEO for Wix?
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Is it possible for a generic platform to compete, performance-wise?
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
GMB review bugs: A bug affecting the display of Google My Business reviews
May 2021 page experience: Google gives dates and more information on their page experience as a ranking factor
Black Friday optimisation: Sharing Luke Carthy's tips for optimising your e-commerce site for Black Friday
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking to e-commerce SEO expert Roman Sadowski about what it takes to rank in 2020.
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What should your day-to-day look like running the SEO for a large e-commerce site?
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What are the important e-commerce ranking factors in 2020?
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How important are Google's coming e-commerce SERP changes?
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How can in-house SEO teams be the most effective?
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What is the advice for people new SEOs joining e-commerce brands?
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking to SEO expert Lily Ray about Google EAT, patents, and specifics such as:
Does Google recognise individual authors and how important is this?
What is Google doing with speech recognition?
Is it possible to complete in YMYL niches with a new company?
Are links a big part of EAT?
And much more!
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Mobile-only indexing: The difference between mobile-first and mobile-only indexing with Google's new deadline announced
Google Discover tips: Some new advice on ranking in Google Discover
AI for alt tags: Microsoft's new AI available to developers to automatically describe images
QRG updates: Google has updated their Quality Rater Guidelines in October
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
StreamEA: A new way to do on-page entity optimisation
GPT-3: Bots in the wild on Reddit and ranking spun content
Indexing bug: Affecting billions of pages
Search Terms report: A temporary Google Analytics workaround
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
New Google features: Discussion of the new features coming to Google as announced in SearchOn, including passage indexing, improved misspelling recognition, and improvements to visual search
Ads in Suggest: New ads appearing in Suggest results for Google Maps
Indexing issues: More workarounds to Google's current indexing issues
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Indexing issues: Google still having problems with two concurrent indexing issues.
Merchant Centre metrics: New performance metrics coming for November
Google News Showcase: Google launches a completely new product for news
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Shipping schema: New options for e-commerce retailers in search
GMB messaging: Google rolls out more in-depth update messaging in GMB
Ads affecting SEO: Do ads or the type of ads impact rankings?
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Googlebot moving to HTTP/2: What does this mean for SEOs and webmasters?
Cheap hosting and SEO: A recent study suggests that cheap, shared hosting could be bad for your rankings.
ITP in iOS14: The latest headline notes on Intelligent Tracking Prevention and iOS14
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis talking about:
Shopping ads showing in any country: A Google Shopping update that can show products in any country, depending on language.
Update in location reporting: Google removing actual physical location data
Search terms report data: Rob's approach to dealing with missing search term data
Microsoft Ads updates: The raft of new features coming to Microsoft Advertising
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Search terms report data slashed: Google has reduced the amount of data that is going to be accessible to Google Ad advertisers. What could this mean for the future?
Google Ads price hides: In response to new digital taxes, Google has passed the price increase onto advertisers.
Listener Q&A: Your SEO questions, on Javascript, indexing, and internal linking answered!
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode, you will hear a SearchNorwich recording of Elodie Patridge giving her talk "Content with more crunch". Elodie explores how Google's changing focus away from keywords and towards entities should affect your SEO strategy.
You can watch the full video the talk and see slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
What's in this episode:
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking to Areej AbuAli, founder of Women in Tech SEO for a conversation about getting starting in the SEO industry, the Women in Tech SEO community, speaking opportunities, mentor programmes and how anyone that identifies as a woman, can become involved.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
The big Google glitch: Another problem at Google this year led many SEOs to believe there had been one of the biggest algorithm changes in the last few years.
GMB updates: New ways to update Google My Business information and new insights are coming
GPT-3 thoughts: A brief look at GPT-3 and some of its content generation uses
Listener Q&A: Your SEO questions, answered!
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
GSC API updates: If you're using the Search Console API, Google is making changes you need to be aware of.
Quality rater information: Google has published an up to date guide on their search quality raters.
What is not a ranking factor: Barry Schwartz has published a cited list of ranking factors Google has said they do not use.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Buy with Google: Google opening up their checkout to third parties
Internal ranking documents: Have Google been lying to us about how they use click data?
Infinite scroll and CLS: Tips on how to improve your CLS score with infinite scroll sites
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
News in GSC: The new 'News' filter being added to Google Search Console
Weird SEO: A thread of the weirdest things you've been told about SEO
Google Stories: An overview of the Google Stories AMP project and new open beta Wordpress plugin.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
All in One SEO plugin: A major security flaw affecting 2M users of the Wordpress plugin
Google CTRs: A look at the Sistrix CTR study which shows why global CTRs and keyword volumes are no longer useful for forecasting
Tabbed content: A surprising case study by Searchpilot showing Google's advice may not be optimal
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
The Google Blogspot.in expiring: Why expiring domains are hugely valuable for SEO and how you can prevent yours getting caught.
Low-quality indexing: Theories on if Google has "raised the bar" on the quality of content they will index
Rich results tool: The SEO community reaction to Google's new schema testing tool
SEO resources: Some extra tools and resources for you to use
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode:
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking to Patrick Hathaway, director at Sitebulb about SEO site audits, technical SEO and what is to come in Sitebulb. Together they discuss:
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How Sitebulb came to be
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Patrick's thoughts on technical SEO and Google as a source of truth
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Benefits of cloud vs desktop tools
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Internal link optimisation
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Trends in technical SEO
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Why the f*** Patrick swears so much
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking about:
Google 2019 webspam report: The key stats about combatting webspam in 2019 and how Google is doing.
Text fragments: A new Google Chrome extension that can generate highlighted text fragment links and the potential impact for SEO
Tracking featured snippets: An inventive way to track clicks on featured snippets using Google Analytics and Tag Manager.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode:
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook talking to Dawn Anderson about information retrieval (IR) and why SEOs should be learning more about it as a topic to become better at what they do.
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How is IR being used to identify authors?
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IR resources for SEOs to follow
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The use of Human In The Loop in ML/IR
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Information foraging and value scent
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Search features in the future
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode:
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook and Andrew Cock-Starkey discussing GMB spam, more confusion over the new sponsored and ugc nofollow and Google's advice on guest posting.
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New GMB spam Google is looking into
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Are rel=sponsored and rel=ugc ranking signals?
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Should we nofollow all guest post links?
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook and James Brockbank discussing the state of link building in 2020, including:
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Is guest posting still worth it in 2020?
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How do you identify a toxic link?
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Is it possible to place a $ value on a single link?
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What tactics give the best value?
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode, you will hear Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis discussing:
Core Web Vitals as ranking factors: Google recently announced three new metrics they will be using to measure page quality and these will be incorporated as ranking signals in 2021.
Discovery ads: Rob discusses how to advertise in Google's Discover Feed on mobile.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode you will hear Mark Williams-Cook going through the 3 new metrics that have been introduced in the latest version 6 of Lighthouse. He'll also be discussing the latest news and thoughts on how Google is handling unlinked mentions.
You can get the full transcription and links to resources at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode you will hear an Authoritas 'Tea Time SEO' recording of Mark Williams-Cook from Candour, Maret Reutelingsperger from Mobe Digital and Michael Stepney from Blue Array talking about internal link optimisation and content structure.
You'll find out how to best plans optimise your site with anchor text and a "hub and spoke" approach to content and hear the Q&A session at the end.
You can watch the full video of the talk and see the slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will talk about why talking about the Google May 2020 Core update at this point is a waste of time and will go through the most popular user submitted 'SEO myths' including content length, bounce rate, and links not being important!
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will be talking to Dan Taylor about the Backlinko 11.8M Google Search result study, the SEO community's reaction and Dan's thoughts on how useful the study in context helping people rank better.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will be covering:
Google (no)index: Issues with Google indexing new content and some things you may not know about site: cache: and x-robots.
Free shopping feeds: Google's huge announcement that it will make inclusion in shopping feeds free.
Featured snippet traffic loss: A quick dive into the Moz experiment that demonstrated removing featured snippets may be detrimental to your traffic.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Product categorisation and faceted navigation may seem straight-forward for users but it's a minefield for search engines. Without prior planning, it's easy to wreck your chances of building a competitive e-commerce platform. In this episode, Mark Williams-Cook and SEO and e-commerce expert Kristina Azarenko explore what you need to be thinking about, planning and implementing to get the best possible chance of improving your organic traffic.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
What e-commerce digital trends are we seeing during Coronavirus? What can e-commerce companies do to adapt? Where are the opportunities to thrive? Mark talks to e-commerce expert Luke Carthy to get his insights into what opportunities there are for brands in an industry that has been shaken to its core.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode, you will hear a SearchNorwich recording of Jon Falgate giving his talk on the keyword research process. Jon explores how keyword research is not just a process you go through once when you make a site or new page, but something that needs to ride the wave of intent and respond to ever-evolving demands.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will be talking about:
Google My Business policy changes: Changes to GMB policy that helps restaurants and food stores that are now offering delivery during COVID-19.
COVID-19 Google Ad grants: Some details on the $340M of Google Ads credit that Google is giving small and medium businesses.
SEO and e-commerce: Advice on what to do and what not to do when shuttering your e-commerce store temporarily over the Coronvirus period.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Kevin and Mark discuss what strategies and tactics organisations can think about to do something good during the COVID-19 crisis. Kevin gives his thoughts about interacting with customers that are 'in shock' and Mark brings his thoughts on the SEO and PPC changes they have been making with clients.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Natalie and Mark discuss the range of myths and misconceptions that are still alive and kicking about SEO. From social media links to duplicate content penalties, Natalie gives her advice and tips on how to focus on what is effective.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Seb and Mark discuss the whole SEO process from content ideation to link building. Seb gives his insight into processes and tools he is using in the competitive industry of financial price comparison.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be covering:
Google guest post crackdown: Multiple publishers have reported receiving penalties related to guest posts.
Fake PPC traffic: A run through how to detect fake PPC traffic and a discussion of Rob's tools he uses to combat these clicks.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode, you will hear a SearchNorwich recording from Mark Williams-Cook giving his talk "Won't somebody think of the robots?". Mark shares his experiences of vital SEO tasks that are often missed during web builds, as they don't directly impact the end user.
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be covering:
Fashion SERPs: The big shake up in how fashion SERPs are shown in the US and what you need to do
Google Partner programme changes: What you need to know about the new requirements to be a Google Partner.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be covering:
Removing content from Google: New tools within Google Search Console to handle content removal.
Google Ads delivery: Changes and workarounds for Google's new ad delivery methods
ISP data: What is ISP data and why has it been removed from Google Analytics?
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode, you will hear a SearchNorwich recording of Aleyda Solis giving her talk "How to develop actionable and impactful SEO audits". Aleyda shares her vast experience of developing a process with SEO audits that can achieve real buy-in and deliver business change.
You can watch the full video the talk and see his slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
Mark Williams-Cook talks about:
Google favicons on desktop: How are these favicons impacting users? Mark discusses the studies that have been completed so far.
Featured snippet update: What you need to know about Google removing duplicate listings from search results and how you can work with and around it.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will be talking to SEO consultant, author and speaker, Aleyda Solis about what it takes to make a truly effective SEO site audit that delivers outcomes instead of reports.
We'll dive into the importance of technical, content and links within audits, their context to the business and how to get that all-important client buy-in.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook talks about:
2019 Sistrix IndexWatch: Who were the SEO winners of 2019?
Medium's organic fall: An overview of the investigation into Medium.com's loss of half their traffic.
Listener Q&A: Questions on how to help Google trust canonical signals and link building multiple links from a single site.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode you will hear a SearchNorwich recording of Steven van Vessum giving his talk "SEO disasters: the good, the bad and the taboo". Steven explores some real-life SEO disasters and talks about how to put in place processes to both monitor and deal with issues before they become big problems.
You can watch the full video the talk and see his slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
What's in this episode?
In this episode, Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis are joined by PPC expert Sean Clark from Clark St. James and SEO expert Michael Curtis from Further to discuss search predictions for 2020.
We'll talk about how trends such as voice search and AI are affecting (or not so much!) the industry and how our job roles may continue to change and evolve.
You can watch the full video the talk and see her slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode you will hear a SearchNorwich recording of Lexi Mills giving her talk "Fail free content marketing that builds links and authority". Lexi takes us in detail behind the curtain of successful PR campaigns and why she doesn't feel that the "one hit wonder" PR approach is best for SEO.
You can watch the full video the talk and see her slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
Mark Williams-Cook talks about:
Google Quality Rater Guidelines update: How is Google combating bias in search
Link disavowing: Should we be disavowing links when there is no penalty?
New Google features and learning resources.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be talking about the ins and outs of the Google Ads Optimisation Score. Does it work in your favour or Google's? What are the common traps and mistakes that businesses fall into when entering into the world of Google Ads?
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will be covering:
GSC page and speed reports: The new reports in Google Search Console showing rich product SERPs and CrUX speed reports.
Political ads: Google's new policies on showing political ads on their platform
AlsoAsked.com: An introduction to our People Also Asked tool
Listener Q&A: A dive into possible uses of canonical tags on e-commerce sites
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode, you'll hear from Andrew Smith giving actionable insight into dealing with big site SEO from his experiences with companies such as Expedia, CheapFlights and eDreams on big site SEO.
Recorded on 7th November 2019 at SearchNorwich 9, Andrew goes into detail about reporting best practises, common pitfalls when dealing with big site SEO.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will be talking to Andrew Smith about his experiences with companies such as Expedia, CheapFlights and eDreams on big site SEO.
What are the differences between big and small site SEO? What are the specific challenges and how do you approach them? Do big sites have a free pass with Google in 2019?
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode you will hear a SearchNorwich recording of Dom Hodgson giving his talk "Adventures in outsourcing your digital marketing on the cheap". What exactly happens when you put your marketing out on Fiverr? Find out.
You can watch the full video the talk and see his slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be talking about:
Google BERT: The biggest Google change in over 5 years and one of the biggest leaps in search technology.
Google lead form extensions: Will Google's new lead form extension be the answer for lead generation sites?
Bumper Ads BETA: Talking about the new Bumper Ads in BETA for Premier Google Partners.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be talking about blackhat PPC! Mark and Rob will go into some depth about the rules some PPC practioners are breaking and how they are profiting from it.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
In this episode you will hear a SearchNorwich recording of Chris Green giving his talk "Essential technical SEO learnings from launching and migrating over 120 websites". Chris goes into great detail about the importance and challenges of site migrations from both a technical and communication point of view.
You can watch the full video the talk and see his slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be talking about:
Googlebot user-agent change: Exploring how an update to Google's user-agent string might cause websites some issues.
Internal nofollow links: Clarifying best practise on crawl management with internal nofollow links.
Q&A: We're answering your questions about PPC for franchises and on-page HTML sitemaps.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be talking about:
September Core Update: Looking at the first ranking change data that is coming in and discussing what you can do about core updates.
Rich snippet controls: Google's new tags that allow you to control how your rich snippet results appear for text, images and video.
GSC data: Google Search Console improving data refresh times.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will be talking about:
Google review rich results: Google's algorithm update is preventing 'self-serving' review stars from showing in SERPs
GSC Breadcrumbs: A new addition to Google Search Console
Microsoft Audiences: Microsoft trying to tempt publishers with new audience targeting options in open beta.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will be talking about:
Google Quality Rater Guidelines: Small changes in these guidelines show a shift to Google looking to perform better at perceptual tasks.
ECPC changes: Google Ads brings maximise conversion value to manual bidding
Nofollow: A discussion on the interesting side effects of the recent introduction of rel=ugc and rel=sponsored tags
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook & Tom Haczewski will be talking about the role of User Experience (UX) in SEO.
Google has been slowing moving forward with integrating UX signals into their algorithm looking at things like site speed, mobile friendliness and pop ups.
Tom & Mark discuss how SEOs can do a better job by approaching UX from the ground up, rather than trying to fix specific bits downstream.
You'll hear Tom's expert opinion on UX projects he's worked on, where SMEs should start with UX and even his opinion on cookie pop-ups.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook & Rob Lewis will be talking about:
GMB ads: Google is now showing competitor ads within organisation's own information boxes.
Average position sunsetting: Google is removing the 'average position' metric. Rob and Mark discuss the pros and cons and impact it will have on campaigns.
Maximise conversion value: Google's newest automated bidding strategy. Can we sack the PPC managers yet?
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you'll hear a SearchNorwich recording of Daniel Brooks giving his talk "Keyword Research: Tips & tactics that generate clicks & impressions to implement tomorrow!". Daniel goes over the importance of keyword research and provides some really effective strategies to carry it out using various tools and what metrics you should be considering.
You can watch the full video of Daniel's talk and see her slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
In this episode, you'll hear a SearchNorwich recording of Eva Wilkes giving her talk "Awesome Audiences". Eva gives a great overview of audiences you can use on the Google Display Network, and then goes over strategies on how to build custom affinity audiences to give you the most control.
You can watch the full video of Eva's talk and see her slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
In this episode, you'll hear a SearchNorwich recording of Stacey MacNaught giving her talk "Honey, I shrunk the content marketing budget!". Stacey gives some great examples about producing low-risk content on a budget but can still drive links and interest.
You can watch the full video of Stacey's talk and see her slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
In this episode you will hear a SearchNorwich recording of Lukasz Zelezny giving his talk "SEO tactics to implement tonight". Lukasz gives a detailed and insightful overview of a few his tactics to help improve organic rankings, citing his own method of keyword research, GAP analysis, WordPress plugins and more.
You can watch the full video of Lukasz's talk and see his slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook gives some brief news on the Google Maverick algorithm update, Google's new #AskGoogleWembmaster shorts and Google's confirmation that there has been a technical problem with Google My Business shortnames. You'll then here from Sean Clark from Clark St. James, deliver his SearchNorwich talk on why so many companies struggle to realise a return on investment with their Google Ads campaigns. Sean will go over tips, tools and techniques to help you see past just keywords, bids and ad copy onto what is really important.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes athttps://search.withcandour.co.uk
Episode 19: Google Shopping support and automated bidding algorithm changes
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook & Rob Lewis will be talking about:
Google suspending Shopping support: After a European Commission ruling, Google will no longer be offering technical or strategic help with Google Shopping campaigns.
Automated bidding changes: Google has made signficant changes to their automated bidding algorithm that could make it easier for new businesses to enter the PPC market.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will be talking about:
Local SEO & Google My Business bugs: Some great tips for UK businesses to get ahead in map results and the Google My Business bug that has been making businesses profiles get suspended.
Schema abuse: A quick look at sites that are abusing schema to force rich results in the SERPs
Google SERP experiments: A new "people also views" SERP experiment - plus how to share Google experiments you're seeing.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will be talking about:
Robots.txt changes: How Google are dropping support for undocumented features of robots.txt parsing in September and what effect this may have.
Diversity update: New analysis by SearchMetrics on how the Google diversity update is impacting sites
Keyword research with Python: A look at a free, new keyword research tool built in Python.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will be taking a dive into the world of Google penalties!
We'll be talking about how Google handles and processes penalties, what the most common types of penalty are and why it might seem like Google is doing nothing about that pesky cheating competitor!
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you'll hear a SearchNorwich recording of Andrew Martin giving his talk "How to use schema to enrich search results and improve your CTR". Andrew gives a clear and concise introduction to structured data, schema.org and what you need to be doing to get on the front foot in the SERPs.
You can watch the full video of Andrew's talk and see his slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook will be discussing:
Latest advice on the Google core algorithm update:Google has provided a few specifics on how webmasters should be looking at the core algorithm update.
Should we trust Google?A look at some recent cases were following best practise has not been helpful.
Listener Q&AYour questions answered on if where your website is hosted matters and the effect of internal 'jump to' links.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be discussing the Google core update and a new, unannounced change to Google's location targeting that will be affecting your campaigns.
Google core updateWe'll be covering the data that's come in about the Google update and what we've seen so far.
PPC location updateGoogle has quietly updated how location targeting works on all accounts, which may be affecting your campaign costs.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you'll hear from Jack Bamfield of Verve Search on how to run a successful link building campaign from ideation to outreach. Jack gives real-world case studies and provides templates of his own outreach email campaigns.
You can watch the full video of Jack's talk and see his slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
What's in this episode?
Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be discussing how to combat PPC click fraud and what's changing with the new Google SERP.
New Google SERP
Google are changing how ads look and introducing favicons into search results
PPC Click fraudHow can you identify and combat click fraud?
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode? Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be discussing the Google Marketing Live 2019 event announcements including:
Discovery adsGoogle's new native ad format appearing over many properties
Gallery AdsComing out of beta to the top of a SERP near you
New Shopping ExperienceIs Google finally gearing up to go toe to toe with Amazon?
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode? Mark Williams-Cook will be discussing:
Google I/O
New features coming to Google Search such as AR and Google Lens updates
Evergreen Googlebot
What does Googlebot's version update mean for Javascript and SEO
HowTo and FAQ structured data
Google's support for HowTo and FAQ structured data on search and assistants
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode? Mark Williams-Cook will be discussing:
Google Search Console bugsThere was a 16 day data loss within Google Search Console and errors with manual action reports.
Bing Ads rebrandThe Bing Ads platform is rebranding to Microsoft Ads and changing focus.
Google XSS exploitsA newly released zero-day exploit that allows blackhats to inject links and content onto third party website's Google cache.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
In this episode, you'll get some insight into techniques that blackhat SEO that have been used to rank in Google and make the people prepared to do them a lot of money. Listening to Craig Campbell will give businesses insight into what their competitors may be doing, how to protect themselves and maybe some inspiration to think outside the SEO box.
You can watch the full video of Craig's talk and see his slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
What's in this episode? Mark Williams-Cook will be discussing:
Yoast Schema
Yoast have just published version 11 of their plugin claiming they have "solved" schema, by tying together the graph for you.
Google AMP signed exchanges
Search results for AMP can now display the hosting domain, rather than Google's properties using signed exchanges.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode? Mark Williams-Cook will be discussing:
Google de-indexing and other bugs
A dive into the massive bug that caused millions of pages to be dropped from Google's index and what you can do about it, as well as a look at Google's rich data and cache bugs that are also causing headaches for site owners.
Google Search Console updates
New reports in the GSC interface, including the Google Discover report and the updating of performance reports to include only canonical URL data.
Gallery Ads
A look at Google's new beta 'Gallery Ad' format that is shaking up paid search results.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode? Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be discussing:
- Sub-site links in Google
Google appears to be testing a new category of 'sub' site links on mobile. Triggered on brand ads, Google offers searchers the opportunity to navigate directly to products from a vertical accordion.
- Google replacing audience keywords with custom intent audiences
Rob will explain the different between audience keywords, custom intent audiences and what it means for advertisers on Google Ads.
- Bing's Action Extensions
Bing has dropped a big new feature that they claim enhances advertiser's click through rates by an average of 20%! We'll find out more about it and how to use it.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
The special holiday (well, Mark's holiday at least) episode!
In this episode, you'll hear a recording from the SearchNorwich meetup of SEO expert Andrew Martin giving his talk on how to win SEO results with schema.
Google told us last year that schema was on of the two most important things to focus your SEO efforts on and just in the last episode we highlighted how some SEOs were exploiting schema to grab rankings they not be deserving.
It's powerful stuff and Andrew gives one of the best introductions on the topic, so enjoy!
You can watch the full video of his talk and see his slides at https://search.withcandour.co.uk and learn more about SearchNorwich at https://searchnorwich.org
In this episode, Mark Williams-Cook will be talking about:
- Pagination problems
There is a significant pagination bug present in the WPEngine system and Google have updated their best practise advise regarding pagination.
- Date published abuse
Google reaffirm best practise for articles using datePublished and dateModified as some SEOs cite concerns Google may not have a grip on this as publishers are abusing it for rankings
- Google My Business fraud reporting
In case you missed it, Google My Business as launched a new form which enables you to report competitors or fraudulent listings within Google My Business.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk
What's in this episode? Mark Williams-Cook and Rob Lewis will be discussing:
- Google Ads Shopping UpdatesGoogle is merging Google Images with the standard Search Network for Shopping Campaigns, this means you can no longer opt-out of having shopping ads showing on Google Images.
- Apple's ITP v2.1 is going to disrupt AnalyticsThe new Intelligent Tracking Prevention going live in Safari 12.1 and iOS 12.2 will automatically expire cookies than are more than 7 days old, which will inflate Google Analytics metrics.
- Google's broad core algorithmIn a rare confirmation, Google has announced they are pushing a large, 'broad, core' algorithm update. We'll be discussing the impact and Google's advice on what to do.
You can get the full transcription and links for this episode in our show notes at https://search.withcandour.co.uk